Chewing Gum is no Substitute

I've noticed a distinct lack of mints here, I find it strange, I thought the British were known for their love of mint, I mean Fisherman's Friend were invented here and I don't think you get any mintier than that.  It's only now that I can't find mints anywhere, well at least not any of the obvious spots, ie right next to a cash register, that I'm starting to miss them.  What with my occasional raw onion lunch I am starting to suffer withdrawal symptoms.  Now when I think of all the eclipse mints that I just casually left in Sydney, thinking oh no need to take these, everyone sells mints, I suffer pangs of regret.  Anyone visiting from Australia, forget TimTams, just a couple of boxes of mints and the couch is yours.

Rough Week

I've had a rough week this week.  It started on Monday with an insect bite, which by that night had become infected.  I woke up on Tuesday morning, and found that the infection was starting to spread up my arm, it gave me a good idea as to where the lymph system actually lies, which was kind of cool.  Though I started to worry what would happen if it reached my heart, as it was already getting pretty close to my shoulder.  So began a week long delve into the British medical system, something I was hoping not to have to experience quite so soon.

It's a strange system, I haven't yet decided if I like it, very bureaucratic and inflexible, but on the plus side, free. I can see the advantages if you have a persistent, on-going medical condition, or if you need weekly visits to the doctors surgery, if you have kids, are pregnant, are old, something like that.  Where it seems to break down is if you are actually sick and need to see someone that day. 

Firstly, I naively rang the closest doctors surgery to me and tried to book an appointment.  The first question the receptionist asked me was my date of birth, which at the time I thought was a little strange, but this question would become a recurring theme this week.  It seems that if the British ever need to reduce their citizenry to a number it's going to be your date of birth, they love it.  After the receptionist realised I wasn't a patient I'm then told they can't see me because I don't live in their particular catchment area, turns out I'm off by one street.

Once I find the one and only surgery in the whole of England which would possibly accept me, I then had to try and make an appointment there.  This consisted of pressing redial constantly for half an hour until I managed to finally get through to a machine which told me I was in a queue, why that machine couldn't have answered the first time I called is a mystery to me, perhaps they need another machine to have a queue for the queue?  When I finally got through to a person the first question was, of course, "what's your date of birth?", upon realising I wasn't a patient there they told me I couldn't make an appointment until I registered.  So into the surgery I go with my photo ID and proof of address.  Once I'm registered I'm then told by the receptionist that she is physically incapable of making an appointment for me that day.  They can only do appointments for 2 days from now and would I like her to make an appointment for later in the week.

What this system means is that if you aren't sick your visit to the doctor is completely pleasurable, you make an appointment for whenever is convenient, turn up, no queue, straight in and out.  Whereas if you are sick there are only 1.5 hours available to you each day, where you have to physically go to the surgery to be put in a queue for the doctor.  I am starting to sense where the British ability to queue comes from. 

And they are militant on those 1.5 available hours.  Whilst waiting the first time an old lady turned up with a chest infection wanting to see someone, problem was it was 10:05am and the queue stops growing at 10am.  So the receptionist sent her away.  Holy cow! 

The other really weird thing is that to see the doctor you have to get past the gate keepers first, the receptioinsts, which means explaining to them in graphic detail what is wrong with you in full hearing of everyone else waiting.  So forget any notion of privacy you may have.   

I think they almost have a great system though, I mean it is free and prescriptions are only 7 pounds each for any medication they may give you.  I just think it needs a bit of tweaking, perhaps more appointments available for sick people that day?  But maybe the fact that it is free is also part of the problem, because why wouldn't you see the doctor anytime you feel mildly sick, apart from the time-cost of course.  Add to that the 20 sick days the British get a year, and the fact you can take 7 days off in a row before needing to provide a medical certificate and it all points to a rather inefficient health care system.  All in all I probably spent close to 7 hours waiting for various doctors that week.  Perhaps there is some room in the system for a mixture of paid and free doctors.  I mean, I would be happy to pay not to have to wait 7 hours in a queue, especially when it's flu season.

What made the whole thing really bad though, and led to the 7 hours of waiting around, is that the second time I went back to the surgery, as the infection was still growing, the doctor gave me possibly the worst antibiotic he could, Erythromycin.  Seriously if anyone tries to prescribe that to you, straight-up refuse, don't go through what I went through.  The way it made me feel, I really thought I was dying.  Though by that stage I was on 4 grams of antibiotics a day, which probably wasn't helping my body function properly either.  Once the third doctor I saw realised she had no idea what was going on, and things were looking bad, it was off to the local accident and emergency ward, on a Friday night. 

