The full Irish breakfast, as served by The Moorings restaurant in Portmagee, County Kerry, Ireland. Egg poached, pork sausage, bacon, fried tomato, baked beans, black pudding and white pudding (both sausages).
We ended up here after the weather ended our hopes of crossing to Skellig Michael. The full Irish breakfast cheered us up (Halbe had porridge). We watched the choppy waves in the port from our window-side seat.
And five days left without dependable internet. In in a nutshell, in a bulletted list, here’s what we’re doing:
– Goats: water, hay, straw, milking with machine, clean machine, repeat in the evening.
– Muck out stalls (remove all the old urine and feces-laden straw)
– Walk greyhounds twice a day, clean out their stalls
– Watch our waistline balloon on the solid diet of potatoes and meat (i.e., Tuesday night’s meal (per person): two hamburger patties, two sausage, pork loin, chicken breast, steak, jacket potato with butter, roll with butter)
– Watched greyhound races
– Watched greyhound time trials
– Watched greyhounds exercise on beach
– Go to local pub (Marine Bar) for traditional music
We leave on the 15th for Paris, where we’ll remain for five days.
Halbe and I are alive and well, but with a limited internet connection. I’m literally writing this on a laptop balanced on a fencepost on the edge of a goat field. We’ve been taking tons of photos and enjoying our time on a goat farm in Ireland. We worked at a farmer’s market today, and talked to many of the other vendors about their own experiences. Fascinating stuff which we hope to write about soon.
A few Anglo-Nubians are waiting for their turn, so I need to hop. Updates soon!
The highlight of my trip to the Guinness Storehouse was the “Perfect Pint” bar, where they instruct visitors on how to pour, you guessed it, the perfect pint. They’re very specific about it, largely to ensure the correct amount of the creamy head. I took copious notes (not really, I photographed the instructional poster), and here is the method as described to me by an official Guinness bartender:
Take a cool, dry, Guinness-branded glass. The distinctive, bulbed pint glass is important. The traditional, straight-side glass leads to either too-much or not enough head.
Hold the glass “firmly” at 45 degrees under the tap, logo facing you.
Pull the handle fully forward towards you. Straighten the glass when the drink reaches the “Guinness” text. Stop filling when it reaches the middle of the harp, or about 3/4 full. Do not allow the nozzle to touch the side of the glass, nor penetrate the surface of the drink.
Leave the surge to settle, allowing the creamy head to form. The head should be 10-15 mm high. The head is formed by nitrogen gas, released from the liquid by friction from a mid-line filter. It first runs down the side of the glass (hence the cascading dark/light effect), then up the middle. The gas, temporarily caught in the top of the liquid, forms the head.
Top up the glass by pushing the tap handle away from you. Stop when the foam is proud of the rim (slightly above it). Do not allow spillage.
Present to customer with a steady hand, logo facing forward.
Halbe snapped this shot of a sodden Dublin pair, enjoying the sunshine/sidewalk on a Monday afternoon. Taken in Temple Bar.
We’re back in sightseeing mode, and have spent two days checking off items in Dublin: Guiness Storehouse, Trinity College, Long Library, Book of Kells, Temple Bar, St. Stephen’s Green, Ha’Penny Bridge, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Any recommendations of things to do or see?
Best meal for me so far: bangers and mash from Gruel on Dame Street.
Two sausages on mashed potatoes, covered with onions cooked in a balsamic vinegar. Hearty and delicious.
Since arriving, I’ve been living a fairly Henry VIII-style diet. Lotsa meat. Dinner the night before was a grill selection: thick cut bacon, steak, and more sausage, accompanied with potato wedges.
I haven’t seen the emphasis on organic and local food here that was near-omnipresent in England/Wales. We did eat at “Nude”, an eco-conscious cafe created by Bono’s older brother, but its €2.25 wheatgrass shots did not appear to be attracting many customers.
Next, we’re considering renting a car to visit the northern coast of the island. Next week we begin work on a commercial goat dairy farm in County Cork.
Me over the Bristol Channel and sporting a very fashionable camera bag. This hillside of grass grows increasingly steep, gives way to rocks, then plunges into the channel. From there I couldn’t see anything of this, but instead a clean line where land and water seemed to meet. A slip would certainly have been painful, if not fatal. But at this moment, my feet firmly planted, the view was calming and peaceful.
Today was our last full day in Wales. Tomorrow we travel to Dublin and begin our time in Ireland.
You’re on your hands and knees, a tray of seedlings by your side. You scoop a hole with one hand, and pop a seedling out with the other, push it into the soil, and press it down into place. Reach forward, balanced over your knees, do it again with the middle row. Push the tray forward, then crawl forward one pace. Repeat. In several months, each plant will produce one, sometimes two, corn cobs.
