Day 36

November 8, 2021:

I ate muesli for breakfast with fresh strawberries and blueberries. Su had already left to go swimming, but I talked with Gerry some more over the food. He told me about a trip in which he had hiked in the mountains of Yemen. I mentioned my trip to Peru, and talked about the altitude sickness I had suffered in Chinchero.

I packed at 9:00 am, and left at 9:30. I plotted my route south, through Mt Temple and Birr toward Cloughjordan, where another Warmshowers host – Elaine – had offered to take me in. I crossed the Old Rail Trail as I passed south, forming a small triangle with the ground track of my path. I followed the N62 south for some ways, probably about 20 km. It was a scary road, just like the N55 yesterday. I nearly got sideswiped a few times by huge lorries that passed me. After passing through Ferbane, I detoured on back roads to Birr – anything to avoid the big road.

The roads in Ireland are numbered, and you can typically tell how safe it’ll be by the letter it starts with. M stands for motorway, and just like the interstate highways of the US, I’m forbidden from using them on a bicycle. N stands for national, and they’re like state routes that are busy country highways. I can use them, but they’re dangerous. R stands for regional, and they’re also country highways like the N roads, with the same minimal shoulders, but they aren’t as heavily trafficked. L stands for local, and these roads are often single-lane paths that serve small towns in the Irish countryside. They may be narrow, but they’re very safe given the infrequency and slow speed of traffic.

The big destination of the day was the Birr Castle Demesne that I went to on Peter’s recommendation. I just wanted to see the telescopes on the castle grounds, and ground my teeth when they charged me 10 Euro to get in. Ridiculous. That said, I did enjoy my time there. There are two telescopes on the castle grounds: a giant Newtonian reflecting telescope, and I-LOFAR, a modern radio telescope.

When it was built, the reflecting telescope was the largest in the world. It’s some 17 meters long and 1.8 meters in diameter. Built by William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, the telescope was used to discover M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, though the Earl thought it was a nebula at the time. The telescope sits inside a giant masonry cradle that is designed to hoist the telescope to different inclinations skyward. The telescope also has the means to rotate slightly within this frame, allowing it to track objects across the sky for about an hour. Focusing was done at the eyepiece, located at the top of the tube. An operator would sit in a little wooden basket that would move with the telescope. The telescope is no longer operational, but it’s still very cool, especially since I understand the principles behind how it works, having used Newtonian scopes myself.

I-LOFAR, the radio telescope, is Ireland’s contribution to Europe’s Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) network. It’s a gigantic array of radio telescopes that span many countries in Europe, with several found within Germany and Poland. There were only a few signs about the telescope. When I approached the Trinity College of Dublin building, I couldn’t find a way in. Someone was clearly inside, but it wasn’t apparent whether they were open or closed. I tried the door, but it was locked, and she came to answer it, explaining that they were closed, but asking if I had any questions. It led to a 15 or so minute conversation, and it was super interesting because I understood far more of the technical aspect of how the telescope operates than the signs were able to indicate. Her name is Aine (pronounced ‘On-ye’).

The telescope was built on this land because it’s a rural area with low radio interference, the sort of thing that might be found near large cities or under busy air traffic routes. The current Earl of Rosse leased the land to the Trinity University in Dublin for the telescope for 1 Euro/year for the next 35 years, so it’s a pretty good deal. Before construction, the River Camcor flooded over its banks, flooding the area where the telescope was to be built. The builders reported to the LOFAR headquarters in the Netherlands that they may have to back out of construction as a result of this issue. But the Dutch reminded them that their country is basically underwater, so they very much could proceed with plans, just creatively. The decision was made to raise the land upon which the telescope would be built by 1 meter to help mitigate the threat of future flooding. Gravel found elsewhere on the castle grounds was used to raise the land, instead of bringing in outside help, which turned out to be well out of their budget.

The telescope is an array of precisely positioned Styrofoam blocks. Each block contains two triangle-shaped radio antennas perpendicular to one another to capture each polarity. They are aligned on the cardinal directions, and must be placed to within +/- 3 cm. They’re covered with thick tarps that keep debris and moisture out. The tarps do not need to be removed to conduct observations. Radio just passes right through, as it does the clouds. This allows observations to be conducted night and day, 24/7. The telescope can be ‘pointed’ using software to add a slight time delay to the antennas on one side of the array vs the other, which calibrates the data coming in to account for light hitting one side first, then the other. I also asked why the antennae need to be triangle-shaped, but she didn’t know. The signals from the array are combined at a control room and, when in international-mode, are automatically sent to the Netherlands, where they are combined with other signals from the other LOFAR stations across Europe. There is also a low-frequency array, which is made up of wires strung together. I didn’t get as much of a good look at that one.

I also walked the castle gardens a bit. The Earls of Rosse have a history of being interested in science, from astronomy to steam engines (one of the Earls of Rosse invented the compact steam engine) to botany. They have a big plant collection, including the largest number of Sequoias growing in one place outside of California. The garden walkways were multicolored from the leaves, and were truly beautiful. The gardens also feature the world’s tallest box hedge, as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s 300 years old, and stands some 10 meters high.

