July 14, 2024

July 14, 2024

I have been feeling less than 100%. I initially thought it was some allergy like mold because of the damp climate. Since Aimee is now feeling under the weather, it must be a mild cold. It doesn’t help that the temperature here is far below what us desert rats enjoy. We are both bundled up while the locals are in shorts. No wonder the Romans never invaded and referred to Ireland as Hibernia, Land of Winter. We slept-in this morning and had a late breakfast.

We wandered into ‘downtown’ Kinsale and met up with a local walking tour. In the age of sail, Kinsale was a major port of Ireland. The harbor eventually silted up, and trade moved to the deepwater port of Cobh. Much of the old port was landfilled and is now a brightly decorated tourist town.

The little port has a wooden mast decorating the entrance. It is a memorial to the epic Battle of Kinsale. In 1601 the Irish leaders of Ulster (northern Ireland) allied themselves with Catholic Spain against Protestant England. A Spanish armada landed in Kinsale while the Ulster army marched south. In the interim, the English rushed troops here and besieged Kinsale. With the Spanish trapped inside, the English won an easy victory against the Irish. With the defeat the Ulster Earls fled Ireland. The English seized the vacant land and settled Scottish Protestants in their place setting up the problem of Northern Ireland that continues to this day.

In mid-afternoon, we drove a few miles outside town to tour Charles Fort. It was built by the English after the Battle of Kinsale to avoid the harbor falling into foreign hands again. We joined a guided tour of this large star-shaped fort. I think the Irish make the best guides because they have a natural gift of storytelling. The fort was only attacked once during an English Civil War when Catholic King James II was trying to regain his throne from Protestant William and Mary. As happens often with coastal forts, it was breached easily from the land-side.

What was probably more interesting about the talk was learning about the life of an English soldier. A young man enlisted for life and was unlikely to ever marry. Despite the hardships, many willingly joined (even lots of Irish) because there was no better alternative.