Boyne Valley Activities

Battles of the Boyne

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 21:34:00 +0000

Today we were in full battle mode in Boyne Valley Activities. It was all hands on deck as we had a few trips downriver to organise. First on the agenda was our Boyne Valley Landscape Tour. Seeing as today is July 12, we had to stop at Rossnaree Ford and rest for a while to take in the surroundings. This was the site of not one, but two decisive battles in Irish history.
The first battle of the boyne is mentioned in the Tain Bo Cualigne and it involved the shamed King of Ulster marching on Tara after Queen Maeve stole his prize bull. Legend has it that Rossnaree Ford is where the main confrontation took place. This makes sense. In the age before maps and roads, people used the landscape features to mark out boundaries, and the Boyne has always divided the North and South in Ireland. The King of Tara lost his head here, courtesy of some fancy spear work from Cu Chulainn who ran across the ford to win the battle.

Williamites vs Jacobites

Jump ahead 2000 years and you have another army marching on the south from Ulster. This battle in 1690 involved soldiers from all over Europe. It was fought between William and his father-in-law James for control of Europe. It was the largest battle ever fought on Irish soil and the fields around here still throw up military artifacts. Instead of spears, this time they used muskets and cannons. In this hot weather, with the water levels extremely low, you can see how General Schomberg would have chosen this spot to cross and flank the Jacobite troops. They met at a boggy ravine at Sheepgrange and stood facing each other, unable to advance. Meanwhile William took his chance and crossed at Oldbridge. This was the last time that kings faced each other on the battle field. After that they left it to the poor soldiers to do the fighting on their behalf.

In the afternoon, we had another medieval river tour of Trim. After a quick walk around the deserted ruins of SS Peter & Paul we hopped back into the kayaks and finished off at the Priory of St John the Baptist. This 13th century hospital had its main keep added later as a private residence. After the Battle of the Boyne, King William confiscated the building and granted it to one of his soldiers. This was common practise throughout the valley and it had a big impact on land ownership. In this case, the soldier did not stay. It is recorded that he spent one night in the residence and had such nightmares that he left the very next day. Hopefully our tourist amenities are a bit more welcoming nowadays.

Hospital of St John the Baptist, Newtown

Finally, we got suited and booted for the late afternoons activities. We had a paintball battle starting at our new course in the centre of the town. After all that talk of ancient history we were in the mood for a bit of action and there is nothing like running about the place shooting at each other with paint pellets to get a full understanding of historical warfare.
Who won this battle? Like most battles, it depends who you ask. It is still being disputed in a beer garden somewhere.

History being made

Game of Ruins

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:35:00 +0000

After the success of our Float through Time Historical River Tour (Slane to Newgrange) we wondered if we could do a similar job on our homebase in Trim. At first we were unsure. Trim Castle overshadows everything in the town and there is already a tour running in there, which we highly recommend. However, we had the same concern with Newgrange and there turned out to be a whole lot more to Bru na Boinne than one monument, so we pressed on.

We also had the added disadvantage of growing up here. We tend to walk past stone ruins and think of them as places to walk through on the way somewhere else. This is something that only a Trim-head can understand. While tourists stop and photograph everything, we just carry on.
Our Newgrange tour covers about 6000 years through a World Heritage landscape, so there is no shortage of stories and monuments to show and tell there. The majority of the features in Trim are from the medieval period, from about 450AD to 1600AD. During that period they had wheels and money and even America. To prehistorians like us, that is practically last week.
So we had to dig deep to find the story. Luckily there were plenty of excavation reports. During the boom years, archaeology in Trim multiplied tenfold compared to previous decades, so the picture most of us have of the town is often based on old ideas. Yes, there were knights and lords and saints, and they have a habit of hogging the headlines of the historical records with their big decisions and battles and treaties. However, the real story is the town itself, how it changed from a highly sophisticated multi-ethnic society into a radical experiment in community self-government that appeared in pockets of feudal Europe during the middle ages. Throw in a few hundred years of competition between different groups of religious folk and the place starts to become like something out of Game of Thrones. While there are no record of dragons in Trim, it was definitely the place to be if you fancied an interesting life.

Give us a shout if you fancy learning more.

Big Rock

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:33:00 +0000

While the lads were busy with a river trip yesterday, I got out of the Boyne Valley and headed south to the Barrow River and its flat lowlands for a change of scenery. About 6000 years ago, people in this area constructed one of the largest megalithic monuments of its type in Europe and I wanted to check it out. The Brownshill Portal Tomb, or the Kernanstown Cromlech as it is known locally, is situated 3km outside Carlow town on the face of a slight rise. From the road, it looks disappointing. No matter which way you approach this monument, it does not look like much, until you get close to it.

Even when close to it, it is hard to appreciate the scale of this site. Only when I put a person in the picture could I get an idea of how big that capstone really was. It is a big rock! They reckon that it weighs between 100 -150 tonnes. It sits on two upright stones which would have acted as an entrance (the portal) and as such they are similar to court-tombs in that respect. This site also has a blocking stone between the door and this too is common enough in portal tombs. It would also have probably had side stones aswell and it looks like they would have collapsed over time. The capstone, like others, balances on low stones at the back and it ascends upwards to sit on the front uprights. How they managed to put them there is a good question. Monuments like this appear to have been built earlier than passage tombs and again, there is evidence of burial activity, but there is no way of knowing how long the stones were there before the burial took place. Like passage tombs, these monuments were originally covered by a cairn so all you would have seen was the entrance and the mound.
We have no idea why portal tombs follow this fashion. They come in a range of shapes and sizes. They can be spectacular like this one. They can be small and dumpy or tall and skinny. Some look just like a pile of rocks. Some have double capstones balanced on top. Others appear to be like modern sculptures, almost animal-like. Most sites have definitely been used and reused for burials over time, from at least the Neolithic times. Not all of them have burial evidence though, so there is the possibility that they were territorial markers. Some of them also have an alignment with the sun. This particular monument has never been excavated so its mystery remains, but if its size was anything to go by, it marks something or someone important.

Like most prehistoric monuments in Ireland, there is a lot of folklore associated with them. In historical times they were known as the Beds of Diarmuid and Grainne. Some of them have fortune-telling customs connected to them while others were used as dance spots. While these enigmatic monuments attract visitors from all over the world, Ireland is not the only country to have them. They appear in mainland Europe at the same time, along with Russia and India.
However, if you really want to go somewhere with a lot of these monuments, skip Carlow and head to Korea. There you will find the greatest concentration of them in the world.

