Peel: IOM and Éire, pt 2

Dublin Airport, Ireland, Ronaldsway Airport and Peel, Isle of Man
April 16-17, 2014

Oops. I just realized we never actually said where we were going or why we were going there. I think most of you probably know because I've been talking about it for ages now, but, just in case we pick up some readers who don't know--

In general, I research and plan our trips. I'm usually the driving force behind making them happen. During college, I took a class called Grail Legends (it was, as the name suggests, a class about the Holy Grail). The professor mentioned that the popular theory about where the places from the King Arthur/Grail legends were is in Southern England, all conveniently close together and forming a good tourist trap. However, the theory my professor liked best had things in different places--like Avalon being on St. Patrick's Isle off the coast of the Isle of Man. She also mentioned that neither she nor any of her students had actually made it to St. Patrick's Isle. I thought it would be cool to be the first. So I started looking up St. Patrick's Isle. I discovered there were the ruins of a castle (Peel Castle) there and...I was hooked. 

When I studied abroad in Ireland in 2011, I knew I'd have some time to travel around after the term ended. If you'd asked me where I wanted to go most outside of Ireland, St. Patrick's Isle would have been at the top of my list. But we didn't make it. So I decided my next international trip would be to the Isle of Man to see St. Patrick's Isle and Peel Castle. By the time I started planning the trip, it had also been a couple of years since I'd been to Ireland and I missed it, so I decided I wanted to go there too. I picked April because that was the earliest Peel Castle was open. I eventually settled on two weeks because that would give me close to equal time in both Ireland and the Isle of Man and it wouldn't be too hard to take that much time off of work. 

The other thing I discovered as I researched and planned this trip was a scarcity of information on the Isle of Man. For example, the library I work at doesn't have a single book about the island. (That's largely because there aren't any published in the U.S.) The internet had some information, but not nearly as much as I wanted. So, forgive me if I insert more practical information than you may want around the story of our adventure. I don't know if anyone looking to travel to the Isle of Man will ever want to wade through our blog posts, but if I can make another traveler's trip easier, I think I should. 

Our plan was to go straight to the Isle of Man, spend a week there, and then to come back to Galway for about five days before heading home. This made it difficult for Shannon to book the flights. Airline ticketing services are designed for you to go to one place, stay there for a bit, then come back. They do not allow for spending time in two different places. 

Since I wanted to do the Isle of Man first and Galway second, I had to book the flights separately. We had round trip tickets from Portland to Dublin and back, and tickets from Dublin to Ronaldsway Airport (the Isle of Man airport) and back. (Also, Travelocity and the like do not recognize Ronaldsway Airport as a place you can go, so that made things a little harder too. >:c)

So, we disembarked from the plane (surprisingly quickly) and wandered down the long glass lined hallways, until we hit a crossroads. Those people with connecting flights went one way, while the rest went through passport/border control. Technically, we had a connecting flight. I was harboring hopes that we could find someone who could get our bags transferred for us so we wouldn't actually have to leave security, so we started towards the connecting flight area. There was a seemingly random (though convenient for us) Aer Lingus desk just around the corner. We explained our situation to the man there and he checked us into our next flight and gave us our boarding passes. Unfortunately, we still had to go get our bags and re-check them. Back we went to passport/border control. 

The line was shorter now, and to make things even better the security guards were wearing pink reflective vests instead of the usual orange. We traipsed through and went to wait for our checked bags. They didn't come. Bags thumped onto the conveyor and one by one, they were picked up. Finally, no more were coming and there were at least 20 of us still standing around. (That there were so many others also waiting for their bags was the only thing keeping me from panicking at this point.) An airport employee walked past, saw all of us and said he'd check on the bags. We waited. Eventually, the conveyor started moving again and our bags appeared. Second bag-related crisis averted. Yay! 

There was a giant line for re-checking our bags. While we slowly inched our way towards the desks, I amused myself by looking at the people. There were fashionably dressed children; the lady wearing a cardigan as a shirt--with no bra; another lady with chains for straps (ouch); and a lot of men in very tight pants. Meanwhile, I was feeling ridiculous with a bag that was completely unsuited to the occasion. Learning from our last trip, where we were stuck with our large bags much more often than we'd intended, I packed in a hiking backpack. Huge, but easy to carry for long periods of time. This time, though, we have places to stash our bags set up beforehand (our hostel and the B&B where we're staying), so there was really no reason for me to use that kind of bag. And wearing a huge backpack is a serious hazard to other people in a tightly-packed queue. So I took it off. And dragged it around for the long wait in line. Shannon was mostly unaware of my struggles, as she'd packed in a rolling duffel, which is perfectly suited to standing in line. Live and learn. 

