CHARITY CYCLE: DUBLIN TO GALWAY - REST DAY
Today was a rest day, which in Foley terms means pool, gym, kayaking, inflatable water park, heritage park, joke shop, and chill.
The kayaking was a bit of a disaster, either myself and Dom are getting old (likely) or we both managed to get kayaks that dug into our ancient backs. I also believe my rented wetsuit was perhaps intended for a pre-adolescent boy as it kept my neck in an unpleasant stranglehold. The fact it was warm and damp when I first put it on didn't help with my discomfort and confirmed it was definitely last worn by an malodorous man-child.
Water based sports are my least favourite activity at the best of times so I suggested we return to shore to 'fix' things. I then announced I couldn't risk damaging my precious back, especially with so much of the big cycle left, and promptly jumped out of the canoe! Dom and Roisin found new boats and headed back out. In fairness to Roisin, she had no 'back' issues and was determined not to bail like her aging mother.
As I sipped tea by the lake edge and read my book, I felt pangs of guilt for being a lousy Mum. However, it turned out to be the right call as I fell foul of an attack of vertigo. I have Menieres disease and haven't had an attack in years, but today that pesky creep found me. It was mild in the grand scheme of things - fleeting dizziness, low grade nausea and a high pitched whistling in my ear. The only way I have learned to handle these attacks are to wait them out (preferably alone), it's not the kind of experience that likes company.
Dom and Roisin went straight from kayaks to an inflatable fun park in the lake so I was left to recuperate nicely in my own time, unbeknownst to the wild pair. I was right as rain by the time the sodden twosome returned. Roisin confirmed it was the best water park she had ever been to - well done, Roscommon!
She relished flinging herself off great heights and catapulting herself through the air, with Dom following behind. My inner ear was screaming in terror, thank Christ I missed out.
When Dom and Roisin are in charge we end up in amusement and water parks, it was my turn to take the helm and I suggested a trip to the local Dun na Sli Heritage Park. The suggestion was met with a quiet acquiescence, it wasn't the usual stopping point for adrenaline junkies but I was determined to slow things down and inject some history and culture into our weary bones.
It was a cloudy day with droplets of rain so we were the only visitors to the open air park, but what a treasure it was. You step back in time to follow a trail that brings you through an old timey farmhouse, an actual mini farm with a goat, roosters, hens, ducks and geese, on to a beautiful fisherman's cottage, a recreated 'hedge school', a forge, a museum, a reconstructed ring fort, a dolmen, a stone circle, and a massive Irish warrior named Lugh who is bursting up through the ground (has to be seen to be believed).
Some facts we learned:
- 40% of the entire worlds collection of ancient horns and trumpets are of Irish origin (we like music)
- Ring forts were known in Irish folklore as 'fairy rings', it was (and is) considered bad luck to cross into a fairy ring without permission from the little people (we like superstition)
- Under the Penal laws of the 18th century Catholic schools were forbidden so illegal schools sprang up in roadside hedges all over the country, teaching (in secret) Latin, Greek, History, Geography, Irish language and Irish dance, they were so popular that an official Inquiry in 1826 estimated that of half a million school age kids, 400,000 of them were in Hedge Schools (we like to learn, and we like sedition)
- Before the Great Famine, the census of 1841 indicated that 85% of the total population lived in extreme poverty in one room mud huts (we don't like unequal land ownership)
Roisin's passion for fun is matched only by her passion to learn, she loved the park, I felt I had restored my parenting skills, at least for one more day.
Athlone is home to a joke shop, Roisin found a bricks and mortar joke shop quite the draw so in we popped. I managed to steer her away from gag cigarettes and fart bombs, we'd enough of that in the hotel room, and we finally called it a day.
Tomorrow we are off the Greenway and onto country roads as we traverse from Athlone to Ballinasloe.
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