The Boyne River Valley

Two more Irish posts should wrap up this trip.
We were ambitious, wanting to see and do as much as possible, and we had three full weeks so it was a far cry from the 1969 movie “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium”. Still we kept to a pretty busy schedule. Our house exchange base, where we were for about 12 days, was in a town called Navan, county seat for Meath. It is about an hour by bus northwest of Dublin, conveniently placed, and in the midst of a significant historical area, the Boyne Valley. On our first evening we walked into the town centre and weren't impressed at all. It was grey and damp, and all the storefronts had metal roller blinds/grates pulled down. Coming from Charlottetown and Victoria that is not a look we are familiar with and it spoke of a drab, derelict, unhappy place. Next time we went to the town centre it was during business hours and the place was hopping with people and activity and suddenly we were impressed with what a well balanced and well placed location it is. By Irish standards, Navan is a pretty big town (about 25,000 in greater Navan), and yet it has quirky little streets and alleys, and lots of old and interesting shops, restaurants, and pubs.

Irish washer woman, in the garden in Navan, being supervised by Ed.

Also in the town centre (yes, centre) is a new-ish shopping centre, with a Mark’s and Spencer’s complete with Food Hall. Yay! The people we met in Navan were lovely and everyone was interested in how we were getting on and anxious to be helpful. If you are ever there make sure to have the seafood risotto at La Cucina on Railway Street.

The sites of historic significance within 30 minutes of Navan seem endless: Newgrange, Trim Castle, Kells (of the Book of Kells fame), the Battle of the Boyne, Hill of Tara, Slane Castle, to name some. We tried to do it all, of course, and Jim and Ed even played golf thanks to our host, Tim, and his friends Martin and Con.

from the top of Trim Castle, the largest Norman castle in Ireland and made more famous by the filming of Braveheart

A high Celtic cross in Kells, possibly the oldest in Ireland, circa 1000-ish

Pat and the Stone of Destiny on the Hill of Tara. We expected something a little more grand. The stone is supposed to shout out when touched by the "High King"; it didn't for us. 

The entrance to Newgrange, one of several passage tombs, circa 3200 BC

at the Battle of the Boyne site

It’s almost worth a separate post to talk about Bettystown, but I’ll cram it into this one. To understand you have to know that, sitting in a café garden on a beautiful Sunday morning, the owner told us he hadn't used his outdoor umbrellas even one day the previous year. This was a perfect summer, sunny, Sunday

That afternoon, with nothing else planned, we decided to drive the 30 km to the coast for a look-see. The same café owner told us to go to Bettystown. We got within 10 k of Bettystown and found ourselves in bumper to bumper traffic. After about 30 minutes of that, Jim suggested we pull into a side street and walk which we did, to the see what was going on up ahead. Lo and behold, Bettystown consists of an intersection and a couple of pizza/beer places. The fourth side of the intersection leads on to the beach and cars were coming from the other 3 directions onto the beach! They drive down the beach until they find a parking spot, and that’s it. Can you imagine in our highly protected Canadian environment anything even remotely like it? I can’t. Let’s go for a family outing to enjoy the ocean and sand, spend an hour in traffic to get parked, and play in the sand amongst cars and exhaust fumes! And then spend 2 hours getting home. We were gobsmacked.

We beat a hasty retreat to nearby Laytown, which doesn't have a drive-onto-the-beach access but does have a very decent pub.