As we were walking away from the bag check area, I noticed this. It's a brilliant idea. There's space to repack, a scale for weighing your bag, and slots for clothing donations for charity. There's also a handy trash and recycling bin. How come we don't have these? 

After we got through security, we still had extra time. Anticipating that, after traveling for a little more than 24 hours (time zones included), we would feel a bit gross, we came prepared. We got these bathing wipes and fancy micro towels and brought some extra clothes in our carry-ons so we could get cleaned up. I washed my hair in a sink (I'm sure I got really weird looks for it too, but since I couldn't see them, oh well *shrug*). I felt about a million times better after getting cleaned up. Then we finally got on the plane for the last leg of our journey.

All I remember about the flight is that it only lasted about 45 minutes and that the island looked beautiful as we flew in. 

The Isle of Man out of our plane's window

Another part of the Isle of Man

It was a tiny plane, and there were very few people on it. The baggage claim had exactly six bags on it. Ours accounted for a full third of the baggage on that plane. There's a way to make you feel like you over packed. (After the debacle that was laundry last time, we both packed so we wouldn't have to do any.) Having retrieved our luggage, we tried to begin the routine established on our last Europe trip upon arrival in a new country:
1. Get some local cash
2. Find a local map
3. Figure out how to get to the place where you're spending the night
4. Find a place to eat

However, we discovered we couldn't even achieve #1 without leaving arrivals area of the airport (which consisted of a single room with a baggage carousel). As soon as we entered the main terminal we were intercepted by a very friendly-looking middle-aged lady in a nice red coat--our hostess, Dot. She and her husband, Dave, had come to the airport to pick us up and drive us across the island to their B&B, Gien Mie. I was really surprised and flattered that they had gone to the trouble. (Actually, Griff knew they were going to pick us up. I told him that was what was happening. Dot had offered to come get us from the airport after we confirmed we wanted to stay at Gien Mie. I suspect Griff was just too brain dead to remember this. He's right that it was very nice of them to go to the trouble though.)  

Dot and Dave took us on the scenic route back to Peel (the town we've been staying in), telling us about some of the local history along the way. We drove past old copper and tin mines (and what's left of their accompanying buildings), some really neat houses, and a lot of fields and gently rolling hills. It's a really beautiful island. (Also a very hilly one. It quickly became clear that renting bicycles and trying to get everywhere that way wasn't a good idea.) 

We arrived at Gien Mie, were shown our room (small, cute, elegant, and the space is really well-used), and got ourselves unpacked and re-packed for non-air travel. Then we decided it was time to go exploring.

Our hosts had thoughtfully provided a map of Peel for our use. I quickly realized I had forgotten my compass. Oops. 

Looking back towards Gien Mie

Looking down the street we went down to find a bank

We still needed to pay Dot and Dave so we headed out towards where we thought a bank would be. (Poking around the internet we learned that the Isle of Man uses pounds. They're different from British pounds, but worth the same. It was unclear if British pounds would be acceptable and after checking out a couple of the currency exchanges along the way, we opted not to get any cash until we arrived on the island.) And we were going to have to find food soon. I get grumpy when I get hungry, and no one wants that. After a couple of wrong turns, I figured out the orientation of the map and we found our way to a bank. (What we ended up discovering is that Manx pounds look different and are really only usable on the Isle of Man. Also they'll accept British pounds pretty much everywhere on the island--in fact our change was often a mix of Manx and British pounds.)

Now that we had some valid currency, we began our exploration. Our first discovery was a really cool little used book store. This place was a treasure. It had more Manx literature than I'd ever seen before (almost an entire wall [the walls were pretty little since the shop was so small, but still it was quite a bit]), and a bunch of other books that I'd never seen before in my life. And some things that I really hadn't expected, like Dean Koontz. We found a really old book of Manx fairy tales, and snatched it up.

The Bookshop : )

After the book shop, we found two local grocery stores, right next to each other. First was the ShopRite, a relatively local chain which seemed to have the basics covered. Second was the Co-op Food, which was much smaller but seemed to focus more on fresh foods. The Co-op Food also had much better hours. We filed away this information for later use.

