The Wet Isle of Eire

Hello friends! We have made it back from our 11 day journey through Ireland a little wetter, a lot wiser, and very glad to be home. It was an excellent trip filled with visits to ruins of all kinds, a lot of driving and great encounters (generally) with folks from the McMahan homeland. Our major visits included Killarney, Dingle, Longford, Sligo, Derry, and Dublin. We will try to post several pictures here in order to document the trip and bring youb a bit closer to our experience there.

On Saturday in between showers we visited various spots along the coast of Northern Ireland including the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge which spans a 80 meter deep ravine along the coast. We all made it across and back without too much vertigo although Mom described it as "not my favorite stop on the trip".

On the same day we visited Londonderry (or Derry as it is known in Ireland and among Catholics) where in 1972 over a dozen protesters were killed by British soldiers, signalling the beginning of the Troubles. Just south of Derry in Bogside, shown here, there are several murals painted on terraced homes depicting events during the Troubles in the 1970's and 1980's. Derry has only recently recovered from these events.