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The Bright Fort
A return to the past with Cahergall Stone Fort, near Cahirciveen on the Ring of Kerry, in south west Ireland. The name Cahergall comes from the Gaelic words, Chathair Gheal, which means “The Bright Fort”. Ring forts are difficult to date as they are often multi-period sites, it appears this dry-stone walled ring fort probably…
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Minard Castle
Overlooking Kilmurry Bay, aka ‘Beal na gCloc’, the Bay of Stones for obvious reasons are the remnants of 16th Century Minard Castle. A former stronghold of the Knight of Kerry, it was one of the last of the Fitzgerald castles constructed on the Dingle Peninsula until destroyed in the mid-17th century by Oliver Cromwell’s parliamentary…
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A Secluded Hideway
Growing up in the midst of the Liverpool suburbs, the nearest green spaces were in my local park, a much frequented place during school holidays. From high ground en route, I could see the distant Lancashire hills with fields, wood and cottages, a sight that sparked my young imagination – and a daydream to live…
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Westport Bridge
Westport is a town in County Mayo at the south-east corner of Clew Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of Ireland. Over the years I’ve noticed many Irish towns tend to situate houses so they back on to rivers. Westport is a beautiful exception, with the town’s Georgian architectural style…
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Stormy Stage Cove
On the clifftop, white posts and fencing surround the still open mine shafts above Stage Cove. At one time the hub of County Waterford’s copper mining, it was from here that copper ore was shipped out on small boats to waiting sea-going ships for transport to Swansea for smelting. Now part of the Copper Coast…
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Solitude
A fisherman sat by,While on his line in calm reposeHe cast his patient eye.As he sat, and hearken’d there…Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Equine Delights
‘Twilight and a pair of curious horses on Croaghaun Hill are silhouetted against the misty blue Comeraghs’ an extract from Waterford, A County Revealed
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Ripples
The wind that ever is with mystic mightA spirit ripple of the Infinite.…Victor Hugo
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Atlantic Evening
The wind has swept from the wide atmosphereEach vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray;And pallid Evening twines its beaming hairIn duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.…by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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“The Sampson”
Four kayakers en route for a sea view of “The Sampson”, a crane ship washed onto Ardmore Head on the County Waterford coast. Samson had left Liverpool in 1987, bound for Malta under tow from a tug boat. The towline parted in a gale off the Welsh coast early on 11 December. The two men aboard…
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Sculptural Landscape
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Anna Liffey
The River Liffey, flowing through the centre of Dublin to Dublin Bay, aka the Anna Liffey, possibly from an anglicisation of Abhainn na Life, an Irish phrase translated into English as “River Liffey”. Shot from the Ha’penny Bridge, evening light reveals the Millennium Bridge and Grattan Bridge behind. And out again I curve and flowTo…
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Growling Sea
Down on the shore, on the stormy shore!Beset by a growling sea,Whose mad waves leap on the rocky steepLike wolves up a traveller’s tree;Where the foam flies wide, and an angry blastBlows the curlew off, with a screech;Where the brown sea-wrack, torn up by the roots,Is flung out of fishes’ reach…By William Allingham… Image from…
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Coumshingaun Lough
A beautiful, quintessential glacial lake in County Waterford’s Comeragh Mountains, Coumshingaun Lough is a habitat of peregrine falcons, ravens and the elusive nightjar. A delightful peaceful place it wasn’t always so tranquil, especially during the life of William Crotty. The leader of an 18th century gang of highwaymen who like Robin Hood, stole from the…
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Days of Future Past
The future: Mooncoin Coin is a proof-of-work based cryptocurrency mainly used for micropayments. The past: A little cottage dating from 1757 in the Irish village of Mooncoin (in Irish: Móin Choinn, meaning ‘Coyne’s Bogland’), made famous by the song ‘The Rose of Mooncoin’, written in the 1800s. The composer was a local schoolteacher and poet…
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Winding Stair
My Soul.I summon to the winding ancient stair;Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,Upon the breathless starlit air … WB Yeats Named after the Yeats poem and staircase, the Winding Stair Bookshop and Café overlooking the River Liffey and Ha’penny bridge became a famous Dublin landmark in the 1970s and…
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Old Friends
To reminisce with old friends, a chance to make some memories…
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Beckett’s Reprise
“Moonlight is sculpture: seen and easily discerned in good composition like a suspension bridge, where each line adds strength and takes none away.” The exquisite lines of the Samuel Beckett Bridge, designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava, crossing the River Liffey in Dublin under a cloud moonlit sky.
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The Samuel Beckett Bridge
Under a rare cloudless blue sky, the exquisite lines of the Samuel Beckett Bridge over the River Liffey in Dublin. Designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava, it’s his second bridge over the Liffey, the first being the James Joyce Bridge that shares a literary connection in more ways than one…
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The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to…
George Munday Creative 