Slept in and got ready for a drive to the forest. Our first intention was to go to Burren Forest, but I started getting unhappy with the idea of driving 3 hours to get there. We had seen some pictures online of some little megalithic huts, and some beautiful scenery. We thought it would be really cool to go hunt down where these pictures were taken. But it felt like too frivolous of an idea to warrant that type of drive and gas. I clearly had gotten close to my limit in driving. I thought there must be a closer forest to go and explore. We stopped by the Village Inn and asked Mary about that. She immediately said yes, and had a specific one in mind. Coole Park. It was a forest preserve and had 6 km of walking trails. And it took twenty minutes to drive too.
So we had our sandwich and banana lunches wrapped up and ready to go and went to Coole park. It turned out to be an amazing place. Johnathon was uncertain about giving up on the idea of the picture hunting, but once we got off the trail at the forest preserve and he… well, just check out this video.
Video – Boo-yah! Stick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Ma8u0SjHo
I think it turned out to be a good idea because we were there for five hours exploring the diverse and wild forest. With the driving time of going to and back from the Burren Forest we would have only had about three hours at most there.
The first part of the forest we were in was mostly this foot high ground vegetation and narrow straight trees going high above. The ground was soft with lots of old pine needles and mulch. A lot of the trees were with the vine like plants on the ground, and many dead trees had fallen down. Lots of good straight sticks to make walking sticks out of.
Video – Entering Coole Park: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl1aX7WEVQA
Video – Swinging a Big Stick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCJTNrUwTDg
Johnathon seemed to be really interested with picking and carrying around as big of the fallen trees as he could. After I made my walking stick we went on, and he was still carrying around a cumbersome amount of wood, I was surprised how long he kept it up too.
Video – Dried Up Stream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_2KMTxZwIw
We saw old majestic trees, I was tempted to climb this ancient looking and gnarly looking one but there was starting to be a noticeable amount of bug activity and I was starting to freak out about it. We followed a more obvious path and kept moving and that was enough to avoid the bugs. I’m thankful that even though there are many kind of bugs, some of which don’t mind landing on people, there seem to be almost no mosquitoes. Before we left that section we noticed a short stone wall had been nearly enveloped by the vegetation. In fact there were several places like this that all you saw was of wall shaped mound of moss stretching in either direction.
There was more ground vegetation in sections, and heavy moss areas. It was interesting how the landscape would change. We later learned Coole Park was once called the seven woods. I am now very fond of that.
Video – Crossroads: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nqi8I8TeD0
Video – Green Woods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdcr-sqK2KY
Video – Stone Wall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHyl1RcwqQo
After we had good fun just giving into our explorative and aimless wandering (we eventually found the trails that led us back to the car), we went back to the cottage. We decided to take the opportunity to try out the free little wooden Sauna that was in the laundry room beside the cottage. It was Johnathon’s first time in one. We put it to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) and tortured ourselves for 25 minutes. I didn’t really get into it and Johnathon really didn’t like it. But I still thought it was fun to try.
I am very happy with how the day turned out, and I’m very thankful we’ve gotten such a good opportunity to explore the Irish countryside.
The Wayward Way 