Day 10: Twout, Mackerel, Haddock, and Cod

Here on Day 10, we are a bit road-weary and need some chill time.  This area of Ireland (the Burren) is a weird limestone area with lots of old burial sites.  The limestone has been eroded for kabillions of years so it's all rutted and difficult to hike on.  We stopped by Poulnabrone Dolmen which is around 5000 years old.  It's basically just an old gravesite, but the location was cool.  The Burren is a lot less green than the rest of Ireland so it's pretty interesting that the old-timers used to bury people in this area.  

Paul was getting antsy for some more fishing. So we spent the morning finding some rivers and lakes for him to try out. The first river didn’t go well, because it was not a good bottom for wading barefoot.  (Paul's note: Stinging nettle is not good when you slip and slide backwards into an acre of it).  Paul got a bit wet and wasn’t catching anything, so off we went to another place. This place was where a river and lake met up. It was drizzling constantly, so I stayed in the car to read. Paul went fishing and caught a few fish. Huzzah! 

Then we were off for Kilmacduagh Abbey. I felt great sadness there. There were seven church/cathedral/abbey ruins on the same smallish area. It’s like it was a cursed place or something. Every religious structure that was put in this area was in ruins. One was a cool tower to hide from Vikings, put up in the 10^th century. The earliest building here was put up in the 7^th century! Wowsers.

It was a cool place, but everything was gated off, so you couldn’t get too close to most of it. And it just seemed like a sad place due to all of the ruins and whatnot. 

Now Paul's taking over this blog.  I ditched Cris after we checked into our B&B and went ocean fishing.  I drove down Galway way to a cool old boat with 7 other folks.  Our captain was a frenchman that has lived in Ireland for 12 years so his accent was ridiculous.  We went out into the bay and dropped plastic feathers down 60 feet and jigged for mackerel, haddock, and cod.  I caught about 20 mackeral, 10 haddock, and 2 cod for a pretty amazing day of fishing.  

Sadly, since I ditched Cris I didn't have anyone to take my picture.  So, here's my bucket of mackerel.  Everyone likes a good blog about buckets of fish....

The best part about this fishing trip was that the skipper gutted and threw a bunch of mackerel on the barbie with salt in their gut, sprayed them with vodka, and served them on a slice of bread.  It was tasty and super fresh.  

The best part about this fishing trip was that when we got back to port there was a lovely seal waiting for us.  When someone dangled fish over the side the seal would kick extra hard to get half his/her body out of the water to beg. And she had a super stylish necklace on. It was super cool, I want a seal instead of Achilles now.