Dingle Peninsula Loop
We began our day with our guide, Tim Collins (as seen on PBS). We had a quick drive through the center of town showing us that Main Street was the medieval town of Dingle. The courthouse was built in 1813 and a judge comes to Dingle one time a month for an hour. The Benners Hotel was the first hotel built in 1790.
The monks had their small beehive huts around the church. These huts only had a small doorway and used these for their living quarters. There are 23 such sites like this around Dingle.
The picture to the right shows how the Oratory was built using all sizes of stones. |
The church is water tight and has 9 ridge or cap stones. The wall behind is the actual wall that once surrounded the entire compound. This became farmland in the 12th century and farmers built walls to divide their land. The other walls now see were built in the 17th and 18th centuries as farm walls.
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To end our tour we stopped at the Celtic jeweler, Brian de Staic who explained about ogham. This was used by the highest member of the clan or to commemorate people. Only 5 lines were needed and it is read from the bottom to the top. Lines were centered, left, right, or diagonal. This form of "sign language" probably goes back 7000 years as men traveled from North Africa to Scandinavia. A group dinner was at Out of the Blue Restaurant. The evening ended for us with a folk concert at St. James Church where 5 musicians sang or played the flute, guitar and Irish pipes.