If this is Tuesday we must be at our destination

As I sit here typing, we're waiting for the heat to come on for the morning. The "dew" is continuing to fall and apparently, it won't be done until the sun goes down. Conclusion - not a good day for golf. But I'll back up a bit.

The trip itself was pretty good other than the 2-hour delay leaving Toronto. That kind of tipped our planned schedule on its head but it wasn't a bother in the end. Having splurged on Premium Economy tickets, we enjoyed our wider seats that actually reclined more than an inch. Ours were in the last row of the cabin and when we did recline them to attempt sleep, there was nobody's lap there to land on.

Dining on beef tenderloin (well that is what it was called), with real cutlery was a treat. The cutlery was a treat. You can call airplane food anything you like but it pretty much all tastes the same. The linen napkins were a nice touch. And the wine flowed freely, although I didn't imbibe. I should have. 

Sleep was elusive except for the odd few moments at a time but we managed to get through the entire day's adventures once we'd arrived, without falling on our faces. (We stayed awake until 10 when, having admitted we were brain dead, we yielded to the sandman.)

A very helpful guy at the Vodaphone outlet at the airport had put the Irish SIM cards in our phones and we were all set. We were in good time for the 11:45 bus to Wicklow town where Oliver met us with his shiny silver Prius and we were off for what turned out to be a very substantial dinner that Mary had spent the morning preparing. It was so substantial that by packing up the meat we left on our plates we have protein for at least two more dinners. Thus fortified we set out, with me at the wheel of Oliver's Prius, with a destination of Shillelagh, home of that well-known stick, and the closest town to our temporary home.

Have you heard that I'm destination-challenged? But this is a route I know well. I did know it well until we were on the Aughrim-bound leg of the trip. Construction! Road closed! Detour sign pointing to a narrower road heading left. That was the only sign for the detour. We made a brief reconnaissance stop at the Meeting of the Waters near Avoca. Avoca??? We didn't want to go there, even though Fitzgerald's pub might have been warm and welcoming. BUT I had turned in the wrong direction. (wrong direction was how I met our Byrne cousins so I don't really get upset at such things now). After passing the Woodenbridge Hotel, not at all on our way, we finally found a sign more or less pointing in the direction of our intended target and finally arrived - almost directly. 

Our diversion was to check out the Coollattin Golf Club where we had a tee time for today. The course looks immaculate and we were excited. Well, until today's weather. We're going to reschedule for tomorrow. I believe we're meeting Jim for a beer instead.

A brief shopping stop was required for coffee, milk, wine and beer - and some apples. Mary had given us some scones and bread. Did we remember butter or jam? Nope. She'd given us two duck eggs for breakfast but we have no butter to cook them. Boiled eggs might be traditional but we are not inclined that way. And there's no butter. Breakfast was coffee and a scone or two - warmed up but in need of butter. Have I mentioned that missing item?

Heating oil is now outrageously expensive and the heating is on a timer. It is not currently in line with our usual schedule. We shall learn to reprogram it. Soon. Meanwhile, it has warmed up nicely.

So here are a few photos from the journey. I'm not good at taking or posing for selfies and believe myself to be marginally more intelligent than I appear. Please humour me and don't point out my shortcomings. I'll get better with practice. 

Waiting for our flight to depart from Toronto

At Dublin airport waiting for the Wexford bus to depart - somewhat sleep-deprived but we are on our feet and enjoying the lack of precipitation at that moment, We were the only bus passengers to wear masks despite the sign on the door.

One of the few photos of Mary. She won't stay still for a picture

Oliver and Pat in the kitchen after our big meal

No Mary is not attacking Pat, she trying to elude the photographer

And our little vehicle is already to face this wet day. Who knows what adventures await - but not on the golf course.

It's almost travel time again

Well, folks, it feels like 200 years have passed since we were free to travel. I was summoned home from Ireland by the Covid pandemic as per the last posts in 2020 and spent 2 weeks in quarantine. After that I was free to stay at home, like everyone else, emerging for brief walks and sorties to the grocery store. That got kind of stale pretty fast. Thankfully, golf was permitted even in the summer of 2020 so fresh air and keeping up with at least my golfing friends, made for a return of sanity. This might be questioned by those who know me, but it was as sane as I'll ever get.

Fast forward to the present. The return to Eire is almost upon me. It will be a two-part trip with very little genealogy unless you count visits with cousins discovered through research and DNA testing. I've met folks connected on both sides of the family and they are all as wonderful and welcoming as the Irish are rumoured to be. I can't wait to reconnect - so watch out over there, I'm about to drop into your world once again. I'll be accompanied by two different friends, one for each part of the trip.

