Castle Tour: Rock of Cashel, Cahir Castle, and Blarney Castle
The first leg of our journey around Ireland took us southwest from Dublin. We wanted to see Blarney Castle and get up close with the famous Blarney Stone. Located 3 hours from Dublin, we decided to break up the drive with two other stops we had seen recommended online, Rock of Cashel and Cahir Castle.
For information about our experience as Americans driving in Ireland, go here.
Our first stop was Rock of Cashel, a picturesque group of ruins set atop a large rock rising up from a town of the same name. The ruins are actually a walled cathedral and not a castle despite how the name sounds. After winding through the small town road we arrived at a parking lot at the base of the rock. Parking costs 4.50 euros per day at the base, although you could probably find street parking further away. One must purchase tickets to go inside the grounds and each ticket is 8 euros for adults. The curving drive up to the entrance is one of the prettiest parts of the site, as the rocks of the wall are speckled with different colored mosses and make for an olden-times feel.
Once inside, a guided tour is offered with admission to the site. We don’t typically partake in guided tours but we arrived right when one was starting so we listened in. The tour definitely made the grounds more interesting as we came to understand the feuding families that had owned the area at different times, giving us a true sense of the history within the cathedral walls. We wandered the grounds, walking into the deserted and worn cross-shaped cathedral. Definitely an antique feel to the place. The surrounding countryside was beautiful with its rolling green hills and other historical landmarks. Part of the site is a graveyard, which is still active but only for descendants of those already buried in the site (only one more living person is allowed to be buried there). The Cormac Chapel is an additional building on site but this costs extra to view the inside. We were tempted, but having already seen several amazing religious buildings in London we decided to pass on this. All in all Rock of Cashel was a nice, tranquil beginning to the day.
Next we made our way to Cahir Castle, which is only 9 miles from Rock of Cashel . A lesser known castle than Blarney, some online reviews suggested this castle was more impressive and enjoyable than Blarney so we decided we would judge for ourselves. Parking was 2.50 euros and tickets were 5 euros each. The side of the castle near the parking was beautiful with foliage of different colors and a shallow stream. We were lucky to be visited by a large family of adult and baby geese swimming by. Once inside, we were treated to a solid castle grounds. Cahir Castle is not the largest castle but it is a good example of one, including a tower, courtyard, dungeons, and even old cannonballs stuck in the walls. The tour for Cahir Castle was also enjoyable as they pointed out many features of the castle that we would have otherwise missed. It had a nice small town feel to it, different from Rock of Cashel and different from what we would experience at Blarney Castle.
While in Cahir we decided to stop across the road from the castle for some lunch. We enjoyed chicken and stuffing sandwiches and caramel apple pie at the River House Cafe, which is a cute restaurant with neat views on the second floor. Good service and a nice selection for lunch. Before leaving the area, we walked through the park next to Cahir Castle, where there are a number of sculptures to view on the Inch Field Sculpture Trail.
Our last site to visit was the coup de grace of the day, Blarney Castle. The most well known of the sites, we couldn’t pass it up. Tickets were the most expensive of the day, 18 euros each at the gate (16 euros online). It was also the largest site of the day. Tickets include access to the castle which most people think of when they hear the name, but also the large, manicured grounds. The grounds are split into different sections including a witch’s woods and exotic garden. Somewhat gimmicky, these areas were very pretty and nice to stroll through. We entered the main castle towards the end of our visit.
Fortunately we arrived late in the day and the line waiting to get up to the castle and to the stone was not long at all. A sign near the bottom says at busy times it could take at least NINETY MINUTES to get to the top. We made it to the top in under 10 minutes. Yes, the Blarney Stone is a tourist attraction and there is a line to do the deed that must be done. The line was about 10 people when we made it to the top. Although we had read that one must lean over backward to kiss the stone, as our chance neared we could see the small gap open to the ground below and Brad got nervous.
However nowadays railings and a set of metal bars are present for visitors to hold onto and prevent a truly nasty fall (this was apparently not the case in the past) and there was a staff member who provided some assistance in lowering people down to the stone as a staff member captured official photographs of the experience. They even had a spray bottle of some sort of cleaning solution next to them, although we did not witness it being used. Erin went first, sat down on the ground, turned around, leaned back, grabbed the railings, and stretched her neck to plant the 28,579,474 sloppy kiss on Blarney stone. She finished with a surprisingly huge smile on her face. Brad was next and did the same. He accidentally kissed one of the nastier looking parts of the stone. Oh well. The ritual of kissing the Blarney Stone was a fun ending to our day of sightseeing. Hopefully it left us with the gift of gab as promised and you guys are enjoying these blog posts!
After leaving the castle, we explored the grounds a little more by entering a cave, walking through the poison gardens, and taking some silly pictures with Blarney Castle in the background. To cap the visit to Blarney we partook of some soft serve vanilla ice cream cones from the gift shop that we had seen just about everybody else getting too. It was some Blarney good soft serve, at least at the moment. All in all, despite being more crowded, Blarney Castle was our favorite of the day. We headed to the parking lot and set off north for our night destination in Limerick, where we would stay prior to the Cliffs of Moher.