It’s lunchtime at the Big Pit coal museum. I’m a curious guy, so I ordered the faggots, peas, and gravy.
Faggots (I feel bad just using the word) does not mean the same thing in the UK as it does in the US. Here it means a meatball that includes liver (it also means a cigarette, or a bundle of kindling). How’d it taste? Mmm… like ground up liver. Not great to me, but I could see how if you grew up with it, it may be a comfort food. I was told it’s a pretty traditional item on the British menu.
We rented a coffee can-sized car (a Chevrolet “Matiz”) and drove around Wales this past weekend. We’re actually heading out again this morning to visit the Big Pit, a coal mine museum. So, in lieu of a full post, here are some observations:
Driving on the left side of the road isn’t as jarring a change as we expected. Shifting with the left hand, however, took some getting used to. I kept slapping the door with my right hand, reaching for the shifter.
We strongly endorse McVitie’s Digestives biscuits as an excellent energy source for hill-walking. We climbed to the second highest peak in Wales — it takes about an hour. It takes another twenty minutes to get to the highest peak, but we needed to get going.
Hay-on-Wye, the tiny town packed with books, is the most charming place we’ve been so far. Bookshelves are tucked all over the city: in alleys, on the decaying castle, from cafes.
This “bookstore” had no one around. It was a whole wall of books, with a box for people to put their money.
Ice cream made from sheep milk: not too bad! Very creamy, a bit grassy. We didn’t know it was non-cow milk until we were done. I had “cinder toffee.” It tasted like the top off a creme brulee.
We had Indian for dinner. Everything was heavy on the coconut milk, and too sweet as a result. In general, we’re finding meals in Britain to be heavy on the sweetness.
A “road” as indicated on a map could mean anything from a nice, two-lane paved and painted thing, down to a rutted dirt path squeezed between ten-foot hedges that may or may not be someone’s driveway. You just don’t know until you get there.
Also, the dashed white line separating lanes is more of a suggestion than enforced law, it seems.
Roundabouts make a lot of sense. Much faster than traffic lights. On the other hand, plopping a roundabout in the middle of a freeway — not as intuitive.
Tintern Abbey is picturesque and grand in a way I’ve never seen before: vaulted stone arches with nothing by sky and birds behind them; the knowledge that men walked these same stone paths 800 years ago. Birds flew in and out like the place was a new kind of forest. It was raining, which gave the whole place a weighty atmosphere — and emphasized the lack of, and importance of, a roof.
Now we’re off for the Big Pit: National Coal Museum! And later, of course, a little bit of work. We’re working. We promise.
I come all the way to Wales, and end up right back in Hollywood.
For context, take a look at this trailer for the upcoming, $26 million feature IRONCLAD:
Not too bad, right? I mean, it has Brian Cox and he’s pretty good. Paul Giamatti, too (but he’s not in the trailer).
But, did you notice the walls? I’ve touched those walls. Y’see, in a land full of castles, the production company decided to make their own. Shooting wrapped back in October of 2009, but the set still stands today, now a sort of local legend — the fake castle of Pencoed. Halbe and I set out yesterday to find it.
Hark! In the distance! What squat residence is this!
We drew closer to find the castle protected by a six-foot security fence. The irony of this did not hit me until just now.
At a break in the fence was a car and a small caravan housing a security guard. It looks like he may have lived there. We approached, said hello, then he invited us to take a look around. “Be careful, though” he said. “She’s starting to show her age.”
We breached the fortress! The walls were made of thin plastic in the form of stone bricks and painted as such. Everything iron (nails, hinges) looked authentically rusted, but that solid oak door behind me was hollow.
Here I am, puzzling over the existence of electrical cables in 12th century England. You can see neon green painted set pieces in the thatched cottage behind me.
The castle keep. You can see the scaffolding support structure through the window. The actual “stone” walls are that plastic stone stuff stapled to plywood. The weathering effect was pretty impressive. Everything looked authentic until you were about arms-length away from it. Or, if you went around the back…
The support scaffolding. You can also see the trailer of the security guard in the lower-right. The whole thing was pretty tall — maybe four stories high. Walking around inside was neat. If I squinted, and ignored the sound of the motorway over the hill, it did feel a bit like I was in an old castle.
The security guard came in to see what we were doing, and told us bit about the movie. IRON CLAD is about a group of mercenaries King John sent to reclaim Rochester Castle in 1215. When the time came to give the castle to the king, the mercenaries decided to instead keep it for themselves. The king’s forces lay siege, and 800 years later it’s all made into a movie. GRAPHIC SPOILER ALERT: King John wins. Here’s how: After being unable to penetrate the fortress for months, he forces a bunch of fat hogs to crawl up the sewage pipe that runs beneath one of the walls, locks them in, then sets them on fire. The intense heat created by the burning fat of the pigs brings down the wall, letting the army inside.