Griff noticed that some of the teas in the ShopRite have silly slogans. This one is, "Make time, make Tetley."

The Yorkshire Tea slogan is, "Let's have a proper brew."

I thought it was funny that there was a cereal called Ricicles. From the picture on the front of the box they look just like Rice Krispies too. :P

A sign on the window of the Co-op. It's funny until you go inside and see
how tiny it is. Then it's just practical.

Now I was starving, so we directed our explorations more toward finding me food. We made our way to the promenade on the waterfront (for future reference, every town here seems to have a promenade, and they are all on the waterfront. So when I write about the Prom, it is always on the waterfront), assuming that would be the best place to find restaurants. Here for posterity are recorded my first two impressions of walking on the Prom in Peel:
1. Wow! Peel Castle is RIGHT THERE! It's SO COOL!
2. Holy CARP it's cold!

Yep. It really is right there. :D

The weather forecast for the entire time we're going to be here said that the temperature should only fluctuate between about 53ᴼF-58ᴼF, so we hadn't been worried about it. What we hadn't accounted for was the wind from the ocean. Wind chill sucks. We were quite cold within minutes. And Shannon was still feeling kind of ill, so we really really needed to pick a place to eat.

We ended up in a restaurant called Filbey's. It was more expensive than we'd been hoping for and a lot fancier than we'd thought, but they were convenient and we could get out of the wind. The food was okay, but kind of expensive. The view would have made up for that, but there was such an air of snootiness that I almost couldn't appreciate it. We were both tired, so we decided to go back to our room and take a nap.

On the way back, we stopped in a candy store, Ellie Mae's Sweets. We thought it would be interesting to try some rhubarb and custard flavored candies and some treacle toffees. I'd never seen candy that was rhubarb and custard flavored and though I'd read about treacle tart in Harry Potter, I'd never had anything treacle flavored either. We didn't try them right away, but when we did, I discovered that treacle toffees are good (though I can see how treacle might glue Harry's teeth together). Rhubarb and custard bon bons are good too. It's definitely a different sort of flavor, but I liked it. I didn't like the rhubarb and custard boilings (hard candies) as well though. The flavor was stronger and I liked it for the first minute or so, but you still have kind of a lot of candy left after a minute, so not my favorite.   

Back in our room in Gien Mie, I just meant to lie down for an hour or so. It was only 3:30pm and I know full well you're supposed to force yourself to stay up so your body will adjust to a new time zone. I didn't wake up again until 2am and then only long enough to wash my face and brush my teeth before going back to sleep.

We got up a little before 8 am, to get ready for breakfast at 8:30. We weren't really sure how this B&B thing worked, so we made sure to be as close to on-time as possible. It turned out to be really informal and nice and friendly. Dot and Dave are excellent cooks (they really are), and gave us a three-course breakfast (cereal first, then an egg and sausage or bacon with tea, then toast). We could have had more if we wanted to, and in fact Dot kept saying that we'd "hardly eaten anything," but we're used to light American breakfasts and so to us it was a feast. 

We also met the other guest that was staying at Gien Mie. She was English, her name was Linda (as we learned later--we were never actually introduced), and she was on the island for just two days for a funeral. 

Dot and Dave turned out to be a treasure trove of information. Shannon and I ended up talking to them for the better part of an hour after we finished breakfast, learning stuff about the island, about their time here, and just getting to know each other. I'm really glad we decided to stay here. (Me too!) Breakfast (both the food and the conversation) has become one of the best parts of my day here.

In the couple of paragraphs on Peel in the one UK guidebook that had an Isle of Man section, as well as on the internet, a museum called the House of Manannann kept coming up. When Dot and Dave mentioned it too, we decided we should start there. We were told it would take us a couple of hours to get through and figured we could do Peel Castle afterwards.

No one should be surprised to hear that's not what happened.

I liked the colors of these buildings. :)

This sign was on the side of one of the houses in Peel. ^_^

First, I got distracted by this really cool clock tower and graveyard on the way down to the museum. We spent some time wandering around in there so I could take pictures. I'm kind of fascinated by cemeteries and will often make Griff stop so I can explore them. It's interesting to see the different kind of monuments people have. The headstones here on the Isle of Man are much bigger than those I've seen in the U.S. (In general. There always seem to be a few massive graves in a cemetery.) They were also consistently older. (Though that wasn't really a surprise.)

