Stone-age, The Boyne and Derry airs

We stopped at Newgrange which is a very impressive Stone-age burial ground complex. Actually there are three major areas: Dowth, Newgrange, and Knowth, with minor sites all around. Activity in the area covers around 5 millenia! There are many sites you could find out more, such as this one. Impressive it may have been, but so were the crowds, and we would have had to wait for 4 hours to get on a tour. We had a good look through the information centre then headed off.

Newgrange happens to lie in a bow in the Boyne river, and for some of you this name will ring a bell. The Battle of the Boyne was a significant event in the history of Ireland as it was in this battle in 1690, that Catholic James II was defeated by Protestant William III (William of Orange). William's army outnumbered James' and he was able to send out a threatening flanking force that James didn't have the numbers to cover. William's main force crossed the Boyne river and pushed the Jacobite defenders back but despite all this James managed to withdraw in good order. However, shortly after he ran away to France so the battle is celebrated by the Protestants of Ireland, and particularly Northern Ireland, as a resounding victory, and they march to celebrate it every July.

We drove on to Londonderry/Derry. Many Irish don't like the London part of the name so call it plain Derry. Of course the Loyalists keep the London part... Londonderry/Derry is a lovely walled town that has had some unfortunate history in the form of sectarian violence. It was the town that was the subject of Bloody Sunday, a movie that was in NZ recently. Bloody Sunday is the name for a British Paratroop shooting of many protesters in January 1972, 13 of whom died immediately and another later of injuries received. It was also the scene of a 105 day siege ending in July 1689, almost exactly a year before the battle mentioned above. The siege began when apprentice boys decided to lock the gates to keep a Jacobite garrison force from replacing the existing Williamite one, and there is a procession around the walls by apprentice boys every year and we missed this particular march by a few weeks.

Our room in the Travelodge was a very noisy one, not so much from the nightclubs below us and across the road, but from all the people spilling out of them. It was just as noisy from neighbouring rooms too, so we didn't get a good sleep.

All our Ireland photos can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/Italythenandnow/Ireland