The doctors there were great, the only problem I had was a bad reaction to the erythromycin, though they couldn't really understand why I was on so many antibiotics in the first place.  I think that's another thing I learned in this process, there seems to be a much greater reliance on the accident and emergency wards here than in Australia.  As in people seem to end up there much earlier in their treatment cycle than I would have thought they would in Australia.  So next time I go to the GP and whatever they give me doesn't work I think I'll just go straight to the A&E, the wait is about the same, but they'll actually fix you up.

You'll be thankful there's no photos this time, though I did take some, just in case anyone is interested.

Westminster

Big Ben, with amazingly no other people really in shot

Houses of Parliament

We went for a bit of a wander around Westminster the other day.  I'll have to work out if we are ever able to actually get inside the Parliament. Westminster Abbey was completely packed, so we decided to leave that for another day.  Checking my guide book, which finally arrived from Australia, it seems that we can at least visit the galleries of Parliament so I might have to pop in there one of these evenings.  It looks like it's open until 10:30pm which is pretty good for those people who are working.

This is going to be a bit more of a photo post than anything else, as I think I'll wait until I actually visit before I write anything more.  I have a feeling that by the time I get around to going the weather is going to have deteriorated dramatically, so perhaps it's best to show the buildings in the best light.

St Margaret's Church, slightly overshadowed by Westminster Abbey next door

Entrance to the Department of Defense

One thing I have noticed living here is the excessive numbers of CCTV cameras which are everywhere.  It is very much a big brother kind of state here, but then I'm dubious as to whether they are in fact effective.  A lady was pushed onto the rails at one of the tube stations one night recently, and the psycho who did that I don't think has been caught, don't worry she wasn't harmed at all, but still pretty crazy behaviour.  And yet the tube stations have a particularly high density of cameras. 

To the left is the entrance to the Ministry of Defense, this was certainly the holy grail of CCTV cameras, and what is shown in the photo is only a tiny percentage of the number of cameras which were actually there.  I didn't want to take too many photos, mainly because I knew every shutter click was being captured in multiple angles and quite possibly high definition.

The Thames and the London Eye

Anyone for some Offal?

We were lucky enough to go to dinner the other night with a London local, or at least an ex-London local who was visiting for a few days.  We were recommended to try St John Restaurant and we were not disappointed.  The thing is the place is literally around the corner from where we were staying when we first moved to London.  When I think of the tourist-traps and burnt food we ate, now knowing that this place was within walking distance, is a bit hilarious. 

This restaurant is known for using all parts of an animal in cooking, and when we went they were true to form.  Tongue, sweetbreads, bone marrow and lamb's heart were the more offally dishes.  The heart was actually surprisingly tender, for such a hard-working muscle, it had an almost kidney-like texture.  It did come out as a full-on heart, which was kind of cool, though it was wrapped in bacon, which I think makes anything look delicious.

It was great going with an English person as well, because the menu certainly needed some translation, what with the middlewhite and arbroath for savouries and Queen of Puddings for dessert it was hard to know what we were going to end up with.

All in all a very enjoyable evening.  If you are ever visiting and feel like something a bit more adventurous than the classic bangers and mash let me know, there seems to be about a 3 week booking turn-around, if you want a reasonable weekend dinner slot.  I would love to go back so in return for me booking you a slot you may be forced to have me along as company :)

Is Guinness Really Better in Ireland?

Dave's Guinness

I have to say that the answer is a whole-hearted yes.  I always thought people were being a bit precious when they said this.  But having found Guinness almost undrinkable in Australia, and then trying one in Dublin, mainly because you feel like you have to, I am now hooked.  Also knowing that it is guaranteed to be chilled has helped matters when drinking it in London.

The Man-O-War pub

Whilst in Dublin we visited a pub which was first established in 1595, it used to be a horse exchange post, which is really going back.  It makes me smile now to think of the pub which proudly proclaimed itself the oldest pub in Sydney. It was established in 1828, and is probably younger than our dodgy local around the corner, though to be honest, being in Hampstead it isn't all that dodgy.

Coming back to this pub, since they built the motorway bypassing it, there has been a dramatic fall-off in customers.  Which is a shame as the bartender was super friendly and let us pull our own drinks, though he did keep a close eye on us as we did it.

Dave pouring himself a drink

The bartender was telling us that Guinness has a very short shelf-life, I think he said something like 10 days, which kind of explains why it really isn't that great in Australia.  It's not bad in London, there seems to be a high enough turn-over in the stuff that it never really exceeds the 10 days by too much.

