Bunratty Castle is located just outside Limerick. The castle itself had been invaded by a school group (French-need I say more?) so we took a look around the main hall but not the rest. The grounds around the castle have been made into a village representing the history of the area. Some of the dwellings replicated those of a few centuries ago and one was a large house built around 1850. Included were thatched cottages, mills with water wheels etc. It was nicely landscaped and inviting. Included in the pictures below are a street with a thatched cottage and the pig sty across the road, inside a cottage furnished as the people would have lived, some "Traveler's Wagons" (gypsies are still common -at least around Cork County where we are; usually they are seen with small horse drawn carts and use the main roads),and a mill showing the water wheel underneath. I threw in the deer picture because wildlife is almost non-existent here -as you can tell they are behind a fence. We have seen "roadside kill" of badgers and rabbits and a live fox but the people have truly eliminated any big game centuries ago.
The main wild creatures are rats. There are no snakes in Ireland so unless there are cats around they have no natural predators. The country is under a plan to replace the forests as that was also decimated. We have not been anywhere that it would be less than a 15 minute walk to the nearest neighbor-usually more like five.
No comments:
Post a Comment