by H. H. "Hub" Brown

 We stayed in a Jury's Inns hotel each night we were in Ireland, two nights in Dublin, next day Ron drove to Cork where we stayed in another Jury's Inn. Although I had some trouble keeping up with the rest, someone would get interested in stopping to watch something or examine something thoroughly and I would rejoin the group. 

 It's hard to realize how ancient Ireland really is, some of the old ruins of forts or castles thousands of years before Christ. 

 Although Ireland is quite far to the north and we were there in February, some of the bushes in the parks in the towns were in bloom and some tulips were in bloom. One thing that seemed strange to me was the lack of corn stalks or stubble. Must be the climate is not favorable to growing corn. 

 Another thing that was quite noticeable, even though Ron drove over more than one third of the lower part of Ireland, we never saw a tree that would make a saw log. Around some of the old farms there would be some old knotty or limby old oaks or maples. 

 Some of the chimneys in the farm houses would have as many as four chimney pots which meant that each room probably had a fireplace where they burnt peat. On the farms they would burn peat that had been chopped out of a nearby bog, stood on end in small heaps to dry. Some of the people in the towns burnt peat that had been compressed with considerable pressure so that it was a lot cleaner to handle.

 The fourth night we spent in Galway. This was a windy rather raw day. A lot of the residents here, in order to have a little piece of green lawn had piled stones in pointed rows. The three Aran islands are not far offshore here which they tell were, until the 1970s remained much the same as Old Ireland had been, outside toilets, not much plumbing. But since then they have become such tourist attractions that some of the older inhabitants don't like all the attention.

 The day Ron and his wife went to the final game of the Rugby season, the rest of us boarded a double decker bus which cruised the city of Dublin until we reached the old Guinness brewery which has been turned into sort of a tourist trap and museum. In one of the dark passageways at the lowest levels of the building there was a metal pipe that was part of a system that moved beer from the bottom of a vat. On its way, someone had drilled a small hole where, when the tiny plug was removed, they could have their own source of supply. 

 We could have got back on the bus but decided to walk some instead. We came to a little place, The Dark Horse pub. Everyone was watching the game on a big TV and said they weren't cooking but we could get a sandwich which was made with Irish bread and so was as good as a meal.