I left, unlocking my bike that I left near the steam turbine on the way in. I went to the Villa Café in Birr, ordering two sandwiches. One was a chicken & stuffing with cranberry sauce sandwich that tasted a lot like the Wawa Gobbler I had in Philly with Kyle. The second was a chicken wrap that contained spinach and cheese and some sort of spicy sauce. It was good.

I cycled the rest of the way to Cloughjordan, passing a giant hill with a lighted cross on it on the way. I remember to call my little brother on the way. I think he and I came to an understanding and plan to meet in London in mid January. Cloughjordan is named for a stone that was brought back from Jordan. Cloughjordan really is in the middle of nowhere. Elaine – my warmshowers host – would be home at 6 ish, so she asked one of the farm volunteers of the local eco-village to help me out if I showed up before she did. I messaged Jake – the farm volunteer – when I was approaching Cloughjordan from Birr, and again when I got into town. I met him outside the church of Ireland with another guy – Horhe, and they walked back to a small house with other farm volunteers. I leaned my bike against the wall there, and got introduced to Torbut and … a woman whose name I now unfortunately forget. Something like Allianna. Unsure. I joined them inside, taking my shoes off, and we ate warm bread with olive oil and tomato sauce. Torbut had worked as a bicycle mechanic, and had done a few tours of his own, so he and I talked for a while. I answered a lot of questions specifically about route planning, and “Why Ireland?”

Elaine got back at around 6:15, and Jake walked me over to her house. I didn’t originally understand that my bicycle also had to move over there, and had already grabbed all my things. Jake helped me by walking my bicycle to her door as well. He wasn’t 100% sure which house it was, just that it was one of the two on each side of the wooden gate he had seen her use before. I checked the postal code, and we chose one door and knocked. One of her children – whom I would later learn was Tara – opened the door, with Elaine following just behind her. She walked out to greet me, then showed Jake where to stow my bike. She cautioned that gate isn’t locked overnight, so it might be wise for me to bring it further into her garden. I went inside first to put down my things. She introduced me to Tara (the older one) and Jenna (the younger one). They are eleven and… eight? Tara and Jenna were pretty quiet. I can understand not wanting to talk to a stranger. I went out to grab a few more things off my bike and bring it further in. I accidentally leaned it against a cart in the neighbor’s yard first, but clarified and put it in Elaine’s garden instead.

She cooked burgers for dinner with sauteed onions and mushrooms, and we got cheese out of the fridge as well. She doesn’t usually eat meat, and was just cooking for her children, since they love it. Jenna made fun of the environmentally-friendly policies of her mother. Elaine tried to make conversation with them, as all mothers try to do, and they talked briefly about the circus camp they had gone to after school, and showed her a quiz book that she had purchased at some point to support some local group. We played the quiz book after dinner. It’s a pamphlet with puns of sorts that involve various Irish towns and cities. We ended up getting 10/30, which I thought was a lot given that I hardly know any Irish towns. She sent the puzzle to her family, and we immediately started getting responses in from them. “To cut neatly: Trim.” ; “Five line funny rhyme: Limerick.” ; “Town that has a village green and a green village: Cloughjordan.” “It’s a long way: Tipperary.” Elaine was surprised I wasn’t familiar with the English marching song that this last one makes a reference to.

Elaine moved here after having lived for something like 20 years in Tanzania, in Dar es Salaam. Her children have a South African father. She came back to Ireland so Tara and Jenna can attend secondary school here.

When talking about my line of work, Elaine definitely has a problem with the ‘defense’ aka war industry. As do I, frankly. There’s a reason I couldn’t stomach the job offer I’d gotten to work on missile systems. She once picketed BAE systems at a career event, handing out fliers to students about what they really do. Her group got kicked out by security after getting increasingly rowdy. She had a lot of trouble understanding how spacecraft work, even after my simplification of life support to essentially being HVAC. Elaine works in IT. She wants to do a big Europe tour as well, and do remote work as a digital nomad. It depends on when she can send the kids off to see their father.

After dinner, we had cake. (Tara recently celebrated her eleventh birthday). After cake, Jenna taught me how to play Bao, a Tanzanian mancala style game. I recall having played a very similar – if not identical – game with Palmer on Tabletop Simulator sometime within the last year, so it was very easy to pick up. We didn’t finish.

The girls were very in to art. One colored in lines while the other sprayed watercolor across a piece of paper – and the living room. They tried to juggle these big plastic balls, but only ended up sending them flying everywhere. At some point, one tripped over a computer cord, sending it tumbling down the piano onto the floor – thankfully it still worked. It’s a messy, disorganized household, but one that reminds me a lot of Curtner and of my childhood.

The house is getting renovated, and there were a lot of things that were in some state of disrepair. Lift up the toilet seat, and it came right off. At some point, around 9:30 pm, Elaine put the kids to bed, and I closed the door to the living room and got into my sleeping bag. When she came back down, I asked for the wifi password and got to work on my blog, taking notes.