Last Irish post

We are home and had a GREAT time. The last two days were spent in Dublin. We stayed in and B&B about 20 miles north of it. We turned in the car and took a bus into Dublin both days.

Dublin is a really nice modern city. We spent our last day getting T-shirts and listening to live music in the pubs. That evening we walked about 1 1/2 miles to a restaurant to eat. We met a amazing couple and had a great time visiting with them. They ended up dropping us by our B&B after dinner. I hope when they visit their son who's in the states they stop by and visit us.

Above are a bunch of pictures that I took along the way. It was a beautiful country filled with beautiful people. I want to go back today.

Home

I'm home but have lots to post about the last two days. I didn't have
good Internet so stay tuned later today.

Sent from RoxAnn's iPod

Dublin

We drove to a town just outside of Dublin today. We went to see Trim Castle in Trim. We also risked life and limb to go to a monestary because Ardith had never seen one. It was mostly rocks because it was not occupied. Then, for really the first time, we got lost. The GPS did not allow for a highway that was closed. We had to find our way with a map. WHAT??? I can't read a map. We made it anyway.

We decided to turn the rental car in early because we are 5 miles from the airport and we found out that it's better if we do not drive in Dublin. We ate dinner and thought we would pop out to the airport and get it turned in. We left at 8:00 p.m. We got back to the B&B at 10:30p.m. They are building a new terminal and everything was moved around. I now am very well versed with the ins and outs of the Dublin Airport now. I know three bus drivers by name and almost had one talked into jumping in with us and helping us find the turn in. Ardith is releaved to say the least. Dublin is tomorrow and we get to bed early because we catch a 6:40 a.m. plane to Heathrow. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow evening.

Cheerio(I'm not sure that's the spelling but we hear it alot here)

THE DAY

Road to the path to the house

Jareth Rooney's home across from homestead

I took this picture in Kilkeel and Monica informed me that that whole block had been owned by a wealthy relative and then sold years ago.

Sean at the local pub that gave us directions

Monica and George in front of the
Patrick Rooney original homestead.

path to the homestead. The original part would be the right hand side but only one story.

view of homestead from Monica's house

This was the day to go to the family homestead. I read in some information from BeBe Daniels' trip that Arthur at the Kilmorey Arms hotel in a neighboring town to Ballymartin knew the Rooneys that live in the homestead and could arrange a visit. Off we went to the Kilmorey Arms in search of Arthur. It turns out that Arthur died three years ago and nobody had any help for us. I was devastated. What were we going to do now? I wanted to eat dinner with some relatives and it was looking like Subway on one of the gravestones in the cemetery was going to be the closest
I would get. But..we had come this far so we were determined.

NEW PLAN...

We went back to Ballymartin to the only Pub in the town. Sean, the pub owner(pictured above) assured us that the house we took a picture of was indeed the original Rooney homestead. He told us to just go up and start knocking on doors and someone would take us to visit. We ask him if that was okay to do. He said "sure..luv...tell them you have lost your way and they'll help you." Sooo, that's what we did. The first house was a Rooney but he had just passed away and his wife was unable to help with the family history. She sent us across the road to Monica (Rooney) Sloans' house which is her sister-in-law. Monica answered the door and ushered us right in and couldn't have been nicer. Jareth, her brother, was on holiday but her two bachelor brothers lived in the family homestead. She rang George(bachelor brother) up at the house down the lane and off we went. It was really neat to walk down the path(sorry, the lane) that you knew your relatives 100 plus years ago walked.

George was my kind of guy. Typical old bachelor with a twinkle in his eye and a dog named Jill that wanted her tummy scratched. We got along right away. He took us into the house and dug around for a book where he kept old family photos. He gave me a photo of Edward "Ned" Rooney 1808-1896 and Mary Cannon 1825-?. It was AWESOME!!!

I have to send it back as they seem to treasure the old photos. George was very hard to understand due to his thick accent so I had to ask him to repeat almost everything. He told us that he loved Obama. Here was this 70 year old crusty bachelor saying that he was sure Obama would save the world. He told me that if I had lived here we would have had "crack" this evening. I asked him to repeat this several times. Monica explained that "crack" was defined as a fun time in a pub. Imagine our relief...we did not want to come home and say our relatives introduced us to "crack."

Monica showed us several photos and spent about three hours with us. It was fascinating. She has 8 children 6 boys and 2 girls all over 21 years old and 6 still live with her. It was the best day of the trip!!!

They said that relatives stop by occasionally and one name Charlie showed up in a taxi with his own chauffeur. We remember Charlie and totally related to that. I think it didn't have the effect on them that he hoped. All Monica said is it seemed like he was not short on money. "Crack" was not mentioned.

Off to Dublin tomorrow and a whole new adventure in driving.

Rooney Family Update

Lane to the homestead(1 and 1/4 width of one car)

Homestead(pretty sure)

St. Joseph Church

Inside church

One Rooney stone. I will use some material I have from different sources to locate the original one tomorrow.

We arrived in Downpatrick today. Just to clarify what this meant to me, this is why I wanted to come to Ireland. I wanted to walk and be in the same places that my ancestors lived. I have been interested in our family history for a long time and I wanted to see things for myself. Ardith, of course, had to come to drive and vacation, but now she's interested too.