St Patrick in the Boyne Valley

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:08:00 +0000

We have been mad busy with our rope courses and getting ready for the new season, so it has been a while since we paid attention to the archaeology of the Boyne Valley. With the weekend that it is, we did a little digging. Turns out he was so frequent a visitor here back in the 5th century that we would have done him a deal for a few trips on the river.

There are so many legends about Patrick that many people can be forgiven for thinking he was a mythological character, but he was as real as the next person. His own writings survive still and they are the earliest records of a slave in the time of the Roman empire. If that is not impressive enough he is also the first person in history that we know actually existed in Ireland. Yet, he wasn't Irish. He started off as a slave in the west, but he pointed his boat in the direction of the Boyne Valley when he made the return visit. Dublin at this time was only a twinkling in the eye of some distant Vikings, so he headed for Colpe at the mouth of the Boyne. The Boyne allowed Patrick to progress into the heart of the land and also to make his mark on a few of the main power centres in the country. Tara, as a royal site, was top of his list. Although there is no definite record of him ever actually being on the hill, there are plenty of stories about Tara coming to him. Apparently, the druids were expecting this crazy new preacher and they feared that their time as the spiritual teachers of the people was coming to an end. When Patrick lit the Easter fire on a hilltop in the Boyne Valley (probably Knowth or Slane) to herald the birth of the new god, this was in direct opposition to the political custom of the time and he knew that it would be like a slap in the face to Tara. An almighty row started with druids directing thunderbolts and all sorts of weird magic at him. This was no bother to Patrick and he eventually wiped out everyone who refused to kneel before him. It was like a Jedi Knight taking on a load of Sith Lords and kicking ass. This was also where he first used the shamrock to demonstrate the trinity. At least that is the way his 7th century biographer-monk described it. This is the problem with Patricks' story. He had the early medieval equivalent of a facebook page bigging up every move that he made. The truth was probably a bit more mundane.

Patrick was a practical man. The Roman church had already sent a bishop to Ireland to tend to the scattered Christians but Palladius had not left much of a mark apart from a few references in ecclesiastical records. Early medieval society was extremely hierarchical and segmented and Patrick needed to get his foot in the door of the Tuath tribal system because they controlled the people. He needed the protection and influence of the Tuath kings and the Boyne Valley was a hotspot for them. If he could convert the kings, the rest would follow suit. It was trickle-down religion, although he also made a point of converting slaves and low born. He sent his nephew Lomman upriver to convert Fedelmid, the king at the crossing point there. This community became the town of Trim. The Cathedral Church of St Patrick there stands on the site of the early church which rivals Armagh as the oldest Patrician church in Ireland. This focus on creating communities was influenced by his time spent in the new monasteries in France and this is seen as the start of the so-called proto-towns in Ireland.

Patrick was not expected to have much success and in his lifetime he did not view himself as being successful. Ireland was considered at best, the edge of the known world, and at worst, the entrance to hell (Lough Derg in Donegal). His family and friends were not impressed with his mission. There were plenty of easier gigs for a churchman at the time. Todays' equivalent would be to volunteer to go to Mars. He spent most of his time trying to stop his newly christianised people from being killed by raiders and it pained him that Briton traders did the most damage because they did not view Patricks' converts as being worthy. He was successful because he knew the language and he incorporated the pagan religion into Christianity. He would have been well aware that the people worshipped the Boyne as a living god so he used the river for baptism because it involved full immersion back then. He also used the natural springs and wells in the valley and they would have had spiritual associations from pre-Christian times. There are numerous St Patricks' Wells in the Boyne Valley and they all claim a connection from his travels throughout the county.
The communities did flourish, although not quite as rapidly as his social media marketeers would lead you to believe. We know from the archaeology of burials throughout the Boyne Valley that Christianity was a gradual process. Still, within the space of two generations, Ireland was sending monks back out into Europe who transformed the religion. Over 1500 years later his name is trending worldwide every March 17. Not bad for a visitor.

References
Meath

Irelandnow

Pilgrimagemedievalireland

Voxhiberionacum

Askaboutireland

Image Credits
http://ansionnachfionn.com/2012/06/25/irish-national-heritage-park-no-irish/
http://sothl.com/

Marking the Occasion

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 01:39:00 +0000

We had a lot of visitors to the Boyne Valley in 2012. People from all over the place. Most of them will be celebrating the passing of the old Year and the coming of the new one. It is the nearest thing we have to a global holiday, apart from Paddys Day. So we decided to see what all these peoples would be up to.

In Latin America they wear lucky underwear. They do the same in Italy. In Spain, they eat twelve grapes at midnight and make a wish on each one. Fireworks are common in most countries but in Ecuador they burn scarecrows outside the houses. Scotland has the tradition of first-footing, which involves visiting houses and bringing items of luck with you. They also twirl giant balls of fire around their heads while parading around the streets. This sounds very Viking-like, and fun, but not as fun as Denmark. Denmark is one of the most progressive countries in Europe, but on New Years Eve they like to smash plates on their neighbours front doors. It is a sign of great pride and community standing if you have the biggest pile of broken dishes outside your door in Denmark. In Austria, they waltz to the Blue Danube. In America they watch a Waterford crystal ball descend into Times Square. In Germany, everyone has been watching the exact same tv show every year since 1972. In London, everyone jumps in the fountain in Piccadilly Circus. Another Latin American tradition in the big cities is to race around the block carrying luggage with you. This will apparently ensure lots of travel in the coming year.In Brazil on New Year’s Eve the priestesses of the local macumba voodoo cult dress in blue skirts and white blouses for a ceremony dedicated to the goddess of water, Yemanja. A sacrificial boat laden with flowers, candles and jewelery is pushed out to sea from the famous Ipenama beach in Rio de Janeiro.

Here in Ireland we are big on weird traditions to mark the calendar. Some people have to clean their houses to drive out the spirit of the old year. Others prefer to bang fresh bread on the walls, but if the Mammy caught us doing that she wouldn't be impressed, not after she cleaning the place. There was also something about entering through the front door and leaving through the back door but the Da would be shouting at us to shut the doors. There is still a tradition in rural areas of throwing holy water on the animals in the farmyard. There are also plenty of traditions about food. Some families leave an extra place at the table for those no longer with us. Others eat a plate of pickled herring.

The weirdest tradition in Ireland has to be in the village of portmagee in Kerry. In 17-something, a French ship landed down there and the sailors enacted a strange drama whereby they paraded through the village with an old gentleman and then they killed him so that he would be replaced by a young man. The locals had never seen anything like this before and since then they have been reenacting the same drama every year since.