The clock tower was built in 1872. The clock itself was a gift from JK Ward,
a Peel man who prospered in Canada. 

Some of the smaller headstones that line the edges of the clock tower's little area. 

Those big pieces of stone in the ground are grave stones too. Apparently this graveyard was disused in 1958, the same time the church that used to be here was torn down. 

Eventually we got back on track for the House of Manannan. Manannán mac Lir, by the way, is the Manx god of the sea and the mists. He's a master of illusion, and can change his appearance to look like anything from a young boy to an old man. He protects the island by hiding it in the mist, or by making one man look like an army. (He is also, if you hadn't guessed, what the island is named for.) They had the museum set up with little movies so that Manannan could guide you through Manx history via the exhibits. It was just a tiny bit hokey, but it was a lot of fun. It was a fantastic museum, and we learned more about Manx history and culture than in all the reading and research we had done up to that point. It really is a mishmash of Celtic, Norse, with a dash of English, Scottish, and Irish that you won't find anywhere else. The Isle of Man got passed around like a football (or hot potato) between dozens of kings of various nationalities for hundreds of years, and it's taken some of the character of each. The Celts left their language (a local variation of Gaelic called Manx), the Vikings left their names for places and their parliamentary government (the parliament at Tynwald is the oldest in the world: over 1000 years of continuous operation), and the Scots and Irish left bits of their culture that you'll find in unexpected places. The English bought the whole island and turned it into a Crown Dependency (which it still is today). And all of them influenced the architecture. It's really fascinating. We also learned that kippers are a kind of smoked herring. Neither of us had any idea. We both thought (without discussing it beforehand) that they were a kind of sausage. (The weird thing is that I know I've encountered kippers in books before. I guess the authors never described them and based on context I just assumed I knew what they were... oops.) You learn something new every day.

The outside of The House of Manannan

These vikings are pulling their ship through the window. :)

Oddly, my favorite part of the whole museum was The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles, which had been translated into English. They had the whole thing available to read on a little touch-screen computer display. It was a recorded history of the important events on the Isle of Man from about 1016 AD to 1275 AD. This was a very rocky period in the island's history in terms of how quickly it changed hands. For a couple of hundred years, every lord and his mother wanted to own the Isle of Man, and they employed every method from treachery, to war, to sieges, and secret meetings. And all of them seemed to be named Olaf, Reginald, or Harald. Especially Harald. And somehow, throughout all of this, the Manx people still maintained a parliament for governing their everyday affairs, even if there was some lord or king who was officially in charge. It was fascinating. Shannon and I spent at least an hour just reading through everything that was available. (The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles was actually one of my favorite parts too. The whole museum is really neat and well put together though. Definitely worth your time to visit.)

Some of the highlights from The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles.

A reproduction of the actual book. We read a digital version.

Odin's Raven, a two-thirds recreation of a viking ship. It sailed
from Norway to Peel in the '70s to commemorate a millennium
of the Tynwald.

It looks big until you realize you'd be sharing the space with 15 other people. o_O

After we learned about kippers they let us color herring. Griff's is on top.
He hates coloring, which is probably why his herring is on fire.
Mine is rather boring in comparison. It's not on fire. 

By the time we got out of the museum, it was almost 4 pm. We got a quick bite to eat in the museum's cafe (quite good; I got the quiche lorraine and Shannon got a ham bap [I'm still not quite clear on what a bap is, but I think it's a kind of sandwich with almost nothing in it except the thing it is named for, in this case ham]), looked at a special exhibit they had on Celtic designs in modern style, bought a couple of things in the gift shop (including a book on how to speak Manx and a book on ancient Manx history), and left before they locked us in at 5 pm. (So, if you plan on visiting the House of Manannan, expect to take closer to 3 hours. More if you're really thorough like we were.)

We missed the castle because it closed at 4, but we had most of an evening to fill so we decided to go on a walk. I wanted to go to Corrin's Folly, a little tower Dot had pointed out on our drive into Peel from the airport. It was built by Thomas Corrin, in memory of his dead wife, and it was about two miles outside of Peel, across a beautiful landscape of heather-and-gorse-covered hills. We wandered up out of Peel, stopping frequently so I could take pictures. 

Looking back at Peel from just a little ways up the path.

Looking forward

Peel from a little farther up the hill

As we came to the top of a ridge, the path split. We followed the smaller arm out of curiosity, and found a gate. It wasn't locked so we went through it.

