Calendar: Two Thousand Ten - March

I realized that my picture for March's calendar page was taken on the same day as February's. What can I say? It was a rather epic and picturesque day!

I've made a rough map to show where we were that day. Here's the big-picture map of Ireland, with the marker on the town called Liscannor, in County Clare.(you may have to click to see it clearly)

Ireland is not huge! We drove from Dublin to that marker in one day, which Google says is a four-hour drive.

Anyway, that day started at "our" cottage in Liscannor, County Clare. We drove about 45 minutes north and east to The Burren, as already described, then looped back along the coast to hit the town called Doolin for dinner. Doolin is famous for its traditional Irish music (called trad sessions, I think), but we only stuck around long enough to eat amazing food and walk down to the beach to walk in the windy spray.

Although the wind was fierce, we could tell it was spring - we were there in April - by looking at the little flowers gamely growing up around the rocks near the beach. This is my March calendar shot, and seems fitting for what can be a blustery time of year! (click the picture to see all of it)
Oh, and we totally squealed as we left Doolin to head back to Liscannor, and passed our first real castle!

Calendar: Two Thousand Ten - February

This is the third year in which I've created a calendar of my photos to share with family and a couple of friends. I decided to use the calendar as blog-fodder; once a month I'll be able to write about the calendar picture. (For all pictures, click to see a bigger version!)

February's photo is from The Burren, in Ireland. It's a wind-swept, rocky place, rather hilly. I drove there with my friends Sue and Deirdre from "our" cottage in County Clare (Sue's cousin's, really, but who's counting?).

Driving there was quite exciting, an hour's drive on the teeniest country roads you've ever seen - and on the wrong side, of course! It takes a LOT of concentration to drive down a steep road with hairpin curves AND stay in the leftish lane.

We parked near a farm, barely able to squeeze off the road, and then hiked up up up the hill to the top of the world.  Our car is down by that farmhouse in the center of the picture:

I loved the stone walls that served a dual purpose: they cleared the fields of rocks, and penned in any cattle that might be grazing in the now-cleared fields. The walls were rather porous, a fact I illustrated in the top photo (which wound up being February), and here, in a close-up:

Some of the walls clearly didn't serve any real purpose any more (if ever they had):

Except maybe to provide safe nooks for flowers to grow:

Above: Common Dog-violet; below: Early-purple Orchid. Both were SO small.

 

It felt like were were on the top of the world. It was great!