In cold countries they have Polar Bear Dips, which involves jumping into the sea. This is what we will be doing in the morning. So, whatever you get up to, enjoy.

Credits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear_plunge

http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/Irish-New-Year-traditions-that-span-the-centuries-112594784.html

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/world-our-backyard/2012/dec/31/11-unusual-new-years-eve-traditions-around-world/

Boggers

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:23:00 +0000

Living in the Boyne Valley, there is a tendency to spend a lot of time thinking about the neolithic, and giant rocks, and solstice alignments and important world heritage stuff like that.

So, when Bord na Mona turf-cutters came across a body in the bog near Kinnegad last Friday, I was delighted. Proper archaeology! Imagine finding something like that after breakfast. The body is now safely deposited in the National Museum where it will be examined further by experts. They should be able to establish the sex, the age and the cause of death of the body. They will probably be able to establish what the person had to eat and other interesting things about the life that it had before it ended up in the bog near Kinnegad.

The evidence is pointing towards the fact that this is a bog body. If it was a modern body, it would usually have synthetic materials such as polyester or jewellery and they would have survived with the body. Prehistoric people did not have access to jeans or tracksuits. Bog bodies are prehistoric burials that are widespread across Northern Europe and which appear to have been deliberately placed in watery conditions. However, the bodies do not decompose as they would normally. The acidic oxygen-free conditions in bogs are perfect for preserving human remains. The skin, hair and even stomach remains can be preserved, although bones tend to turn to goo after a while. While the dry conditions of the deserts kept the pharoahs intact and the ice of the Alps preserved Otzi the Iceman, in Ireland we have the bogs, and underneath them is a whole world of archaeology just waiting to be found. This bog has already been the site of numerous material remains, mostly trackways, but this is the first bog body found here. It is not the first time the Boyne Valley has been the resting place for a bog body though. Another one was found in 2003 and it too is up in the National Museum. He had a natty mowhawk hairdo which he liked to spike with pine resin. Not just ordinary pine resin, but the resin from a particular pine which only grows along the borders of Spain and France. Fancy.

But first let's talk about the bogs because they are crucial to the story. They are strange places, even to those of us who spend summers there. Raised bogs are a result of sudden and severe climate change. After the Ice Age, melted ice gathered in lakes in the interior of Ireland because of it's saucer shape. Plants and trees lived and died on the edge of these lakes. Then, sometime around the Bronze Age there was a major environmental change in Europe. It got wetter, and Ireland got wetter than most. We know this from environmental records in the bog. The trees started to disappear from the pollen record and the peat (dead trees) starts to pile up.

The question is, was it the importation of bronze which led to the cutting down of the trees? These new blades were perfect for chopping trees. Why the need for chopping down all the lovely trees? Well, the change in climate had already covered the uplands in blanket bog. It was useless for farming now. People needed land. People were under pressure to put food on the table, and across Europe, the old empires were falling. Bronze was also useful for something else - weapons which were specially designed to kill people instead of work. So, the bog bodies may have been connected with all this violence.

This is also the period when we start to see water deposits, in rivers, lakes and bogs. Some cultures deposit their wealth for safe-keeping during times of stress. Some do it to appease the gods. Some even do it to mark different territories between opposing groups. These deposits could be goods, or people.

There was also a change when iron was introduced. It appears that societies got even more violent now that they could make stronger swords and spears. The Iron Age in Ireland was always considered a period of huge displacement. There was very little settlement activity, although the excavations during the boom years are changing that picture. It did seem as if the whole country was on the move. The legends talk of invasions, kings, druids and warriors. This is the period that we find the majority of the bog bodies in Europe. The Roman senator, Tacitus, mentions that the Germanic people had a terribe habit of pinning their social outcasts down into bogs with wooden spikes. There is also the strange pattern with bog bodies being mutilated in some fashion. This happens in a lot of cases and we don't know if it happened before or after death.

So, there is lots of violence, catastrophic climate changes and bodies in the bogs. We also have the trackways. These are the wooden structures which were found near this body in Kinnegad bog. Trackways were another Iron Age feature in Northern Europe. Corlea Trackway in longford is the largest Irish example and it was built in 148 BC. They were wooden roads which led into watery landscapes. Only they did not seem to be designed for everyday transport. Trackways appear to be special constructions, used rarely and for purposes which we do not know. Perhaps they were used for a last journey.

All this, without a passage mound in sight.

Credits

http://www.heritagecouncil.ie/fileadmin/user_upload/INSTAR_Database/Climate_Change_and_Human_Activity_in_Wetlands_of_Ireland_Progress_Report_08.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/human_sacrifice_01.shtml

Wood and Water

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:16:00 +0000

Last week we were off-river. For a change we were in the middle of a forest beside a lake, so we weren't totally on dry land. The location was Drewstown Woods and we were doing a High Ropes Intructor Course. A lovely spot, and all the Beech and Pine trees got me thinking about woodland and wetland archaeology, which is a bit of a contrast to the rolling green mounds and prehistoric art that you would normally associate with the Boyne Valley.

Hanging around

Something must have been in the air because this week saw the release of some amazing pictures from the Drumclay crannog in Fermanagh which was saved from the bulldozer by archaeologists. This got me thinking of the crannogs in the Boyne Valley. Crannogs get their name from the irish for "tree" and they were usually built by driving large wooden piles into waterlogged areas and then building up the interior with brushwood, peat, stones and soil to create an artificial island. Architecturally, lake dwelling spaces are a worldwide phenomenon and are still in use in some cultures today. There are over 1500 of them listed in Ireland. Two of the best known are located in the Boyne Valley.
Moynagh Lough is located near Nobber on the edge of a former lake by the River Dee. It was excavated during the 80s and evidence was found from prehistoric periods along with early history. However, it was the early medieval period (700-900AD) that produced the most evidence for settlement. A range of high status items such as brooches were found here and they were created from different materials including gold, bronze, jet, amber, glass, horn and iron. Some of these items were found in the waste disposal area of the site so there was obviously plenty of material going spare. The presence of bowl furnaces also suggest that this crannog was used for the mass production of objects and many of these were ecclesiastical in nature. Due to the anaerobic conditions of the site there was also a great many items discovered which would normally not survive in the record, such as leather shoes and wooden utensils. Sites like this tell us a lot about everyday life back then because during that period, pottery was rare in Ireland.

