Visiting Sligo

'Under bare Ben Bulben's head, in Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid'.


We visited this morning, just us and a coach load of German tourists - whose driver was serving them up a snack of wurst in the car park when we arrived.

It's a Church of Ireland church, beautifully kept and not terribly old - Victorian on old foundations. There was an Abbey there in pre-Reformation days and some of the old Celtic crosses are re-used in the walls. This is the only one left standing, with the stump of the old round tower behind.

Afterwards, heading into the hills, we walked up a stretch of road being improved. The workmen greeted us and stopped to chat. Everyone seems to have time to stop and chat. It's lovely. And so is the weather - today it was so hot I wore shorts and T-shirt!!

We are here for a couple of nights, so we've already made friends with fellow campers.A couple from Dublin, another from Carrickfergus. Tonight the conversation reverted to the Troubles - stuff that we only heard of through television or the newspapers. They spoke so calmly of the kind of things that made my blood run cold. All different now, they said.

So we've now ticked off two things from the 'to do in Ireland' list. We've been the length of County Donegal. ( We are none the wiser about where TM's forebears actually came from, but we can appreciate how hard it must have been for them to adapt to the overcrowded Old Town of Edinburgh after leaving these wild shores. His 4x great grandmother died there in 1855, so she has an official death certificate which says she was 103 years old, widow of a farmer, and mother of 10 children, five of whom survive her. She arrived in Scotland when she was over 70. She must have been one tough old lady.).

And we've seen Ben Bulben, and Yeats's grave. Where next?

Another fabulous sunset tonight.