Logistics in Connemarra

There have been a wide variety of human activities in Connemara over the centuries, some of them a bit unusual by modern standards. Here's the staircase at Aughnanure Castle in County Galway. It was built by the O'Flaherty family in the 16th century. They were a rambunctious bunch, and often warred with their neighbors, so they built some shrewd defensive measures into the castle. Take this spiral staircase. It goes upward in a clockwise direction...we're looking down in this pic. Now if you are a right handed swordsman like most people, you can only get a full swing off if you're a defender, above the people trying to attack you and get upstairs. Their right handers are inhibited by the stone wall on the inside of the staircase. So the attackers would be at a severe disadvantage unless they had a bunch of lefties heading up the stairs.

Here's a wide view of the castle. The walls sloped a little outward at the bottom, meaning defenders could pitch, say, rocks or boiling oil from the battlements at the top and that stuff would ricochet outward toward the attackers. There was also a "murder hole" in the floor above the main entrance to the castle. Defenders could shoot arrows or throw stuff at the attackers trying to get in the front door, without risk to themselves.

All this was fine until the English employed modern technology in 1572...artillery! Murder holes turned out not to work very well against cannonballs. But, the O'Flahertys eventually reacquired the castle through peaceful means, and turned it over to the government in the mid 20th century; it's now a national historic site.

This is a memorial to John Alcock and Arthur Brown, who, it may surprise most Americans to learn, were the first people to fly nonstop across the Atlantic from North America to Europe! They did it in 1919, eight years before Lindbergh, and landed in a bog a couple miles from here, near Clifden in Connemara. There is, however, an asterisk...they took off from Newfoundland and landed here in Ireland...of course both are islands, but considered parts of North America and Europe respectively. Lindbergh was the first aviator to do a nonstop from mainland to mainland, which was a considerably longer flight.

Ireland is a boggy place. Here in Connemara the average annual rainfall is about 65 inches; the average annual evaporation is around 20. Can you say waterlogged? For millennia this soggy land has processed the grass, gorse, etc into peat, which is several feet deep in many places. When cut up into strips and dried, the peat makes excellent fuel...burning without a spark (good if you live in a thatched hut) and coming in very handy if you don't have forests for wood or buffalo for chips. This pic shows an old peat bog...blow up the image and you can see neat cuts that have been made over the years to extract peat. The area is now in Connemara National Park and is not used anymore...who knows when it was? Could be 20 years ago, or 200. Peat is a renewable resource...but long term, like timber. Don't know how fast peat replenishes itself...a guess would be a foot a century or so.

Here's a closeup of a modern, ongoing peat operation. The hillock in the background is being gradually shaved back and the peat cut into strips (foreground) and left out to dry. A problematical task as it rains nearly every day here! You can buy peat in stores, take it home, and use it for fuel...Wiki says more than 20 percent of Irish homes are heated by peat!