Drewstown Lake

On the other side of the Boyne Valley is another famous crannog. Lagore is located near Dunshaughlin and according to the historical sources, this was the home of the Southern Brega who were a warlike bunch that liked nothing better than persecuting the Norsemen in Dublin and the Northern Brega based at Knowth. The evidence found at Lagore include iron slave collars, drinking containers made from human skulls and more iron than bronze. They also liked to use human bones in the foundations of the island, and these may have been workers that paid the ultimate sacrifice. Industrial activity from Lagore was primarily agricultural with ploughs, spindles and game pieces turning up.

Drinking Horns from Moynagh Lough Crannog

So, in a time when there were no towns in Ireland, we have people organising the building of wooden stilted settlements near water. The evidence suggests that they were located here for particular reasons. They may have been to do with manufacturing, or status, or defence. The ongoing work in Fermanagh will hopefully build on what we have learned in the Boyne Valley.
In the meantime, I have some branches to chop.
Credits
Crannogs
Scott, B G 1978 `Iron 'slave-collars' from Lagore Crannog, Co Meath' Proc Roy Ir Acad C 78, 1978 213-30,
Bradley J. Excavations at Moynagh Lough County Meath, The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Vol. 121, (1991), pp. 5-26

Infographic

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 20:48:00 +0000

Halloween

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 01:18:00 +0000

Halloween, or Samhain (Summers End) in the Boyne Valley was originally celebrated as the end of the old year and like a modern day New Years Eve, it is a bit difficult to decide which is the best party to go to on the night. While the urban areas of the Boyne Valley see the continuation of old rituals such as fires, guising (costumes), divination (apple bobbing) and mischief (teenagers roaming the streets), the rural areas are just as busy.

This is not a new phenomenon. Ireland was a rural landscape up until the 20th century and this time of the year is important for country people. The animals would be brought in from the fields. Slaughtering would take place and feasts would be had to fatten up for the dark cold nights coming. This was the last chance to gather fruits or grains before the frosts killed them and the land descended into darkness. Travelling workers returned to their own families. Fires were lit. And of course, the fairy folk were able to slip through the veil between the worlds without the usual spiritual immigration laws that operated the rest of the year.

Up at Loughcrew, the passage mound at Carnbane L has an unusual standing stone within it which is illuminated by the sunrise at Samhain. Cairn U is also supposed to be aligned with the sunrise. The Mound of the Hostages on Tara is another landscape marker aligned with the Samhain sunrise and like Carnbane L, there was a standing stone at its entrance up until the 19th century.

The Mound of the Hostages dates from the neolithic and there is a lot of archaeological evidence for a ring of fire pits around it. The earliest historical records from here mention the lighting of the fires at Tara to signal the start of the New Year. Everyone waited for the signal from Tara, but the high king at Tara got his signal from the druids at Tlachtga, which goes by the name of the Hill of Ward today. While Tara was seen as the political capital, Tlachtga was seen as the spiritual centre for the druids and it is there where the biggest party was last night.

Flame torches and flourescent lights circled this unusual multi-ditched site while a procession made its way up from the fair green in Athboy. Modern day druids rubbed shoulders with Wiccan practitioners and children in masks and elderly farmers out to mark All Hallows Eve, the christian version. There was even a film crew from Korea and when the ritual pageant of the story of Tlachtga started I kept expecting Halloween "Gangnam" style but it was a classy affair, about Tlachtgas search for knowledge and the idea of sharing that knowledge rather than using it to control others. Nice sentiments, followed by tea and crisps.

This mix of different styles and old tales is typical of Tlachtga. Ongoing remote sensing surveys on the hill are revealing that there is a lot more going on under the ground than we can see. There are only three sites like Tlachtga in Ireland and one of them is the Rath of the Synods in Tara so there definitely seems to be a link with the royal site here. Whatever it was originally used for (nobody even knows if the hill of Ward is actually Tlachtga!), it still draws a crowd on Halloween.

Credits

Image credit

The Romans of the Boyne Valley

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 23:12:00 +0000

With the news this week that a roman statue of Hercules was found in the National Museum after being missing for over a hundred years and it turns out that it was originally found in the Boyne river near Navan, the question is raised again about whether or not the Romans ever came to Ireland. Coincidently, the Discovery Programme are hosting an international conference this weekend about the Romans in ireland, so the find is well-timed and should get the archaeologists rubbing their trowels with happiness.

While Roman artifacts are rare enough, they do pop up quite a lot in the Boyne Valley and all along the East Coast. It seems that the peoples of the Mediterranean were quite knowledgeable about this area during the period when Rome was a superpower. The first recorded historical reference to the Boyne was on a map in a museum in Alexandria by the philosopher Ptolemy which dates from around 150AD. This map was very accurate (even though it referred to Boyne as Buvinda) and it would have probably have been drawn by Phoenician traders.

The Roman historian, Tacitus, referred to Ireland as being easily invaded by just one legion, yet unlike the rest of Europe, there is no military or even settlement activity discovered yet.

Plenty of trade though. Apparently, the Romans were fond of our wolfhounds. Pottery dredged from the Boyne and from Collierstown have been traced back to Syria and Turkey and they were most likely used for transporting oil and wine. Artifacts found at Tara suggest that there was a Roman trading post here during the Iron Age. At the entrance to Newgrange were found high status Roman coins that were deliberatley deposited there, raising the suggestion that the mound was an international pilgrimage site for them. There was also a roman brooch found in a holywell at Randalstown which was probably another votive deposit.
Burial-wise, there are some definite Roman examples along the east coast. Cremations in Kilkenny are similar to the romano-british style from around 100AD. In Bettystown in the 70s, some very strange burials were found. They were treated differently than others in the area and with the progress in geochemistry in recent years we can tell lots more about these bodies now. Isotope analysis of their tooth enamel places this person as growing up in a very specific part of North Africa around 500AD. You have to remember that the empire was made up of a melting-pot of different ethnic groups at the time. Citizens included visitors from across the Irish Sea and they would have been quite different than the toga wearing beaurocrats we normally think about when we talk about Rome. Patrick was one of those citizens and despite the lack of traditional Roman archaeology found here, christianity was a direct import from Rome to Ireland. So the question is not what the romans have ever done for us, it is more what were they doing here while they were here.

Sources

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Ptolemy_Cosmographia_1467_-_Ireland.jpg

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/1017/1224325323956.html

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2011/11/roman-contacts-with-ireland/

Raftery, B. 1994 Pagan Celtic Ireland: the enigma of the Irish Iron Age. Dublin.

Waddle, J. 1998 The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland, Wordwell, Dublin.