This trip will have two, or sort of three, phases. The first two weeks will be devoted to golfing and some minor tours in the Wicklow-Wexford-Carlow-Waterford-Kilkenny and maybe Tipperary area. Distances are not what we are accustomed to in Canada so visiting multiple counties will be easy. I've yet to visit every county on the island of Ireland. Maybe that can be a goal.

Following the golf, I'll be joined by a friend whose trip to Ireland was supposed to have taken place when Covid-19 rudely shut down the plans of pretty much everyone on the planet. This time, armed with masks, rapid tests, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, we'll hit the back roads of Ireland for a grand tour of a whole month.

There will be meet-ups with old friends and relatives, but mostly two of the St Pat's Sirens (hello to those not joining us) will be visiting some well-known and some lesser-known spots around the country. We'll spend €s and £s as we travel in the Republic and in the Irish portion of the UK – Northern Ireland. Probably more euros and pounds than we are actually planning as inflation has struck fear in the hearts of everyone everywhere.

Our final week will see us settled in a Dublin hotel to enjoy as many delights of the city as we can and there might be some genealogy opportunities there although, on this trip, they are not top of the priority list. That is the iffy possible phase 3.

Do feel free to follow us here as we wend our way around the country, er, counties. I'll post a couple of photos with the blurb of the day. I hope to post something each day although there may be gaps depending on access to wifi and the extent of exhaustion as evening comes around. 

Tune in here as you wish. The latest post is always the one showing but feel free to drift down to the bottom and you have the option of moving back in time through earlier posts.

In order to comment you might have to "join" but please do so at your pleasure (and ours). You might need a Gmail account but I don't recall.

The adventure begins on April 10th when we fly to Dublin and ends on May 24th when we fly home. We won't get to do everything we'd like to but we're sure going to make a good stab at it.

The word from the Barn

Well, here I am, coffee in hand, spinach omelet on the plate and sun streaming in the window. Well, it's streaming now but going to disappear soon as the dark clouds make their way over the hills in my direction. 

The laundry is about to start an additional spin and that is likely to be my great accomplishment du jour. Well, that and making sure that everything I want to take home fits into the suitcase and carry-on. 

I'll have lots of time to write today and hope that I can be somewhat productive. It's good practice for staying alone at home once I'm back in Ottawa. 

I figure that my chances of getting infected with the coronavirus are pretty good on one of the two aircraft that are in my near future. Despite assurances of extra cleaning and fresh air circulation on board, airplanes are known sources of all sorts of "sharing". 

There have been very few photos taken on this trip because I haven't really gone anywhere new. I have not seen everyone I'd planned to visit and will not see them before departure. 

As I have nothing more to say, I shall stop now.

Blogging Covid-19

If you are reading only my most recent post, you might want to check back one day to get the last blog-worthy entry. Things are changing and I will follow that trend.

I saw a post on Facebook that was aimed at genealogists but I'm passing along the idea and hope that my family and friends will consider this an opportunity. I mean, you're going to be stuck at home anyway.

Keep a journal – or a blog – of your Covid-19 experience. Include a bit of info about yourself and write a bit every day about what it's like, whether you become ill or not. Obviously, this is easier to do if you are not sick with it. This will be a great first-hand account for future generations. 

So, I shall create my own Covid-19 blog from here on. Let's hope it is not a long series of posts. I'm going to begin with a brief outline of what has been going on to date in my little part of the world. Everything has changed rapidly in the past couple of days and there is likely to be less to say without much social contact. But let's just write stuff down and see how it goes.

Heading home early

Hello loyal reader

I am heading home on Tuesday. Leaving Ireland on St Patrick's seems wrong but that is the first date with an economy seat on Air Canada. I am unwilling to pay $3600 for a one-way business class ticket. I can huddle in my window seat and try to stay as isolated as I would be paying several times more than a round trip ticket costs.

Thursday I enjoyed my final social encounter with the "cousins on the McGrath side" in Kilkenny. John met me in Bunclody and he drove via Gowran and Borris to McDonagh Junction Mall where we met the siblings for coffee and a catch-up visit. During that time we learned that the schools were closing and later learned that pretty much everything is a no-go now. No tourist sites will be welcoming visitors. 

So I decided on the way back, to get the first flight home. That proved to be a royal pain but eventually, I did get a seat booked for Tuesday and I took it. The extra cost is $134 for the Air Transport Fee which I thought I'd paid on the original ticket. The "change" fee was waived. But they still did a "gotcha".