A couple of things to say about Guinness, since it does seem to be the national drink, Arthur Guinness was a very clever man, and if you look at the harp on the glass you'll see it's facing a particular way.  Well Arthur Guinness actually copyrighted that, which is impressive when you think about it, given that the harp is the national emblem of the country, but I suppose it became a country post the copyrighting.  This means that all images of the harp now have to be done the other way, if you look at a euro coin from Ireland, you'll see the harp on that, and it's facing the other way.  Even the harps in the Dublin castle were all facing the other way. 

Also the other is not to visit the Guinness Store-House in Dublin.  We didn't go as we were fairly vehemently sworn off it by one of the tour guides.  Apparently Guinness has been bought out by Diageo, a massive drinks company, and whilst the family is still a shareholder, they don't actually work at all in the company.  We were told that there's no longer any guided tour and that at 13 euros, it's an expensive free pint of Guinness.  Instead we went to the Jameson Distillery, which was enough of a tourist-fest for us.

Rotten Apples

Look at that sky!  Summer in Regeants Park, who said the weather was bad here?

We had some bad luck with our iMac this week, one of the backlights in the screen looks to have blown.  So we are desktop-less this week, which means no more Ireland photos for a little while, at least until we get the computer back.

Apple Care was actually much better than what I was expecting, though if you go in with terribly low expectations you can sometimes be pleasantly surprised.  They sent someone out the next day to take it in to be repaired, which is good, I was dreading trying to carry a 27" desktop onto the tube.

Hopefully the problem isn't too major and we can get our computer back with no loss of data.  Though reading the webs it seems that this problem is not terribly uncommon.  It seems Apple is refusing to acknowledge it, which is why you won't see this problem anywhere on the Apple Support pages, but there are about 15 threads on the MacRumours site.  Poor show Apple, this is worse than Microsoft, they replaced their dodgy x-boxes, no questions asked, whilst you are refusing to say anything about it.  It means people who have just gone out of warranty are now finding their screens busted and have to pay $600 to get it repaired.  In fact there is a court case in the US at the moment as to just how much Apple knew about this issue before they released the computer.  I'm just wondering if anyone out there knows the date when Apple turned evil? 

Other than that just got a few photos for you.  Straight off the camera I'm afraid as Lightroom is on the iMac.  Oh yeah, and we went to Oxford last weekend, post to follow soon.

Dinner location by the Thames in Oxford

Oxford skyline, with a splash of autumn colour

Is this the Ugliest Mug You've Ever Seen?

If you ever visit me you can guarantee I'll never offer you a cup of tea out of this mug.  It was delivered, for free, to my front door a couple of days ago.

It seems that ordering online has really taken off here, basically you can buy anything online, nothing too different from anywhere you may say, but here it actually works.  I ordered a book from The Book Depository in the expectation that I wouldn't see it for about 3 weeks.  In Australia you order something online, wait awhile, forget about it, then when it arrives it's like a surprise all over again.  Here I ordered the book on Friday, and by 9am Monday it had been delivered, so whilst I lost out on the secondary joy of receiving something that had long been forgotten about, I had the book in less than 24 business hours.

In this fever of online ordering I decided to try and get some new gym gear, having culled everything for the move.  I'd already been to a few stores in person and was starting to despair, it was either all really running specific, not what you want to wear to yoga, or too expensive, or it was like visiting a Target shop.  The people from Canberra will know what I'm talking about, you walk into a store which seemingly has a lot of stock, and you find that actually there's not a thing that you could buy. 

So in a fit of people hatred I resorted to the internet.  And a few days later my things arrived, along with this incredibly hideous mug.  I can see why they are giving these away.  The placemat underneath the hideous mug is from another online purchase, like I said I've been going a bit crazy.

On another note we're off to Barcelona tomorrow evening.  It's going to be interesting to return, last time I was there was in 2007/2008 and I really loved it.  But maybe that's because I didn't really have any expectations and the place turned out to be just what I needed at that point.  So I'm hoping I like it as much the second time round, when there is the large weight of expectation hanging on it.

Tower of London

We visited the Tower of London the other day.  Of course the crown jewels are their centre-piece, unfortunately you can't take any photos of those, probably some sort of security risk, I suppose.  It was a lovely day and there were a lot of people out enjoying the sunshine.  It felt like we got there kind of late, but then, looking at the queues for the crown jewels later in the day made me think that perhaps, in Europe, you are never as late as what you think.

