Cill Mhic Dhuach

This picture was actually taken from the bus as we were pulling up. As you can see its pretty much surrounded by cattle. I've seen more cattle than sheep in Ireland. I don't know if this is considered "common land" or not, but basically if it is common land then its owned by the government but you can put livestock on it for free and let them graze. Turns out the land behind the place I am staying at is common land- which is why the horses are out there. The biggest problem I see with this is the family I live with doesn't know who owns the horses... and I'm not sure the government does either. So if there was a problem with an animal like it got sick or something, I'm not sure the owner could be easily contacted.


This is my Irish Literature teacher talking about the round tower and the monks. He didn't know I was filming him- shhhh! Oh and never mind the loud mooing in the background- there were a lot of cattle about.



This is just kind of cool. Ireland has all sorts of crazy stairs for getting to the other side of stone walls. This one I climbed over to get a better look at the house pictured below. Of course cattle were on the other side of the wall... which was also fine until one of the girls decided she wanted her picture in front of a cow. Which after an angry glare from the cow, the picture was taken a good distance away. I however hopped right back over the wall just in case it didn't go so well that the cow wouldn't be angry with me as well. All turned out well though, she got her picture and the cow didn't charge or anything.


Yes, those are graves inside the little ruin of a house. I'm not sure if they were there when it had a roof or not.




More graves at Cill Mhic Duach. Note the really awesome and seriously old Celtic crosses


The round tower of Cill Mhic Dhuach


The round tower and ruins of Cill Mhic Dhuach


This was just awesome! On the building you can see there is some sort of plaque explaining the importance of the ruin- and the cow is using it to scratch her face- just delightful!


This man was herding his cows near the round tower. I thought this was pretty awesome. He really looked like he could have used the help of a herding dog but he was doing alright with it. You can't hear it on the video but he was making a high shhhh noise at them.