Back in November when Wes and I planned to fly to Dublin and let the site know we were coming the Coone offered to take us on a road trip. We accepted in an instant. I figure the email from Colin better tells the plan of the trip then I can – email below.
Along with the email Coone attached a map of the of the trip with pictures.
Fast forward to today – December 6th, and Colin picked us up at the office in a 7 passenger citron van, and away we went. I took the seat all the way in the rear of the van, Wes got shot gun, Coone drove, Bailey sat in front of me and Bionic Todd sat behind Coone. if you want to play a logic game you can work out which side of the van I was sitting on.
Sally Gap
First stop was sally gap. The road was about a lane and a half wide by my standards, and covered in so much fog all we could see was the tail lights of the red car in front of we were following. I only hit my head on the ceiling of the car three times on the way out from the bumps and curves. It seemed to me like they gave a dozer driver all he could drink and said make us a road. The home owners built stone walls on the sides of the road, and leaves fell on the side of the side of the road next to fences and were left there to build up.
We did stop at Sally gap, but with all of the fog, there was not much to see. Was nice to can opener out of the back of the car and stretch my legs for a minute. Then back in the van we squeezed to carry on to glendalough lake.
Glendalough Lake and monastery
Short way down the lane we came upon a restaurant and hotel advertising for Saint Kevin didn’t look out the windows much to enjoy the drive. Colin and I walked ahead of the other guys up some steep stone stairs in the road into a cemetery. The other guys caught up and we took a group shot in front of some tall stone tower with a door 12′ in the air. Sooner or later Todd will finish cleaning his blood out and send me the picture to post below.
I’m always impressed with large stone things built with not much more then man power. Takes a team of men to move massive single stones, lift them and set them. The monastery ruins impressed me. What looked like it would have been ornate windows behind the pullpet was mostly there minus the glass and the trim work. I wanted to climb up in it, but you know respect for a building older then my country and all.
From stone buildings and head stones we continued up the lane to a gate leading to a walking path around the lake. The path was paved for a bit then it turned into a wooden path over a bit of a bog. Looked like at once time there was a thing expanded metal mesh stapled over the lot of the wood for traction. Then the mesh vanished but the staples in perfect lines remained providing traction.
After the walk about we stopped in at the restaurant we parked in front of and had some water and coffees before carrying on to the Coone family country manour house
Coone Family Country Manour House and Tree Farm
Turns out Colin has more jobs then I figured. I knew about dominating at Microsoft and dominating as the coach of a football team, and was aware that he has three boys who are endless work. I was not aware the also tends to 20 plus acres of wooded land, fruit trees, and farm animals. Sleep is something I avoid, time management is something I figured I was ok at, but I’m nothing compared to Coone. No clue how he fits so much in; he’s even more impressive.
On the Coone Family estate there is an amazing forest like I’ve never walked through before. The evergreen forest is tightly planted 6 feet apart in rows about 7 feet apart. The trees look to be about 20 years old and have grown into one solid massive of green tree canopy with little to no light below. The ground on the floor of the forest is covered with nothing but fallen pine needles and cones.
Colin has carved out a few tunnels through the trees which are both spooking and awesome to walk through. In the middle of one of the tunnels, called Jurassic Alley based on the sign, he’d built a dinosaur nest complete with painted eggs in it for his kids. Another spot in a less dense forest he’d built and painted little fairy doors he put on the trees to give the kids a fairy park to play in. His boys have no clue how spectacular and magical this place is for them to spend summers.
For lunch we had some beef – with a side of brocoli, chicken, and cheese dish. excellent food the coone warmed up for his while he was taking on walk about of the property. he timed the walk so the food was done when we returned; sneaky.
The Beach
A short mile from the Coone Manour house is the beach where the saving private Ryan storming the beach scene was filmed. We drove there to have a 99 icecreme cone. Sadly the ice creme joint was closed – sad face Wes and Kev. Happy face Wes and Kev the beach was open and Kev got to run on the sand like a tiny kid and touch the ocean. Had it not been almost dark already I’d have used the tiny shovel I found in the sand to dig a hole, asked Wes to jump in it, then covered him in sand up to his neck. — Stupid getting dark at like 4pm.
Johnny Foxes Pub
From the beach we drove down more tiny roads with almost no glowing lines or reflectors in the dark towards a proper motor way down some more tiny roads to a pub called Johnny Foxes established in 17XX. The pub was a fabulous old building heated with coal burning fire places. I was going to have a pint of gunniss like Colin listed in our plan, but my tum tum was super upset from something. I went to the toilet for a purge and rally then had some water and nuts.
From the pub we dropped Todd off to clean his blood, stopped by a Lidal for sweets and chicken then were returned home. Thanks Colin for the amazing day.
Back at home I assisted Ashwin preparing some chicken for a site cook off tomorrow then we took in a movie and I cranked out all of these words. When I was about to spell check and add in the pictures the internets stopped working. LAME sauce. turns out the internet outage was a Dublin wide DNS outage that turned into a DHCP outage when people restarted all of their cable modems. Made it to /r/Ireland.
The rest of the pictures from the day
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