Ireland day 0646. Thursday 06 July 2023- Cavan *

Ireland day 0646. Thursday 06 July 2023- Cavan

Today’s summary	Walk round the demesne in the morning, visit to Cavan County Museum in Ballyjamesduff in the afternoon, dinner at Kathmandu Kitchen in the evening.
Today’s weather	Dry and overcast in the morning, showery in the afternoon with more persistent rain in the afternoon and evening,. Moderate to strong south westerly wind. Appx 16C

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

A busy day today!

It started with an admin related call, then a video chat with family back in the UK. All before breakfast. This was quickly followed by a brisk walk round the demesne – well actually Val ran round and I trailed round in her wake at as fast a walking pace as I could manage (sadly one of the few things I am absolutely not supposed to do with my new hips is to go running).

Once we were back, we made the spontaneous decision to add a new county to our ever-growing list of Irish counties visited. Today, it was Cavan so we duly headed off up the M3, through the little town of Virginia and on to Ballyjamesduff, the home of the Cavan County Museum. The museum is highly rated and we both enjoyed the visit – and actually it was a welcome shelter from the weather which, with heavy rain, strong winds and low temperatures felt more like November than July. The museum covers the history of Cavan right from the last ice age to today, and seems to feature military history quite strongly.

There is a large section on the 1916 uprising and the subsequent War of Independence which is well done. My only criticism would be that there is too much information to read and remember, so you tend to dip in and out and gloss over large sections of it. And somewhat bizarrely there is a mock up of one of the first world war trenches from the Somme in the rear garden – looking pretty authentic, I imagined, in today’s wet and generally inhospitable conditions. We made time, of course, for the obligatory coffee and scone in the modest but pleasant café before jumping back in the car, where we used the journey back down the motorway as an ideal opportunity to catch up on some podcasts.

As well as enjoying the museum visit, the bits of County Cavan we saw today also looked good despite the weather. If France has “La France Profonde” then this must surely be Ireland’s equivalent. And all less than an hour and a half from Dublin.

This evening once we got back, we celebrated a fulfilling and interesting day out with dinner at our go-to restaurant in Malahide: Kathmandu Kitchen. The trip was courtesy of a birthday voucher Val received from family – so thank you K&D!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


In the entrance all to the museum. It’s housed in a former convent	The impressive wooden stairway leading up to the top floor

In the Peace Garden at the back of the museum. The name seemed a bit inappropriate as it seemed to feature the horrors of war quite heavily	The museum from the garden

Looking into “Eire Profonde” from the front terrace of the museum. An infinity of green	Creepy or stunning, depending on how you look at it – the Pagan Corleck Head, retrieved from the townland of Corleck in 1855 it dates back to ca 100BC. The head is about 30-40 cm high and is curious in that it has three faces, which you can see as the artefact is displayed on a rotating plinth. Just like something from “Game of Thrones”. NB This is a replica – the original is in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin

A map of county Cavan. It’s relatively off the beaten track for tourists and indeed is actually quite depopulated even today, having suffered continual emigration since the early 19th century, and most particularly during the Famine in the late 1840s, which hit the county particularly has due to its heavy reliance on potato cultivation. The bumpy area in the middle is Lough Oughter, which is a fine example of an inland flooded drumlin swarm. We will definitely have to pay a return visit