Boats! Trains! Tractors!

The trifecta of transportation! Plus tents!
Ok, tractors aren't usually technically considered transportation either but there are no pictures of cars, so I didn't think I could use that in the title. But there is news on the car area and that is that Emmet actually fell asleep in the car seat twice! TWICE! on his own! without being preceded by a half hour of screaming.
We drove up to Lough Ree just north of Athlone, about two hours drive north of here, and smack in the center of Ireland, for a camping trip this weekend. We didn't leave until about 1 in the afternoon on Saturday thanks to a leisurely breakfast of pumpkin pancakes, and a trip to the farmers market. But we did have time for a bag of chips, and a boat trip up the Shannon River, from Athlone and into Lough Ree. Initially we wanted to take the Viking boat tour as it involved hats, but after being racing there for a 3:30 departure, then being told he was running late and it would be 4:00, then finally being pushed back to 5:00, we abandoned ship (ha ha) and went on the regular cruise. On the whole I don't recommend the trip. The weather was nice, it was relaxing, but we didn't see that much or learn much interesting information. But there is now a photo of our little salty pup with the competitors of the Athlone Regatta on the background. We did learn from the cruise that Ireland has the two oldest yacht clubs in the world. Cork's is the oldest and then Athlone's.
After the cruise we were all getting hungry so we headed for the campsite on the shores of the lake. Orrin headed up the cream of broccoli soup I'd made that morning, while Silas and Nathan unpacked and set up the tents. Which left me to lounge on the blanket while Emmet used me as a jungle gym. Afterwards, we skipped rocks on the lake, swung on the swing set, blew bubbles, ate fruit, dug in the sand pit, and read books until everyone fell asleep at last. I was campaigning for a girls tent and a boys tent, but eventually they made me take the baby in my tent too.
In the morning we heated up the leftover pumpkin pancakes in the non-stick camping skillet Lucy gave Orrin for Christmas last year. (This was their first use Lucy- and they were great!) Served with peanut butter and pear jelly (home-made by Christiane, thanks!) Silas gobbled down four of them! Next we broke camp and drove to a scenic lookout over the lake, which with any luck is the new picture you see at the top of this blog now.
Onward to the main attraction, and reason for the trip, the Clonmacnoise and West Offaly Bog Train! This is a stop I really do recommend. Obviously, for Silas it's a train, so it's pretty great. But the tour guide provided a wealth of information about the modern methods of making milled peat and how it is harvested and transported to the Shannonbridge power plant where it provides Ireland with 5% of her electricity. I really thought of peat as a quaint little heating method confined mostly to thatched cottages, but apparently the low grade stuff if scraped, and dried, and harrowed into a powder, and burned to make steam. Although this bog's supply of peat is due to be depleted in a mere 15 years. The tour guide did outline what the plans were for the land once all the peat was gone and it included forest land, reclaimed bog/wetlands, wildlife habitat, some will be limed for farming, but 10% of it will be used for cranberry and blueberry farming to take advantage of the acidic soil.
It is amazing, and sad, that 70 years of intensive harvesting of peat on this raised bog will have removed what took thousands of years to form. But such is the story of fossil fuels. Somehow the cutting of the turf just seems much more wholesome and traditional, than drilling for oil or coal mining, so it seems sad. Orrin, Nathan, and Silas did try their hand at the traditional method of cutting the sod. Orrin was really quite proficient at it right away. Though maybe he's been practicing when we weren't watching.
We also learned about the flora and fauna of the bog. Which includes "the bog builder" sphagnum moss, as well as the carnivorous but tiny sun dew, heather, bog orchids, the rare corncrake bird, and foxes. Our guide also told us about some of the many things that have been found in the bog. Most famously, the human bodies so well preserved scientists could determine what their last meal had been but also what kind of pine tree's resin had been used as hair wax! Butter is also a common find as the bog was used an an ice house to keep things cool. Apparently the butter was still edible a couple hundred years after it had been placed in the bog. Yum!
They had a small "museum" of the old equipment that used to be used to harvest the peat. I would call this more like a junk heap, but I guess there was room to walk around all the equipment and most of them looked to be intact with no pieces pilfered off to use elsewhere, so maybe, despite the lack of information, it was a museum. And once we understood the process of harvesting it was easy to figure out what task each of the implements preformed. Silas, of course, loved being able to climb on the old trains, bulldozers, and tractors all modified to have extra wide wooden tracks, instead of wheels.
We stopped in Shannonbridge for a quick lunch. It took a while because it seemed that there was only one man running the pub, making the food, and running a small attached grocery store/fishing shop. But we kept entertained by reading the riddles and puzzles that had been posted all over the walls and ceiling of the pub.
Our final stop of the journey was Clonmacnoise. It's an old monastic site with three high crosses, a couple round towers, and some cathedral ruins. We took a short walk to the nun's church where Silas examined some Hiberno-Romanesque carvings in the archway. It was a nice site, but we were all getting a bit hot and tired. Plus it was pretty crowded with German tourists.
We headed for home, I finished "The Boy in Striped Pyjamas," and was treated to Indian take-away for dinner. Hooray for not having to cook!