It kind of feels, though, that they aren't making the most of what they have.  I mean the grounds and the buildings look lovely and seem really well preserved, but you have to think that perhaps the White Tower isn't the best place to keep a whole bunch of armour and swords in.

The white tower, built by William the Conqueror

This building has been used, almost continuously, by the rulers of England since William the Conqueror.  That's some serious history there.  Currently it is used as the armoury museum, but using it for that seems to ignore the fact that you are standing inside an 11th century keep.  Perhaps the history and the building itself should be embraced more.  They obviously have spent a lot of time and energy on the crown jewels, and the presentation there is really good.  Giving the kings and queens since William in 1066 and their coats of arms, before close-ups of the different jewels.  Though it could be argued that perhaps the crown jewels are the least historical thing there.  I think a lot of what they used to have was lost when Oliver Cromwell went a bit crazy, so what you see is all dated from 1660 or later.

Amazing designs on gold-plated armour

What I would love to see is more information on the lineage of these rulers, how they interacted, where they came from, when and how the different houses took over.  It seems that a lot of the time, blood didn't really have much to do with it, and it was more who had the biggest army.  They all seemed to inter-marry as well, and since they all have about the same 4 names a bit of a family tree would be kind of useful.  I don't know, perhaps they think that the majority of visitors are all English and should really know all this stuff, and perhaps they are.  But when we were there there were an awful lot of Spanish, and not a whole stack of English accents around the place.

They have a small exhibit on the prisoners at the tower and torture used, but again it would have been great to see more on this.  We saw a recreation of what Sir Walter Raleigh's cell would have looked like, but again not much on the history, why he was imprisoned that sort of thing.

Not taking any chances with ravens escaping

Also that was the only cell like it we saw, when Anne Boleyn was held there, prince's disappeared there, future king's were held, it would have been great if more had been made of it.

I think next time we go we'll try a Yeoman tour, I think they add a lot to the experience, in giving you the history and back stories which are missing from the exhibits themselves.

Where the lower ranked yeomen live, on the outskirts of the tower

Tower green, all the high-ranking yeomen live around here.  The ravens all have their wings clipped which I guess explains the need for the perches on the ground.

Tower Bridge in the distance

Looking across the Thames at the new developments

The White Tower and my new haircut

Tower green with a slightly older guard. 

Outside the barracks, that guard looked about 16

Weird dragon sculpture from armour

A lion of St Mark, this was taken from Venice, but I'm not sure if it's a replica or not.  I imagine the real lion is probably in the British Museum.

There was an exhibit on the animals which used to be kept in the zoo here.  Basically you could just walk around with the wild animals.  This led to a lion attacking a lady and ripping her arm off.

The Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough

The Guinness Lake

Our final day trip from Dublin was through the Wicklow Mountains, along Military road with a visit to Glendalough.  This was by far the most popular outing, and there were a lot of people along on this one.  Which of course slowed everything down a bit.  I want to give a shout-out to the tour company we used though, if you are ever in Dublin and want to do a day trip somewhere I would give Day Tours Unplugged a go.  The tours were designed to be smaller, using just mini-buses rather than massive coaches, which is

View across the Wicklow Mountains

always my main fear when going on these commercial tours.  The tour guides were really friendly and knowledgable as well.


Military Road was built through the Wicklow Mountains in the early 1800's.  After the attempted revolution in 1798 some of the rebels hid out in these mountains for a number of years.  The English didn't like the idea of having a safe haven for these people anywhere in Ireland and so built the road to aid access to the area.  It's not much of a road though, little more than a single lane winding through the mountains. 

Is this heather?

Though when you say mountains, the highest is only 915 m, which is only 100m higher than Black Mountain for those people from Canberra.  Though it feels a lot more wild out here, much more like the Alpine National Park in Australia than the centre of Canberra, with a chill wind blowing and grey clouds.  It still feels really remote here, and people still come out to cut peat.  As we were driving along you could see the trenches where peat had been taken from previously.


Apparently members of the Guinness family own a bit of land out here, and a number of TV shows and movies have been filmed in the mountains.  The white marquee in the first picture is set up for the Game of Thrones TV show.  Which kind of explains why we saw one of the actresses in Belfast later on.  Anyway the lake is called the Guinness lake because the water is black but there is a strip of white sand at the top, so it kind of looks like a glass of Guinness, though perhaps it doesn't hurt that a Guinness family member also owns the land.

