I return, with the promised post on Glendalough. The "lough" part is pronounced like "loch," which makes sense since it refers to the lakes.
Glendalough was founded - in a sense - by Saint Kevin in the sixth century. Basically, he was a crazy monk who just wanted a place to be by himself so he could meditate and not be tempted by women and not have to beat them off with sticks and things like that. (I do not exaggerate much here.) So he went off in search of said place, and found some nice mountains with a nice valley and nice lakes, with nice caves to sleep and meditate in. Everything was great for a while, until people heard about this holy man who was off finding peace and becoming closer to God. So they went off to find him and see if he would teach them. Thus, the poor guy was once again surrounded by people. The horror!
Even after he died, folks stuck around. They built a settlement, small at first. They built a church, which became known as Saint Kevin's Kitchen because of the chimney-like tower poking out of the roof. They built a giant round tower, the purpose of which is uncertain, but likely possibilities are that it was a combination bell tower/grain storage tower. They built a huge cross. Eventually they built a cathedral, far smaller than what you'd consider a modern cathedral to be, but still quite impressive. Most impressive of all is that most of it's still there. The cathedral is only in ruins because it was deliberately partially destroyed; unfortunately I'm forgetting the exact reason, but I believe it was to scare people away from it.
Lest I start sounding too flippant, let me say that I absolutely loved it there. It's amazing to stand in a place where people have been taking pilgrimages for over a thousand years, to see buildings that date back many hundreds of years. After we walked through the monastic site, we started to walk towards the lakes, and it was beautiful. We were keeping a brisk pace since we didn't have a lot of time before we had to head out with the tour, but it's truly lovely. Lots of little waterfalls along the side of the trail, with one big one between the two lakes. We didn't get quite far enough to see the caves where Saint Kevin supposedly stayed.
Appropriately enough, there were a bunch of little shamrocks in the woods. I think this was our first genuine Irish shamrocks in the wild encounter.
Next up: testing out the DART system and still more wanderings in Dublin. You can wander a lot in Dublin.
Comments