Best thing since before sliced bread...

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 23:09:00 +0000

This week saw the sad closing of one of the Boyne Valleys oldest food processing companies, Spicers Bakery. Navan is where the Blackwater and the Boyne meet and this mix of rushing water has been used for centuries to power different industries, and perhaps the most important of these were the water-mills. The first water-mill in Ireland was supposedly built by King Cormac Mac Art in the Boyne Valley in the 2nd century AD. His favourite concubine was in the bad books with his jealous wife and she was ordered to grind the grain for the whole royal site of Tara. This is why Cormac had the mill built. These were revolutionary machines when you think that rural people still used the more ancient stone quern method of grinding grain into flour right up until the early 20th century. Mills were referred to by historians as "the backbone of Irish industry". Although the present Spicers bakery was originally the cornstore for the mill, it is still an impressive building. It is a detached six bay four story construction with exposed rubble walls that are whitewashed and which dates from the 1860s.

The mill itself was converted to apartments during the last boom era and it is ironic that it was built in a previous boom. At the time (1785) it was one of the biggest mills in Ireland and it required a considerable amount of capital investment to build these. Records show that there were ten pairs of stones in the original mill, six for wheat and four for oats. The video below shows a typical working water powered flour mill from the Blackwater area.

This large investment was low-risk because bread was fast becoming the staple diet for the new urban workers during the industrial revolution. Before that, bread had been a luxury. The Napoleonic Wars also meant that Britain was dependent on Ireland for its bread. This was why the Irish parliament offered 3d per mile to transport flour to Dublin. This was over twice the price for wheat. Meath was the first county to start sending flour to the capital and this helped its transport infrastructure grow. The Boyne Navigation Canal is a good example of this and it was owned by Spicers until the 1960s. Milling was a profitable business during the 19th century, with over 2500 recorded as being built between 1835 and 1850 in Ireland. There was a downside to this though. Millers wanted all local grinding to be carried out in their mills. That is why we find so many smashed stone querns reused in stone walls and dumped for archaeologists to find. The milling industry also demanded economic protection from the cheap imports which were being processed in the giant mills of Chicago and the American West. This they got, courtesy of the Corn Laws, and they made a killing from it. Unfortunately, the corn laws were not such a good idea during the famine. Eventually, cheap white bread began to flood the market in the 1880s and this heralded the death knell of the mills.
Spicers changed from a mill to a bakery in 1880 and they had depots in Trim and Balbriggan aswell. During the 1970s they employed over 300 people and generations of Loreto convent girls who went to school across the road from the bakery have never forgotten memories of the smell of fresh bread while they studied.

The Trim Incident

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 22:23:00 +0000

This weekend in 1920 was busier than normal in Trim.
The War of Independence was in full swing and the IRA were concentrating on attacking RIC barracks. The Royal Irish Constabulory were the main method of control in Ireland by the British government at the time and the barracks in Trim was a formidable establishment. It had over 20 men stationed there and contained guns, ammunition and grenades. It was located in what is now the Castle Arch Hotel and it had walls and steel gates that were over 15ft high.

The Meath IRA hatched a plan to attack the barracks on Sunday because they knew that half of them would be gone to mass. The IRA was very active in this area and one of the Lalor brothers had already single handedly attacked a truckload of soldiers at the Wellington monument
They blocked off the roads to Trim, captured the constables in the church and attacked the barracks. Only one constable tried to stop them and he was shot in the lung. Then the building was burned down using oil that they brought with them. The IRA escaped and went into hiding. One of them was said to have hid in a freshly dug grave.

They had to hide because they knew that the Black and Tans would arrive soon. The British government had a strategy for dealing with guerilla warfare since the Boer War. Reprisals. Four lorries of Black and Tans arrived and shot into a crowd hurling on the fair green, injuring two boys, George Griffen and James Kelly. The local priest and town leaders intervened and pleaded with the auxillaries not to take it out on the town. They drove off but returned in the early hours of the morning. This is when the madness started.
Witnesses say that the town was left looking like something from the war-fields of France. A quarter of the buildings were burned, including J&E Smyths, right beside where our premises are now located, and the town hall with all the town records. Soldiers waved grenades in front of windows where children hid. For years afterwards, children were forbidden to play with toy guns in the street because so many of them were traumatised. Many of the townsfolk left their homes and hid down by the river, rather than suffer the reprisals.

The looting and burning by the Black and Tans was reported in the New York Times and on the British Pathe newsreel. It had two significant consequences. The IRA in Meath became the centre of the Eastern force in Ireland, and General Crozier, the leader of the Auxillary British Forces, was forced to resign over the actions of his forces in what was called the Trim Incident.After the War of Independence, quite a few of the volunteers that took part on the raid of the RIC barracks went on to join the newly formed police force, An Garda Siochana

Mountain of the Witch

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:55:00 +0000

This weekend we travelled north of the Boyne to visit Sliabh na Cailleach, which has some of the oldest free standing monuments in the world. Otherwise known as Lough Crew, the dates from the mounds place us in the neolithic (about 3200BC), although there is evidence from the mesolithic here also. Lough Crew is the lesser known of the four great neolithic passage mound landscapes in Ireland, but it has an equal range of monuments, from passage mounds to standing stones and stone circles. Bru na Boinne is where the tourists flock to but there are many who prefer the quiet loneliness of Lough Crew. Carrowmore and Carrowkeel rise dramatically out of the Sligo landscape overlooking the Atlantic, but Lough Crew appears to be gentle, leading some commentators to reflect on its feminine style.

Like many other monuments in the Boyne valley, it is not high. Cairn T, at 276m above sea level, is about a ten minute climb from the car park below. It is still the highest point in Meath and the views from here this weekend, take in 18 counties. You can see here from Tara on a good day. Indeed, cairn T is noticeable from all around and, like Newgrange, it was originally covered in quartz. You wouldn't have missed it in the landscape. You would be forgiven for thinking that you are much higher. Neolithic hill landscapes are like that. They maximise their height effect and the hilltops here often rise out of the mists below like they were reaching through clouds. Archaeologists refer to them as "islandscapes". There is a possibility that places like this were more associated with the sky than the land, and this is obvious with cairn T.