You can also see

More heather in bloom, and our tour bus waiting for us

the heather in flower in the shot to the left.  I was pretty excited about that.  I have often heard stories of the heather in Scotland being in bloom and whole hillsides covered in purple, so it was nice to see for myself.

There seemed to be a number of walking tracks heading through the mountains, so I think if I ever start missing the rolling hills of the Australian Alps I know where to go for a hike.

View down the valley in the Wicklow Mountains

The round tower at Glendalough

After emerging from the mountains we headed to Glendalough, the -ugh is pronounced -ch, which is this wonderful monastic site.  Ireland really did do the monastry well, and this is a great example of it. It's set in a valley with a couple of lakes right nearby.  There is a perfectly preserved round tower of about 30m high, though the roof was restored with stones found inside the tower.  These are funny things, the towers, with only one entrance a couple of metres above the ground.  Apparently they used to be bell towers, places to store valuable manuscripts, and the monks had a lot of manuscripts, and places of refuge.

The tower amongst the graves

The main monk associated with Glendalough is St Kevin, who was born in 498 and died in 618, I think one of those dates must be wrong.  This period seemed to be the golden age for Ireland, while the rest of Europe was being ravaged by barbarian tribes, the monks here were busy illuminating manuscripts.  And there's some really nice manuscripts to come out of that time.

St Kevin's Kitchen

As well as the round tower there is a building called St Kevin's kitchen, so called because the belfy, added later, looks like a chimmney.  This building is particularly impressive due to the fact that it has a completely stone roof.  Most of these buildings here date from the 10th to 12th centuries.

The stone roof of the kitchen

Glendalough was seriously seething with tourists, but the site of the round tower is only a small part of a much larger complex.  About 1km further up the valley there are two lakes, which are lovely and peaceful, with many fewer people.  It was here that St Kevin supposedly first established the monastery and lived for a while as a hermit on the banks of upper lake.  One of the stories about him goes that he rejected a local woman's advances by throwing her into the lake.  Though according to the sign above it looks like walking on water is permitted, so perhaps she was OK.

Archeologists hard at work with their footpath find

The day we visited, the upper lake was the scene of a large archeological dig.  It must be quite fun to be studying archeology in Ireland, as perhaps whole semesters are devoted to just travelling around and digging things up. There was definitely a hierachy amongst the workers though.  One person was in charge or the heavy digging, and he would get told off if he dug too ferociously, fair enough really considering what they are dealing with.  It kind of feels like you could dig anywhere in Ireland though and would find some sort of ancient remains.  Perhaps they save the less precious sites for the students to mess around in.

More archeologists preparing the grounds.  Nice location for a dig site

The upper lake of Glendalough

The Reefert Church + graveyard

If you keep walking you'll come across even more remains.  Seriously this place is teeming with ruins.  This was yet another church and yet another grave yard.  This particular church is the Reefert Church, whose name means burial place of the kings.  So perhaps that explains the graveyard.

More graves by the church

More heather flowering on the hillsides

A bit of fauna by the lakes

British Museum : Update

Some people have asked me about the British Museum : A History of the World in 100 Objects, so I thought I would provide a link: British Museum 100 Objects.  You can see the 100 objects here as well as download the podcasts.

I think the BBC and the head of the British Museum did a really good job with this subject.  As the head of the British Museum it certainly seems that he can call in a few favours, so you get some big names on the shows.  In the five I've listened too they've had David Attenborough and James Dyson (yes the vacuum cleaner guy). 

The episode with James Dyson was pretty funny, they got him on to talk about the design of a hand axe and he said something like, "I don't think it is a practical object" followed immediately by the British Museum guy coming back on and saying "of course it is a practical object"

And yes the photo above has nothing to do with this post.  It seems quite rare to actually see a bee these days, there seem to be an awful lot of wasps around, and not too many bees.  I'm just hoping for a run-in with neither.

Newgrange and Monasterboice

Newgrange

Another day trip we took from Dublin was out to Newgrange and Monasterboice.  Newgrange is amazing.  It is a passage tomb built in 3500BC and it predates the Hill of Tara.  This place was built by neolithic people, we are talking stone age farmers that hadn't even invented the wheel.  And what they built at newgrange is astounding.  It is built into the hillside, though in fact the passage
tomb was constructed first and then the hillside built around it.  On the winter solstice, ie the European winter, the first rays of the sun

What would have been the entrance to to tomb.  That first stone was about a metre high, which is pretty high compared to neolithic people

rising over the horizon travel straight down the passage and strike the ground in the middle of the tomb.  You then have about 15 minutes

The entrance now, can't have thousands of people clambering over that impressive entrance stone

as the sun rises where the tomb is completely lit up.  There are actually 5 days in the year where this happens, the days either side of

More stone structures outside the tomb

the solstice as well, and they hold a lottery with 100 tickets for you to be in the tomb the morning of one of those days.  Apparently 12,000 people apply for those 100 tickets.  Our guide had actually been there on the winter solstice and I think she was a but of a closet druid from some of the things she was saying.