Why go home instead of hunkering down here? Well, there's no guarantee that flights will not be cancelled by April 2 and I'd be stuck here longer. I've budgeted until that time and not longer. I do have plans and appointments when I'm back in Ottawa. And I am pretty sure that my travel medical insurance does not cover pandemics - as noted in an email from the insurance company. So, should I contract Covid-19 and need medical care, it would be on my own dime so to speak. I'd rather be at home with fully paid coverage. Gotta love our medicare.

I'll spend the weekend in the Barn (as this cottage is named), doing some writing and staying tuned in to the news. I should be able to consume most of the food that I have left in the fridge. The combinations may be a bit unusual but I won't starve.

I may venture out to Aldi for a bottle of wine and the remainder of their supply of dark chocolate with sea salt. Both are quite medicinal when consumed appropriately. And I am nothing if not an appropriate consumer. It could feel like a long weekend with only myself for company – as suggested by every country in the world now – and I need my creature comforts. 

Aldi is open at 9 this morning and I'll be there! Besides, any later than that and I might have to line up for a parking space so the food hoarders can pounce once again. It is comical to watch but is really not my sport of choice.

The coffee is ready and I'm in need of caffeine. Enjoy your day. It's sunny here now but rain is promised to start this afternoon. The end of the rain has not yet made it into the forecast.

Another train ride, another walk in the rain

I have acquired some new skills in recent days. And no, I don't mean shifting gears. That is an old skill that I've brought back into service. It may still need a bit of dusting off. I am fine with shifting up and down but I have a tendency to use only the brake when I want to stop. And stop I do indeed! At least I'm down in 1st gear by then.

Another skill is timing. The weather here is quite changeable - every few minutes sometimes. Part of that change has included sunshine, which is lovely. It's lovely when you are not driving straight into it. I have learned to time my outings so that in the morning I am heading east and in the evening I'm heading west. I will probably figure out the best hours for my sorties, just in time to Spring forward at the end of March. Not everyone manages to find a way to be heading into the sun – every day. Couple that with winding roads, unforgiving hedges, narrow shoulders (the road, not me) and often the lack of a centre line because there isn't room to paint one. Ta-da you have your challenge du jour. The little extra challenge comes when driving into the sun as a behemoth of a tractor is coming at you. I yield to everyone, and especially to tractors, with or without trailers.

This morning I arrived at Gorey train station in plenty of time. When it came to the pay and display for parking I approached a machine that insists on having you use an app. I installed the app but the commands the pay machine told me to use were not on my screen in the app. The station master couldn't figure it out either. Luckily we found one of the pay stations still accepts coins so I managed to get my ticket, display it on the windshield, and still make the train.

I had eaten breakfast but had not had a coffee so when the "tea wagon" came around, I asked for coffee. Then the question came back to me: Do you want instant or filtered coffee? Is that an actual choice? Of course, I wanted filtered. So I got this regular looking paper cup but the lid was rather extraordinary. I opened the lid to add the milk and found the ground coffee floating on top. What??? This isn't a French Press. I added the milk from those tiny little capsules anyway, replaced the lid and then I saw the filter. There was a sort of swoop to the lid, around the filter. Maybe I'm the last to have discovered this but it took me by surprise. As I had to let it sit to cool off a bit, by the time it sorted itself out it wasn't half bad. 

The weather was pretty decent to start the day. The views along the Wicklow coast were quite lovely. And, as I got off the train at Pearse Station, it was raining. I had remembered the route and arrived at the door to the manuscript room to find it locked. It was about 10:20, the papers were to be ready for me by 9:30. And then I saw the sign: staff development meetings until 11 am. So, I went to the cafe and had a cappuccino while I waited. Tastier than filtered.

Eventually, I returned to the Manuscript building, around the corner, and this time it was open. Proceeding first to put my jacket and bag in a locker, I then asked the info desk guy where the reading room was located. He was new, but after a bit of a puzzled look and short delay, he showed me where to get the elevator. At least I didn't have to install an app this time.

Waiting for me was a small mountain of reading matter pertaining to the Wandesforde Estate which was the homeplace of my Brennan and McGrath ancestors. Nice to get two for one. I did find little bits of material that were helpful although I had most of the information already.

It is rather breathtaking to handle papers that are 200 years old, and older. Some of the items dated back to the mid 18th century. Some were almost shredded. Books, no matter how small, must be placed on a cushion. There are special cushions in various sizes to accommodate various size books. The books I had were small, the cushion I got was big. There is also a string-like device with 'beads' which are weighty and covered with some sort of fabric. This string of beads is used to hold down the pages so you don't have to handle more than just the corners when you turn the page. Another new device. I wish I'd thought to take a photo.

It is interesting to get lost reading old letters. It would be nicer if I could have read the handwriting. Like today, not all cursive writing is easy to read. This looked lovely and I think they were all in English but most of it escaped me. Alas, none were by or about any of my ancestors. 

