The Road to Lisdoonvarna and Kilfenora

It turns out that I was wrong about the weather. The serious cold when I arrived was the exception to the unusual weeks of sunshine occurring in Ireland. It does get cold, and it does rain, but it’s not nearly as bad as I thought.

Due to the sunny weather and abundant free time, I’ve walked to Lisdoonvarna twice and Kilfenora once with some of the other WWOOFers/workers.

Lisdoonvarna is a pleasant walk along back roads to a small town that is largely known for the monthlong Matchmaker Festival it hosts in September. Having missed that bustling time by a few days, it just seems like a small town. But a nice one. It has a small supermarket, a post office, a craft store that is like a gift shop, a cafe, and a bunch of bars.

Here are some pictures from the walk:

Kilfenora on the other hand was a less relaxing adventure. Luckily, it was not just sunny, but also legitimately warm when we walked there…because we got very lost.

We walked for over 1 1/2 hours before we finally reached the (approximately) 3 shops and 2 pubs that make up the village. And because it was Sunday, almost everything was closed.

Here are some pictures from that walk:

On the way back, we splurged and took a cab. It took only 5 minutes to get back to Boghill.

I have to admit that I am failing miserably as a vegetarian. In Lisdoonvarna (the second time), I got a burger. In Kilfenora, I got chicken curry and rice. I can’t resist. I miss meat too much.

Other than that, we’ve been cooking a lot here. My main contributions have been the pizzas and cookies, although I have helped out with other dishes. You really have to get creative or you just end up eating bread for breakfast, eggs for lunch, and pasta for dinner. Hooray for the cooks coming yesterday and today because of visitors!

Here’s some of what we made:

                 

It is a lot of guesstimating when it comes to cooking. Whenever I do find a recipe that I can do here (as in, no meat), it’s in whatever non-metric units are called. I’m pretty sure the conversion never quite turns out…but the stuff has been tasting alright.

The work over the weekend was mostly cleaning and gardening. Cleaning the oven, cleaning the counters, cleaning the shelves, weeding the herb garden, mopping the floors, etc. The belly-dancers cancelled so it was a very quiet weekend.

The excitement for the weekend was probably watching a chicken loose in the garden sprint like mad towards a path a bit away. I’ve never seen a chicken move so fast in my life. I don’t know if I’ve ever moved so fast in my life.

Day 3 at the Boghill Centre: Beautiful Place, with Seriously Cold Weather

Boghill Centre-where I’m WWOOFing for the month- is an ecotourism destination that holds a bunch of workshops and guests, mostly in the summer it turns out. It is in between Lisdoonvarna (population under 800) and Kilfenora (population under 250). Needless to say, it is pretty quiet here. Especially as it is becoming extremely cold. Who knew the temperature would be in the low 40s in the morning in early October in a place that doesn’t snow? I’m puzzled. And cold.

It doesn’t make sense to have the heat on in the hostel where we stay because it is just me and one other WWOOFer, so the owners have it turned on for a couple of hours in the morning and night. Luckily there are plenty of blankets and a stove we can make a fire in during the evening.

Right now, there are three long term workers at Boghill. One lives off-site, another lives in a caravan on-site, and the last lives in a hut made of all natural materials on-site. The only other WWOOFer, Rosa, and I share a hostel room in the main building.

In order to earn my room and board here, I have to work 25 hours a week. That’s really not all that much- I worked way more that summer and at my internship, so it’s a nice break. The tasks seems to be a range of indoor and outdoor things. It is somewhat whatever you find to busy yourself, unless there is an event. It’s less gardening/farming work than I had hoped for, though maybe I should be glad since the weather is only going to get colder from here on out.

My first day was mostly spent getting accustomed to the place and reading the tons of information they have about this place and its practices.

That night, Rahul, one of the long term workers, drove Rosa and I to Doolin. We stopped on the pier, took a picture, and left because a storm was coming in. Not just rain, since that is a numerous-times a day occurrence, but a full-on storm. On our way out of town, we stopped at a local bar and listened to some live Irish music for a while.

Yesterday and this morning we’ve been preparing for a 50+ person training session that is using the Octagon Hall. That’s a lot of people when you look back to where I wrote about the population sizes of the nearby towns. The afternoon has been a lot of dishwashing. Boghill doesn’t have a dishwasher so we have to wash everything by hand. It surprisingly only took about an hour to wash the plates, silverware, glasses, etc., although we do have to go back and finish cleaning mugs and glasses when they’re done with the afternoon session.

An all day event also means that the cook Lorna came in for the day to prepare lunch. It was awesome- both because the food tasted great and because I’m having a hard time being creative when it comes to cooking vegetarian meals. Did I mention Boghill is a vegetarian place?

There are three owners- Sonja, John, and Cari- who all live down the road from Boghill. They seem extremely nice, although I’m not sure how much I’ll see of them on days when we don’t have events or guests. I think the next big thing on the schedule is a belly dancing/yoga workshop on Saturday.

I’m hoping on my days off to explore Ireland a little more. I just have to get up the energy to walk the two miles to the bus stop in Lisdoonvarna in the cold. If it wasn’t cold, I swear I’d do it all the time… but Ireland has this sort of wet-cold thing going on from the constant rain, and all the layers in the world don’t seem to do anything. It can become a comfortable-temperature when the sun is out, but the sun isn’t out that often.

Boghill is definitely different. I’m excited to see more of how it works, and I know that in my plenty of free time, I’ll be able to get some reading done. Maybe I can finally tackle the long list of books I made working at a bookstore this summer.

Pre-Boghill Ireland with my Granny and Papa

I arrived in Shannon airport after a seven hour layover in Heathrow. It was supposed to be four but my first plane got in an hour early and my second plane was delayed two hours. My granny and papa are in Ireland visiting relatives so we overlapped for two days.

We stayed in Ballyvaughan.

We visited Doolin, the Cliff of Moher, Lisdoonvarna, and Ennistymon. Ennistymon was because it had the nearest ATM from Lisdoonvarna.

I didn’t realize until driving through just these small parts of Western Ireland how beautiful the landscape is. It’s endless fields and cows. We even had to stop our car as sheep were herded across the road on our way to Boghill.

I guess I’ve never been somewhere truly rural before, not in the U.S. or abroad. It’s definitely a different experience, but I like the quiet, friendly nature of it. And the easy-to-find Irish music playing at night.

Below is a picture of the Cliffs of Moher, taken from the Doolin pier.

The sign below read: Warning. It is extremely dangerous to bathe in this area. Keep in mind that this area is ginormous waves crashing against big rocks. I really really plan on avoiding bathing in this area.

And more photos from our explorations…