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A Week In Central West Ireland (1/7)

 

These pictures come from our visit to the Irish Midlands and County Clare coast in April 2011.

  

 

 

 

We flew to Dublin from Stansted and then drove towards the west coast. The first night we stayed at the Seadew bed and breakfast in Tullamore, County Offaly. This was the area Barack Obama visited a month later to see his ancestral village of Moneygall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our first full day we tried to visit the Tullamore Dew ex-distillary museum, but it was shut. We had better luck with Birr Castle and its observatory about 20 miles to the south west. Not quite sure why this jet engine style turbine was outside but thought it would make an interesting picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an old picture of the Great Telescope (Leviathan) at Birr Castle built in 1845 at the time when it was still in use. It was the largest in the world for 75 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the castle where the 3rd Earl of Rosse who build the Great Telescope lived and received illustrious astronomers from around Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The telescope was no longer used after 1914 and fell into a state of disrepair. But it was fully restored in the 1990s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here I am next to the six-foot diameter barrel of the Great Telescope of Ireland. Interest in this wonder was rekindled by Patrick Moore and others in the 1970s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here Mark and I are in front of a waterfall in the Birr Castle grounds, which were laid out in the 18th century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the shell grotto, still in the grounds of Birr Castle - mouse over to see face above the entrance

 

 

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