Downpatrick is about 30 miles from the family homestead. We drove to Ballymartin early this evening to see the church that all the Rooney family attended and still do. It was closed so we went to the adjoining cemetary. We discovered alot of new and old Rooney headstones. A lady came into the cemetary while we were looking and I verified with her that we were at St. Joseph church. When I told her why we were there she got very animated. This is a good thing with most people. When Irish people get excited they talk like they are singing a song really fast. I know she said quite a few things but the best I could understand was Rooneys still went to church there and they lived up the lane a bit. We have figured out that you really have to clarify the phrase "a bit." This could be 3 feet or 30 miles. She also had a key to the church so we got see inside the church where some of our ancesters were married. I was really excited about that.

Sooo we went up the lane "a bit" to look at the family homestead. I combined three sets of directions with the GPS settings and off we went. We arrived "at last" at the homestead. The whole point of this trip. It was a dump. Possibly one of the worst houses we had seen in Ireland. We sat in the car for awhile contemplating whether to take a picture of it or find another better house and pretend like it was the homestead.

A guy came up the lane to feed his cattle so I rolled down the window and asked him if that was the Rooney homestead. Again lots of words and gestures and again I got about 1/4 of the conversation. I think what he said was no that is a cow house. The place you're looking for is in the hollow down the lane across from the other Rooneys.

First of all....extreme relief. To give an example of what he really said it would go like this. Tha thah yu loo at is cow 'ouse, luv. out yu blah blah blah is in te hallow don te lean a bit(a bit remember that one?) an te lean yon oter Rooney's.

We found it(we tink). The picture is above. We will go back tomorrow and see who we can meet and also go to Kilkeel to see Arthur at the Kilgory Arms so he can call Gareth Rooney and arrange a lunch date. That's my first idea. If that doesn't work I'm knocking on the door. I didn't come this far to take a picture of the wrong homestead or a cowshed. That's the plan, if it doesn't work Ardith will be at the wheel to drive the getaway car.

Stay Tuned as the Rooney sisters find their homestead!!

A bunch of pictures

Giants Causeway

The cowpath was worse...this is the road and our car

causway again

Donegal Castle

Daniel Boone

Fw: Finally....a post!!!

 

I haven't blogged for a few days because we haven't found WiFi anywhere. Hopefully you will get this on Saturday night.

Friday we drove to Donegal. We stayed in a B&B called Island View. There was an Island to view from it but it was not worth the naming of the B&B. But it was a very nice place. We toured Donegal Castle, walked around town and decided to go out to eat. We used the GPS to find a seafood restaurant that was close. We picked the closest one which was twenty miles away. We followed all the instructions and the highway turned into a road about 2 miles out of town. In about 10 miles the road turned into a narrow lane. Two more miles had us on a one lane cowpath(one lane for the cows only) with twists and turns. By that time we were committed because there was no turning around. We followed the instructions to the end and there was no restaurant at all. Soooo we did everything backwards(Ardith is the driver and was THRILLED), I will share the pics of the cowpath when I get to a good connection.

We did go to the second choice on the GPS and it was called The Lobster Pot. The owner met us at the door and seated us in a comfortable pub with great service and Guinness. I really thought even Ardith was tempted to try some liquid courage for the trip home but she opted for water. I am so smart that I made her the driver.

I word about breakfast at the B&B. The traditional Irish breakfast is an egg with hard yolk, sausage, bacon(more like Canadian bacon) and a broiled tomato. I love it and was really thrilled to eat this the first 2 days. On the third day I informed the owner that I would like a traditional Irish breakfast. She said that that included black pudding. I backed off on the traditional thing because black pudding is pigs blood. All I could think was that there was a pig somewhere that would had to make a strong commitment to my breakfast.

Today is Saturday. Day four and Ardith had won three rounds out of four with the car. We decided that we'd call the cowpath adventure the GPS win. We drove to Coloraine but stopped in LondonDerry to walk the city walls. We asked the tourist information guide if we were ok in flip flops for the wall walk because we figured it was the width of a good strong wall. Well, we were fine as the city wall was really wide. Wide enough to have a church on one part and a restaurant perched on another part. So we were fine.

We went on the Colraine and checked into Breezemount Cottage. This is no cottage. Remember we walked all the way around LondonDerry on the wall. We discovered we were on the 4^th floor of this charming little cottage. Of course, I forgot a couple of things and have made this climb 4 times so far and we haven't even finished the day.

We decided to go to Giants Causeway. It's a formation of rocks that has quite a story behind them. The rocks are tall and skinny and look like cigarettes for a giant.

Actually, the story goes that there was a giant in Ireland that was in love with a girl that lived on an island in Scotland. He decided to build a bridge all the way to this Island so he could visit her anytime. A giant from Scotland ruined the connection on that end so the Irish giant let it go to ruins. The lore is that there is a bridge at the bottom of the sea all the way to Scotland that has sunk in the water.

The boring geologists say that it was formed by a volcano eruption underground and when the volcano lava shot out of the ground and hit the cold water the lava hardened fast to form the columns.

I'm going with the giant story.

Tomorrow we go to DownPatrick by way of Belfast. We will be on the same roads our ancestors traveled. My guess is they weren't traveling in a very small car looking up at the truck tires as they brush by your rear view mirror. We plan on visiting the Rooney original homestead and visiting the church that our ancestors were married and buried in. My great hope is that we meet at least one blood relative. My other hope is that they aren't in jail or a serial killer or in the cemetery. Stay tuned I'll post again in a bit(in Ireland in a bit could be 2 hours or 10 days)