Lough Crew is made up of a range of hills but everyone is visiting Cairn T this weekend because it is the time of the Autumn Equinox and the backstone in this cairn will be lit by the rising sun. This is the time of the year when the sun moves around the sky at great speed, unlike the more relaxed way it hangs in the sky during the solstices. There are exactly twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night during the equinox. This is when the kids start to grumble that it is getting dark in the mornings. From here on in, the days get noticeably shorter and this is traditionally the last chance to bring in the harvest. Any later than this and you run the risk of the crops rotting in the cold ground. The sillstones and passage of the mound carves out the sunlight into a rectangle shape which moves around the backstone as the sun moves in the sky. The famous equinox stone is covered in megalithic art and the light seems to follow the flower designs more than any others. There are also serpentine forms, spirals and cupmarks that appear to have been formed by rubbing stone balls into holes. The theories about the art tell us more about the theorists than the truth but the similarities between the art here and other ancient cultures such as the native Americans or the Australians is obvious.

The cairn was supposedly the burial place of Ollamh Fodhla, the great lawgiver King of Tara. There is doubt about that but it is definitely associated with the cailleach, or the veiled one. Modern western society would class a cailleach as a witch but it could have just as easily meant a wise woman. Local legend (and I always go with that) states that the cairns were formed when the cailleach was jumping across the hills with stones in her apron in order to achieve great power. More likely, the cailleach is the Irish triple goddess made up of the maiden, the mother and the bone lady. A megalith on the north side of the passage mound is called the Hags Chair and this is where she liked to sit and look out over her territory to the North.

This could have just been agricultural legends based on the coming change of the seasons, or it may actually have been based on a strong local female personality from prehistory. Burials associated with the Cailleach Beara in Munster are predominantly female so there may have been a tradition of strong female leaders back then. The hills of Sliabh na Cailleach, like those of the Kerry Paps, lend themselves to the shapes of breasts, so they could also have been used to refer to the earth goddess. There are many theories out there. What do you think?

Leccy Piccy

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 13:33:00 +0000

All roads led to Laois last weekend for the fantastic Electric Picnic and this made us think of Tara. All roads used to lead there. Not the Tara of the beautiful harp and the seat of the High Kings, more the Tara of the drum and the seat of your bum sitting in a field with a bunch of people you haven’t seen all year. We swapped our buoyancy aids for sleeping bags and canoes for tents and made our annual journey across dry land to join the picnicers, while Dara held the fort back in Trim. While sitting in the Body and Soul area looking at all the ancient crafts and healers, we got to thinking about prehistoric festivals in the Boyne Valley.

Tara would have been the place to be in Ireland since around the Neolithic. There is a passage mound here, with megalithic art and evidence of cremations, ritual fire pits and later bronze age inhumations. Smack ontop of a hill with view for miles around and the evidence of continuous use would mean that this would have been going since God was young. Or if not, at least thousands of years before Christ. Geophysical explorations have shown that there was many other mounds here aswell AND a giant wooden henge. Bronze age ring barrows dot the landscape. These are raised burial circles as big as a house with huge ditches dug around them and banks piled up high. Not your average gravestones. A 500m long sunken causeway runs up the hill towards the mounds, with gaps in its banks so different parts of the landscape are visible as visitors move towards the top.

The Iron Age landscape is even more magnificent with internal ditches, while there is evidence of exotic foreign visitors both in the burials and in the artifacts found there which look like they would have been used by roman traders. The great Irish chieftains and kings were supposedly chosen here, the ones who ruled when the stories of Fionn MacCumhaill and Cu Chulainn were first told.

This was the sort of place where world changing events occurred. Big news. Rulers were born, fell in love, got into battles and died, and often came back to life. It was that sort of place. When Patrick arrived back in Ireland he supposedly came to Tara to fight the druids for the right to be the spiritual leader of the people, although there is doubt about that, but we will let him have his claim to fame. It was the stuff of legend, but all that is left now are these amazing earthworks with views that go on and on, and which the local kids delight in running up and down on. Noone knows what really went on here. Archaeologists will tell you one thing while the druids will tell you another, and to be honest, we are not all that interested. Most likely it was the usual tension between powers. Whether it was Daniel O Connell and his monster meetings for Catholic Emancipation or the annual midsummer ceremonies by new age believers, Tara has been the backdrop for all the changes in Ireland. What is more important is that this is where people came to meet with each other for thousands of years.

Just like Body and Soul and MindFields, the 19th century antiquarians gave each space in Tara a dedicated name, such as Teach Cormac or the Banqueting Hall and these names have confused tourists for generations who come looking for houses and courts and the front door of magnificent celtic castles that never existed. What is there, is a landscape that appears to have been specifically designed to hold very large gatherings of people. Every dip and hill up there is placed so that people can see each other and move around in crowds. The majority were probably more interested in catching up with old friends and having the crack than in what the hobnobs were doing.

So next time you are in the Boyne Valley and plan to visit the Hill of Tara, imagine it thronged with revellers, banging their drums and wandering round doing fun things that they normally wouldn’t do.

Lughnasa in the Boyne Valley

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 09:05:00 +0000

August is coming to a close and we have been out on the water pretty much every day this month, testing out our new whitewater rafts and bringing visitors up and down the Boyne. No surprise as the Boyne Valley has just been voted the most popular tourist destination in Ireland! In the meantime we have had the Olympics and the festival of Lughnasa, both of which have links with the Boyne. Before the Olympics there was an even more ancient games in the Boyne Valley. It was called the Aoenach Tailteann to commemorate the goddess Tailtiu. She cleared the land for agriculture so that the first farmers could plant their seeds and build their magnificent monuments.

A modern day Tailtiu?

As we paddle through the valley we can see that the landscape is changing. The crops in the fields are being cut and made ready to be brought in. This was when Tailtiu's foster son, Lugh, the king of the Tuatha de Danann, killed his grandfather, Balor of the evil eye. While this story from the Book of Invasions was probably linked to agriculture with the weakening of the strong summer sun and the crops being harvested, it is also similar to the Mediterranean festival of Neptunalia which was a time to take a break from work and take to the waters. Later on, the Christian faith turned Balor into Crom Dubh and Lugh into St Patrick. These legends then got the hollywood treatment in the Twentieth century when they were turned into Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

While the festival of lughnasa is celebrated throughout Ireland, mostly on hilltops, in Meath it is strongly associated with water. To this day in the Boyne Valley we see lots of people who do the rounds of the many holy wells in the area. These were probably linked with a water cult in prehistoric times and there is a long tradition in Ireland of placing objects in water as sacred deposits. In Christian times, the monks used the wells and rivers for baptisms and for keeping fish, so they have always been special places in the landscape. Some of them are associated with omens for the coming year while still others are supposed to have cures for ailments such as warts and backaches. Most of these wells also have fairy trees nearby and their branches are festooned with offerings. Of course, the Boyne itself also featured heavily in the traditions. At Lughnasa, horses were bathed at night at Stackallen, while farmers would drive their cattle into the Boyne at Trim in the nineteeenth century to avoid disease. For those who were more interested in human affairs than livestock, Lughnasa gave the opportunity to try out a new partner in a handfastening which would last a year and a day.
In the meantime we are having a quick break and a cup of tea before the next group of intrepid explorers arrive !

