KNOWTH

We planned to go to Drogheda then work our way back through Kells, Tara and Newgrange but as it happened we found ourselves on the N11 (thanks, useless satnav) so we went first to Tara.
There was a bit of a buzz there, lots of people streaming off tour buses. There was
no evidence of the anti-motorway people. We walked around the site soaking in all the spirits. Then we went for lunch at the teashop.
We got back in the car to take the Boyne Valley Drive to Newgrange. Part of the drive is on little back roads. At two places along the way we had to push the car through deep water from the recent flooding. Finally we got to Newgrange.
It is no longer possible to simply drive up to the monument and take a look around as I have done in the distant past. Now there is an interpretive center with a full-scale reproduction of the the interior of the passage grave. Tours of the actual monument are limited. All the remaining tours of the day were already sold out. The greeter offered us a tour of the nearby monument at Knowth. We decided to take it even though we would have to wait nearly an hour in the visitor center.


Crawling through a souterrain.

Finally, our bus was ready. The whole area is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site so access to the monuments is very limited. The bus took us to Knowth where a guide was waiting for us. She gave us a 30 minute guided tour of the site and then we were on our own for another 15 minutes before we had to get back on the bus to return to Newgrange.


Orthostat (Carved stone in archeology-speak)

We spent a little more time at the interpretive center, trying to make sense of everything we had seen at Knowth. The carved kerbstones were the most impressive. The designs were very intricate. Some clearly represented the sun and the stars but beyond that it was very hard to descern a meaning. Like all art the meaning for the creator can be very different from the meaning for the viewer.

We got back in the car to make our way to Drogheda.