I did not find their names among those requesting blankets, cloaks, or pumps. Charity could be asked of the landlord. Sometimes small loans were granted and other times foodstuffs or warm clothes. Some names appeared often on those lists. I guess that my folks did a little better, or else were too proud to ask.

Then came the emigration lists and lo and behold there they were. All on the same list. Did they travel to Canada together in 1847? That has yet to be confirmed. The list of families and the number of travellers in each, went on for pages. There were about 1200+ who came to Canada from that one estate. In 1847. And people left over the course of a few years. In the case of my Brennans and McGraths, they received assistance from the landlord and were not simply evicted from the land. None of the ships carrying famine emigrants to Canada, could hold 1200 passengers so many ships would have been needed.

I do have the name of the shipping agent and it seems likely that they left from Dublin. Was it direct or via Liverpool, Bristol, or someplace else? To be determined. Maybe the information I now have will let me find that out.

Around 2 pm I was too hungry to last much longer so went out for a bite to eat. The sun was shining and it was a lovely day. I ate in a cafe across the street from Trinity College. At present it is off-limits to tourists, and students it seems. No visits are permitted to the Long Room or the Book of Kells because of the coronavirus Covid-19. All classes are now presented online, not in classrooms at Trinity. 

My return to the library and completion of the document review – at least of the files I chose to review, took another couple of hours. And I decided to take the 5:30 pm train. The walk to the station was uneventful other than the fact that it was raining again. What is it about having to walk for 20 minutes, in the rain, both ways on both days?

Now I'm back in the snug cottage and about to call it a day. No photos worth posting today - they are all pretty much of documents and of value only to me.

And so good night.

It's still Tuesday but the last post was long enough

As previously noted, the electricity was off here for some sort of regional maintenance reason, from 9 am to whatever. It did go off just after 9 and I wasn't home until after 5 and everything was as it should be by then. Apparently it was on by 11.

With tomorrow's solo trip to the NLI coming up, I decided the easiest route was a 30-minute drive to Gorey for the nearly 2-hour train ride to Pearse Station. I think I can get to the NLI without help this time. So, I drove the route to check my timing, scoped out the parking situation and went into the station to get a ticket. Now I'm all set. 

Since I was on the spot, I visited the Gorey library where I wanted to check out local history information. There were six books all by the same author. It was pretty much exclusively for Gorey and immediate environs, and to date, I have no ancestors that I know of from there, but one potential suspect, so I took photos of a couple of items and headed out. But I had found a reference to check, in Bunclody.

After a brief lunch stop for soup, it was on to Bunclody to fill the car with gas, er, petrol and stop at the Bunclody library to return my book (A Memory of Violets), and look for a book that was referenced but not kept in Gorey. And what a little gem it was. "Heirs to a Heritage" by Willie White. There are two volumes but only the second was available in the Reference section. Willie White was a much-admired citizen of Clonegall. That town was kind of the centre of church and market life for my Byrne ancestors. It's like a magnet for me. 

I had the pleasure of chatting with Willie in 2009 and was impressed with his local knowledge. The man was an encyclopedia of local history. He knew everyone and all the stories. Luckily for his survivors he was a prolific writer. Now my mission is to find and buy a copy of each of his books of local history. It is Mission Impossible. The books are out of print and despite widespread internet searches of old and rare book suppliers, nada. But - I have my contacts on book watch.

Should I skip the part about visiting the Weaver's Cottage? having a personal tour? chatting with another local? and getting a few references to other local historians? One is a Ned Byrne and I'm still trying to decide if I have the nerve to knock on his door. I have no phone number. And, of course he was not alive when my Byrnes left Ireland. But, he might have some great stories that have been handed down.

Well, I will spare you the minute details but will include a few photos of the cottage. The iron bed, its quilt and the christening gown all date from the 17th century. They have been lovingly preserved. 

The reason for visiting the Weaver's Cottage was to try to verify if it had been the one that a potential brother/cousin of my ggg grandmother, had lived in. He occupied one of the 6 cottages in that row in Clonegall in 1842. As it happens, since he was not a weaver, he lived in one of the 4 that have been torn down. But the cottages were identical so I could see how he would have lived.

I could stay here longer but even if I had to leave tomorrow, I have found lots of little gems. Now I have to incorporate them into my ongoing family history writing.

The weavers' cottages, Clonegall

17th century iron bed, quilt and christening gown

About the bed and quilt

His and hers clay pipes for a bit of relaxing by the fire, after the many children had gone to bed

Enjoying the view from the Weaver's Cottage