Trim Castle

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 00:11:00 +0000

As part of an effort to update our blog we are going to be posting a bit about some of the things to be seen on our river trips through the Boyne Valley. Right beside our base in Trim is one of the largest Norman castles in Europe. When Hollywood wanted a real castle to film Braveheart in, this is where they set up their cameras.

With its huge curtain walls, limestone base batter and impressive keep, this is exactly what we think of when we imagine life in medieval times. It appears to be the ideal picture of a defensive Norman castle, permanently ready for military activities.You can imagine knights in armour training for battle inside these walls while soldiers pour boiling oil on anyone foolish enough to try and enter. How else would the invading forces keep the peace amongst the unruly Gaels? Certainly there is plenty of evidence for violence within its walls. Decapitated bodies have been found during excavations. The architecture does lend itself to defense and the annals tell us that Rory O' Connor burnt the original wooden castle down before De Lacy built the stone one in the twelfth century. So far, so good. However, in reality, you wouldn't go wasting oil on people in medieval times. This is a myth. Oil was a precious commodity that the Normans traded from the mediteranean over to the Irish Sea and up the Boyne. The majority of people who lived inside the castle were clerks and beaurocrats, not knights. Although every Norman lord was trained in warfare, De Lacy himself was an international diplomat and a businessman, and he preferred money to military glory. He was sent over to stop the other Normans from fighting amongst themselves after Strongbow died. Trim was his administrative centre, which was part of his plan to attract traders and merchants from all over Europe to here. He achieved this aim by creating one of the first experiments in urban planning with merchants renting plots along the new straight streets that the free town council laid out. He had a mint here and he kept all the land records and deeds for the whole of Ireland here rather than in Dublin.

When it came to battle, The Irish preferred running open skirmishes across the fields. Sieges were the only strategy that worked against castles and the Irish were too impatient for that approach. This is if we are talking about the upper classes. When it came to ordinary working Irish people, there is a good possibility that the Irish people did not care whether it was the Gaels or the Normans that was ruling them. While the curtain walls and base batter were originally defenseive features in castles, they are also fashionable features. Castles were built by masons and they had a repertoire of architectural styles which they followed, just like we have features like pvc facia and double glazed windows today. So the defensive features could well have been there to impress. Not everything is about knights fighting.

Take the Barbican gate, which is unique in Ireland. It appears to have acted purely as a defensive entrance and it certainly did, with its double wooden gates, portcullis, murder holes and battlements. It is not unique in Europe though. The Barbican is a replica of the entrance to the De Lacy ancestral castle in Poitou in France. To the French lords and ladies that lived in the castle, this would have made them feel completely at home. The eight sided keep is also unique but it most certainly was not defensive as each side made them extra vulnerable. It may even have been built to reference the eight sided christian cross of its layout.

The keep only had one exit. Any schoolboy playing "castle" will tell you that this is not a good idea if you want to get away from your attackers. So, Trim Castle – military outpost or medieval administrative centre? Come downriver with us for a look yourself and make your own mind up.

Into the West

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:50:00 +0000

There really isn't a drop of water in the Boyne Valley at the minute (and by the looks of the levels on our favourite pastime, it might be a while before it returns to its normal playground glory) so we decided we would take the Boyne out of the valley and head into the west!
We loaded the tent into the jeep and loaded a steak sandwich into the belly. We loaded the jeep full of diesel and off with us on our merry way, with a couple of things we had to do, a couple of things we wanted to do and one or two things we might just do. The form was good, the sun was up and it was a bank holiday, happy bleedin' days !!
Approaching Galway I feared the luck I was born with was starting to fade, as was the sun. I realised this because at half past nine we had no campsite located, no torch in the jeep and eh, no beer!! So off with me down the promenade in search of a campsite and an off-license (that sold torches) and landed at Bayview caravan and camping park just on the outskirts of the town at 2 minutes to lock down. Fair play to them, by 10 past, me pop up tent was popped, me air bed was pumped and me and Gemma were looking out at the atlantic with a cool box full of bottles of heineken. Yes it was by the skin of our teeth but yes, we were there!
In the morning after we derigged the tent we drove into Galway docks to the canoe polo competition. As ever, its always a great feast of skill on the pitches in there and today was no different. Unfortunately our very own TCC teams didn't make it down this time but not to worry as BOYNE VALLEY ACTIVITIES are in the process of organising a canoe polo event this summer up the road in the Rathbeggan Lakes and I'm sure our local teams will shine and do us proud!!
Moving on up (I'm sure that was a Primal Scream tune) the coast to the quiet fishing port of Rosaveal I had to stop off to check out a crane for work. Yes its a pain, yes its sad but hey, somebody has to fund my trip around the west coast in these recessionary times and sometimes you just have to give in to the man. Otherwise the man will give me a kick in the ass and I'll be doing blogs on the dole queue - "today the dole queue was a bit bigger than it was yesterday" eh I don't think so. So off with me to Rosaveal.....
After my "hard stressful days work in Rosaveal" we continued up the coast to the bustling town of Clifden. Well what can i say!?! Some spot!! Super friendly, busy enough to enjoy its thriving atmosphere where each person who passes you does so with a tip of their cap and a friendly nod and quaint enough to enjoy the true quirkiness of this little gem. We stayed there for a few hours for no other reason than we wanted to. We did a bit of shopping (yes i am a man!). We had some dinner and even lowered down a glass of stout on our visit. Then we sat in the square to see the Rough Diamond cycle through the town, a seriously hard core pedal for anyone. Yet there were families, batmen and robins - even a miss piggy (though that could be the stout!!) I mean the bloody jeep was screaming on those hills, rough diamond? - Crazy diamond if you ask me! WELL DONE FOLKS!!
Off with us again heading to Leenann intending on calling into Killary Adventure Center to see could we catch up with the crew from Gaelforce on the off chance that some of them might have stayed put,but they had all gone up to donegal for their northwest challenge and I believe it was a huge success - as ever!

