Ancient Ireland

 It was Sunday night in Kinvarra, a lovely guesthouse right on the edge of the water’s edge. I am talking about the southern side of Galway bay. We ate at a tremendous restaurant overlooking the bay and in sight of Dun Lagaire. I had two starters, both cheeses; one was deep fried Camembert, and the other was something goats cheesey. Anyway, delicious.

The view at sunset next to Pier Head Restaurant 

The next day saw us travel back into County Clare, primarily to meet a DNA match of Kelly who lived near Feakle, home of her McNamara’s. On the way we went to the Burren, but only to stop at an information spot about the Burren landscape and to visit Clare’s most famous ancient monument, Poulnabrone.

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Do you remember that we McGuiness’ are Y DNA related to three of the 30 people excavated from Poulnabrone. Not directly but we have a common ancestor about 3,000 BC.

I swear I felt something out there. Although for full disclosure we also match people excavated from a number of continental sites too.

Here at Poulnabrone was a whole new lot of protection infrastructure that did not exist 16 years ago. Now there are several informational boards, as always, in both Irish and English.

There were roped off areas, a man selling authentic Celtic jewelry, a Heritage officer; alas no coffee cart.

We were lucky in that the first bus load of the day arrived just as we were leaving. We headed to Dysert O’Dea. See what we found there on my next post.