A Yankee's Corkboard: Blarney

Badger's cave! On the Barney Castle website there is a video with harp music and stories about sights around Blarney castle (and the stone itself)...the caves are featured in it at one point about 5 or 6 minutes in.

For those of you who don't know my interest in blacksmithing, this really made my day! Look at it! I want to make something like this someday!

Glass faces: they were beautiful in an eerie sort of way--reminded me of Welcome to Night Vale

It was nice to see remnants of real art left over when you looked above the more recent vandalism and names carved into the walls...

By the time we had gotten to this floor of the castle I was exhausted, not because of the number of stairs, but because of all the stress they put on my nerves! It was practically a vertical climb, and at such a tight spin that I couldn't get a good picture to show you if I tried (and I did)

Both Francis and Michelle kissed the stone. I wasn't going to, but they convinced me--"you'll regret it if you don't", "you're only here once", "you won't want to climb those stairs again"etc.

So after goin' round the ramparts I circled back and did it anyhow...

Here is the proof

There were all kinds of nooks and crannies and little rooms to explore in the castle

Daffodils grew everywhere

...and then there was this tree

Francis helped Michelle and me each get up into the tree...

...Getting back down was a lot more fun...

There were (wooden) mushrooms randomly around the park. Does anyone know why?

Tee hee hee...

Oh! and did I mention the dungeon? Every castle should have one...It got to be a tight squeeze, small enough that had Francis gone in he would have had to crawl and quite possibly would have gotten stuck.

I felt like Indiana Jones for a bit, or maybe it was because Michelle was humming the Raiders March...