Rolling into Westport at bout 6pm, we booked in to the Clew Bay Hotel. Folks I was all on for camping again but GEMMA refused and as ever the gentleman it wouldn't be proper to insist if thats what she so wished (thats my story and I'm sticking with it!!). After heading down town for a look around and a bite to eat we ended up in the Clew Bay bar and retired early. A certain summit was calling!!
Breakfast was served and off with us,hiking boots at the ready, water and jacket in the rucksack and the same burst of enthusiam I get every time I head up Croagh Patrick. I'm hardly a pilgrim (and i did have my boots on) but i just enjoy climbing it. Maybe it's coz I cant really get lost and I just have to follow everyone or maybe it's coz I was looking at it for 6 months when I lived and worked on clare island and every time I drove past it I swore I'd do it "next time". Or maybe it's coz you get such a variety of people on it that I don't feel as bad when I'm hyperventilating and wondering how long it will be 'til my head explodes, or maybe it's the mad lads you meet up there. I mean c'mon, bare feet - Jasus! There was two lads there heading up barefoot in bloody bits. I just had to stop and have the craic with them. Well, I was having the craic as i was on my descent, body intact, feet intact, bloody sanity intact and they were in serious turmoil - their feet were ripped to shreds and they literally couldnt walk and I'd say they were thrilled with an asshole like me asking stupid questions like "does it hurt?". It's when they tell you they're grand you just think "am i really gone deaf, I could have swore they said grand?". Yep, there truly is nothing as quare as folk!!

Back in the hotel I'm chilled out in a jacquzzi pretty much living the dream. Well I was dreaming of the jacquzzi halfway down the summit so thats good enough for me! I'm heading for a steak dinner then off to Matt Molloys bar for some traditional music and a few pints of porter with my better half. Isn't it well for me. The town is friendly and the atmosphere is electric. We weren't sure where we wanted to go for a weekend break and what we even wanted when we got there but we got a fantastic time served on a friendly plate of proud-to-be-Irish sprinkled with a taste of Clew Bay charm......
Great weekend:-)

Doing a wheelie feider linn.

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:12:00 +0000

It was great to head in to the RDS on Sunday to have a look at the Adventure Weekend and check out what was happening activity-wise around the country. Seems like there's definitely plenty going on in this old island of ours!

We spent a couple of hours there and I have to say that while some people had been complaining about the prices and queues, it wasn't as bad as we feared. Maybe it was because it was Sunday or maybe it was because the Red Bull Flugtag had taken some of the crowds away to Dun Laoghaire to watch the nations finest launch themselves into the air in all sorts of contraptions. Either way, we could make our way around with plenty of ease. Brilliant for us, but maybe not so good for the organisers.
The wind tunnel at the entrance lured every punter in the place to it like space cadets lining up for a rocket launch. You could watch people being blasted upwards and backwards in their "bat suits". As the skin from their cheek bones gently flapped around the backs of their ear lobes, their eyelashes were at full stretch up their forehead and you could easily mistake them for one of those terrible twins from Lucan while every filling in the place was on full view as the wind stretched their mouths into, eh, strange places. The grin from ear to ear as they stepped out of their suits told it all though.
The stunt bikes had to be my favourite, or maybe it was the boarders. Come to think of it, the skaters were amazing. Jasus, the things them lads could do on a ramp was pretty damn impressive. Whether it was "NO FEAR" or "NO BLOODY SENSE" either way it was hugely entertaining. Some energy! These lads were feider linning all over the place.
Of course, I had my excuses for why i could never do it. "We never had a ramp when we were younger" or "we never have the time now that we're older". In fairness, even if I had a ramp and even if I wasn't as old as my birth cert says, my attempt on one of those BMX's would be less like those kids with liathroidi of steel and more like Obama's limo leaving the US embassy!!!

A river runs through it

noreply@blogger.com (Boyne Valley Activities) — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:05:00 +0000

Trim is a bit of an historical town.
People have been coming here for donkeys' years and they all arrive because of the river - the Boyne. About 8000 years ago, mesolithic hunter-gatherers used the river to navigate through the dense forests of Ireland. It was the only way to get around. They followed the salmon in season and camped along the clearings that the Boyne created, leaving their stone tools for archaeologists to find later on.
About 5000BC, agriculturalists arrived in the Boyne Valley and began to clear away the trees so they could see the land. They settled down, tended their crops and stored food for the winter months. This was the beginning of civilisation in Ireland. The Neolithic people built the huge ceremonial passage tombs that can be seen from the river, placing their ancestors in them and marking the territory as owners of the land. This was also the period when people began to look to the heavens. The name of the Boyne comes from the Gaelic for the white cow - the Milky Way. To the first farmers, the Boyne was a mirror of the stars that seemed to flow across the night sky. No wonder they constructed Bru na Boinne to take the calendar and the movement of the stars into account.

Being Ireland, we also have a legend for how the Boyne was created, just in case the facts are too dull. There was a queen called Boanne who was forbidden from going near the magic Well of Knowledge in Kildare, but curiosity eventually got the better of her. When she approached the well, the waters got agitated and exploded, driving her the whole way to the sea where she drowned. That is also how the famous Salmon of Knowledge came to be swimming around beneath the water until Fionn MacCumhaill got his hands on it.

Trim was one of the few spots of the river where it was possible to cross from one side to the other. The Irish name for the town translates as a river crossing point. We take bridges for granted nowadays, but back then a crossing point was the only way of getting from A to B without going all the way round to Z first. This meant that it was hotspot for people on the move.

The Christians arrived in Trim by way of the Boyne. Lomman, St Patrick's nephew and the founder of the town, arrived by boat. He converted the Gaelic chiefs here and gained control of the crossing point. The river was crucial for the trade between religious centres in Europe and it would have been very important for feeding the population that gathered around the place. Water-mills lined the banks and the town would have been busy with boats and fishermen. When the Normans arrived in Ireland, they recognised the value of Trim and the Boyne. They rented land off the church and built their great stone castle here, ensuring that the Boyne continued to be navigable so that they could import their goods around Europe. These strong links attracted religious orders like the Franciscians and Benedictines, whose abbey ruins can be viewed all along the river.

The Boyne is still the life-force of the town. People come and go but the river just rolls along, at times quiet and relaxing and at times wild and exciting. Nowadays the Boyne is used mostly for recreation rather than trade and navigation. Boyne Valley Activities have sit-on kayaks, Canadian canoes and certified paddlers who offer different activities tailor-made to suit your needs. We specialise in river-trips. We are passionate about the landscape of the Boyne Valley, whether it is the river itself, the history or the many activities to be had around the place. We want to make your stay as good as ours.
Get in touch.