Day 8 – May 17 – Saturday: Driving past Hell Fire

Help from above—Waking Fiona

I haven’t yet introduced you to the 11^th member of our group. Fiona is never around for photos, and she doesn’t eat with us. She only talks and never listens, and when she awakes each day, she’s in a brand new world and has to be reminded where she is. In essence, she came along with us as the voice for the ever-attentive eye on high that knew every turn our van made. In preparation for the trip, Cary and Tracy ordered a GPS system from the UK, with the appropriate software. One of the rituals at the start of each day is to wake “Fiona” (as the GPS voice who gave directions came to be known to us). On this particular day, Fiona was being especially stubborn, and Tracy had to spend several minutes “communing with the stars” before we set off. I was reminded of our celestial guidance system, and the importance of getting oriented at the start of each day.

Tracy with Fiona in the palm of her hand, "communing with the stars"

God has provided us with the map (the Bible, His Word) and a Guide (the Holy Spirit) to help us maneuver the twisting paths of our lives. Fiona, of course,was only as reliable as the software input she had available to her, and there were occasions later on in our travels when we had some doubts about Fiona’s directional skills, as it seemed to us she had her “left” and “right” mixed up. If for any reason, Cary didn’t make the turn Fiona had in mind, she wouldn’t get angry, but would politely say in a matter-of-fact way, “Re-cal-cu-la-ting…” Then would come the instructions for getting turned around and back on the right track. In a similar way the Holy Spirit keeps track of us and whenever necessary, informs us of what we need to do to get back on the path God desires for us. Whether we heed His instructions is up to us. I think Cary and Tracy sometimes ignored Fiona, which was OK. Ignoring instructions from the Holy Spirit, however, is a far more serious matter, as the final destination is eternal.

The route today took us through some very remote landscape. This area of the Wicklow Mountains reminded us of some of the upper plateau of Madeira on Paúl da Serra. While there are more ferns on the Madeiran plateau than here, there are more sheep in the Irish mountains.

Gorse (a type of broom) is abundant in both places, but it was really in bloom all across Ireland, including these mountains.

A trio of heads admiring the view from the "warmth" of the van.

I’ve been collecting pictures of signs to put together in one posting, especially those signs that seem odd to us as Americans. There was one sign we saw on the way up to the mountains, but we were past it before I could get my camera out, and we didn’t come back by the same road. The sign said, “HELL FIRE WOOD”. We had no idea what that was about so I made a note to find out on Google. Here’s part of what the Wikipedia entry says about it:

Today, the house and surroundings (called Hell Fire Wood) are owned by Coillte, the State-owned forestry company. The area, with commanding views of Dublin and its environs, is a popular recreation spot for many Dubliners.

According to Wikipedia, the history of the site is not the sort of thing we would have been greatly interested in. There was a historical reason for calling the place "Hellfire", and that's a place none of us are interested in going to.

Glendalough



Our (far better) destination was Glendalough , another of the monastic communities of centuries gone by. In contrast to the bleak landscape of the mountaintops above, the valley is lush with trees and flowers. Once again, we were among tombstones and crosses.






















Once again, the left- and right-leaning tombstones.





















A momentary resting point for one of the many birds living in the surrounding forest.



Stone is a very common building material, as evidenced in a house we passed on the way up through the mountains, and the barn we passed on the way out of Glendalough.





What is unique at Glendalough is the stone roofs, which are formed by stacking stones in such a way as to form the pitch of the roofs. If you’ve ever had your roof damaged by hail, you might want to consider installing this type of roof. Lifetime guarantee against hail damage…your lifetime and those of the next 20 generations, it would seem.


A final picture from this day's journeys: a partial group portrait, under the fancifully-shaped hedge. But as you can see, Fiona was not around for this photo, either.