The gate. We think it was there to keep sheep from escaping, but we're not sure.

The path narrowed and wound along the cliffs. A little while later we walked partway up a hill and just stopped to enjoy the view. The sun was shining and the ocean was remarkably calm.

Looking back at the gate. Because of the direction the sun was shining from, the colors in my pictures came out a lot better if I was looking back. 

We went up the hill just far enough for the path to disappear. 

I wanted to know how far away the Folly was, so Griff climbed up the hill. He was gone for quite a while and I started to get worried, so I climbed up a little ways and met him coming back. Turns out the right path wasn't too far off and the Folly was within sight again. 

But as I went up the hill, I discovered that the gorse bushes (we didn't know they were gorse at the time, but that's what I guessed and I was right) were not only pretty but also extremely prickly. I could get us about 20 feet  from the path, but I couldn't get any closer without walking straight through at least one very prickly patch. We decided we would just have to try to brave our way through. I was wearing jeans, so I wasn't going to have too much trouble with it. Shannon was wearing capris. She got pretty scratched up. I felt really bad. (Gorse hurts. D:)

Once we got to the correct path, it was easy to get to the tower. And that was where we really learned about wind on the Isle of Man. You see, it was pretty windy on the Prom. It was REALLY windy on the hill by the Folly (the kind of windy that really wants to blow you off your feet). I was freezing almost as soon as we got there. The tower was really cool, though. It's about 50 feet high, with a few narrow windows and only one door (which was locked and barred). It was a simple box, narrow and tall, with no ornamentation.

Corrin's Folly

Apparently this family walks to Corrin's Folly
every year.

Another cool part of the tower was the old graffiti. People have been carving their names on the base since it was built in the mid 1800s. There were some really old ones, and some people that have come back multiple times and carved each year by their name. 

Some of the really neat, older graffiti.

There were some other interesting structures around the tower, too. There was what looked like a small graveyard, with a short wall surrounding three low mounds, and there were two pillars at opposite ends of the graveyard. I think that's where Corrin and his wife are buried. Maybe one of their kids, too. (Yep. According to a sign at the base of Peel Hill, the little wall surrounds a graveyard and the pillars are extra memorials to Thomas Corrin, his wife and their young daughter.)

All four pillars and the small graveyard. 

There's a funny story about Corrin's Folly which we learned later. Thomas Corrin liked to spend a lot of time reading in the top floor of his tower. He would even read late into the night by lamplight. A problem arose, however, when some of the ships sailing in the vicinity thought that the light from his window was the lighthouse 2 miles down the coast. He got so many complaints that he was forced to block up his ocean-facing windows. Bad manners to impersonate a lighthouse, apparently.

The sea-ward sides of the Folly. You can kind of see where
the windows have been bricked up.

We got a bunch of pictures, and we were really enjoying the view, but it was getting on 8 pm and we decided it was probably time to head back. I was seriously hungry, we were both pretty cold. On our way back, it occurred to me that I might be able to see Peel Castle from the top of a ridge a little ways past the path we originally took up the hill. I couldn't resist investigating. Turns out we could see the castle and we'd found another path down the hill. I wanted to wait for sunset because Linda had mentioned that the castle was pretty at that time, but it was so cold and windy we kept inching down the hill, looking for cover. As the sun finally actually began setting too, it quickly became clear that it was going to get too dark too fast for any good pictures. Oh well.

Peel Castle as we came down the hill above it.

We wanted a picture with the castle. This was the one that came out best.

Griff forgot to mention that before we went in search of food we went down to Fenella's Beach, which is at the base of St. Patrick's Isle, and played around for a bit.

Silhouetted me! 

Jumping Travolta-Griff!

Peel is a coastal town, so most of the businesses have fairly short hours. (Realistically, there are comparatively short hours everywhere because it's a tiny island.) It was now about 9:00. We were both starving. We found two open restaurants: an Indian place (Royal India) and a Chinese place (Hong Kong Delight). For our first dinner on the Isle of Man we had Indian food. Go us. It was delicious. (I thought the tandoori chicken and the naan was good. We tried this special naan, they called it Peshawari naan, and it was stuffed with coconut and sultanas. It was yummy. The tikka masala wasn't bad, per se, but not what I wanted. [I wanted that tomato chicken stuff from Taj Palace. Karen and April, you know what I mean. That was not what we got. :/] Also, the man who took our order at the Indian place was really friendly. He chatted with us a bit. ^_^)