The central chamber, at the end of

More carved stones around the side of the hill

the passage is about 6m high, the roof is formed of slabs of rock overlapping each other spiraling upwards, and even now 5000 years later, it is still watertight.  You can't take any photos inside, but it really is an experience to go inside something that old, and learn that these massive stones were brought from places 80 kilometres away by people who hadn't even invented the wheel.  Nobody really knows what the neolithic people used this place for, and what it meant to them, but it has been a focal point for people ever since then. 

More stone rings added later

Outside the tomb on the hillside there are a number of other standing stone structures and wooden posts which have been added over the years.  It was first "re-discovered" in 1699 and so there is some quite old graffiti inside the tomb itself.  Though those people also thought there would be gold inside and so smashed some of the massive rocks inside.  It was then "re-discovered" again in the 1960's when it was then restored to what we see now.  All the white stones facing the outside had been scattered and it was quite an effort to recreate what they thought it would have been like.

I really recommend a visit, it's not often that you get to stand in somewhere that old, to put it in context it's about a thousand years older than the oldest Egyptian pyramid.


I have to also

Larger standing stones and the entrance to the tomb

mention one of the total freaks we saw there, obviously somewhere so special is going to attract the masses.  There was one awesome camera wielding tourist.  For him exposure, depth of field, composition means nothing.  I think he was going either for the thousand monkeys approach, in that you take enough photos some of them will turn out ok, or the immersion feeling, in that anyone viewing his photos would be able to basically view his every head turn and step via his photos. 

Another, much smaller tomb, in the adjacent field

Funny stones

More carvings

One last view of Newgrange

The round tower and Muiredach's Cross

After Newgrange it was off to Monasterboice which is another famous site in Ireland, this one deals with a more modern religion than the one at Newgrange.  The monastery there was first founded in the 5th century and it is now enclosed within a lovely, peaceful graveyard, which is still used today.  There is one of the famous Irish round towers there, which I'll talk about in a later post, but the most famous things are the 10th century high crosses.

The crosses in Ireland have a very distinctive shape, consisting of the standard cross but then with a circle joining the arms.  You see these all over the place, and the vast majority are simply copies of, probably, crosses like the ones at Monasterboice.  I think the idea was that they were like the bible in pictures, for the, many, illiterate locals.  The most stunning cross here is the Muiredach's cross, which is 5.5m high.  It actually consists of three blocks of sandstone which fit together with sockets and dowels (or tenons).

One of the high crosses, with some wearing of the sculptures

An interesting point about these crosses is that they have been fairly degraded recently, perhaps partly from the greater number of tourists visiting (which inevitably leads to touching) as well as the unusually cold winters Ireland has been receiving.  According to the tour guide Ireland never receives snow, and that is a solid never, no snow and never below zero degrees. 

But last winter they had about 3 months of solid snow and temperatures of -10 degrees.  In this weather Muiredach's cross was damaged, water got in, froze, expanded and caused a massive crack to appear.  The tour guide, who has been taking people out here for many years, is convinced that in 10 years time these crosses won't be standing anymore.

It's an interesting conundrum, because I'm sure the British Museum would love to have them in it's collection, as would the Irish History Museum in Dublin, but the locals are refusing to let them go.  But should they really stay there if in a decade's time no-one will be able to see them.  Replicas have been taken of the crosses, and it is these replicas which are in the museums, but should it really be the other way around?  Is it fair to deny future generations of humanity access to our shared history, as well as perhaps further knowledge which could be gained with future technologies? 

Obviously the locals want to keep the originals, as they feel some sort of claim over them, as they happen to be in "their" graveyard.  As well as the increased tourist dollars which come from keeping them there.  It just seems a shame to think that soon they will have been worn away to nothing, because the current custodians refuse to let them go.  I suppose on the other hand do these crosses lose some of their meaning if they are taken away from their surroundings and kept in a sterile museum?  The people of the village would certainly lose their connection they currently have with them if that was the case.

Looking up the tower

Lovely sculpture on the crosses

A peaceful cemetry