A trip to Ireland and Scotland with the girls – 3

Ladies View

Watercolour and crayon

©2017 Charlene Brown

One of the stops on our Irish RailTour was Killarney, and from there we were taken by bus on the very winding, sometimes precipitous Ring of Kerry.

A highlight was the Ladies View of the Killarney Lakes – so named because Queen Victoria, while dedicating or inaugurating something during an official visit, gave her ladies-in-waiting the day off and sent them on an excursion.  They spotted this lovely vista and insisted that the Queen herself have a look at it the next day.

In keeping with this backstory and assuming Queen Victoria was always accompanied by a kilted bagpiper, we were ‘piped’ to the lookout point. Our piper was not kilted, but decked out in industrial-strength raingear known as an Inverness Cape, leaning stoically into the wind. I’ve exaggerated how much of the ladies view you could see that day – everything but the piper was actually kind of blurry.  

A trip to Ireland and Scotland with the girls - 2

Cobh

Watercolour and crayon

©2017 Charlene Brown

After Blarney Castle, our Irish RailTour took us to the picturesque port of Cobh on the south coast of County Cork. 

This relatively small town was key to the maritime and emigration legacy of Ireland. In the eighteenth century, the port, then known as Cove, had become an important centre for merchant shipping (and shipping-adjacent activities like piracy), and in the nineteenth century became a tactical naval military base, especially during the Napoleonic Wars between France and Britain (of which Ireland was still a part). The name of the port was changed to Queenstown in 1848 to commemorate a visit by Queen Victoria and was a major point of embarkation for the transportation of ‘criminals’ to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) as well as the massive migration to North America at the time of the Famine. The name was officially changed to Cobh, a Gaelicisation of Cove, in 1920 around the time of the formation of the Irish Free State. 

A ‘Victorian’ garden and many international flags line what is now a major cruise ship terminal.   

A trip to Ireland and Scotland with the girls - 1

Blarney Castle

Watercolour and crayon

©2017 Charlene Brown

My daughters and I last went on a trip together, just the three of us, to celebrate my sixtieth birthday, many years ago.  We decided it was time for another one, and selected Ireland because none of us had been there, and Scotland because our family is pretty solidly of the Scottish persuasion.

It is said that kissing the Blarney Stone will bestow upon you the ‘gift of the gab’ (or blarney).  It is also said, by just about everyone who has been to Blarney Castle – including us, that they didn’t have time to kiss anything. There’s just too much to see – standing stones, mysterious caves, fern gardens, waterfalls – to waste any time standing in line, climbing an alarming number of spiral steps and hanging upside-down off the edge of the roof to kiss the stone parapet that juts out about half a meter (see top left of tower in the painting). 

The pictures below are of my daughters on the castle grounds.

Stuff you used to know, but now have to Google

I’ve never lived in this city. Actually, I did live in Edmonton from 1959 to 1962, but the city pictured here was not there at the time.

The only structures in this painting that I remember from my university days are the High Level Bridge and Provincial Legislature on the far left and the Fairmont MacDonald Hotel, which is just about exactly in the middle – and it is quite different from the MacDonald I remember. Back then, the hotel had a huge ‘Brutalist’ addition, and the whole structure was referred to as a ‘tiny perfect chateau and the box it came in.’ Anyway, the box has been removed, and dozens of much nicer boxes have been added to form today’s Edmonton skyline.

Energy research is quite different from the physics I knew back in the day as well. And when you can’t even remember most of the physics you did know back then, well it’s a good thing there’s Google and Wikipedia now...

Haiku non sequiturs

Saint Andrew’s in on the Bay of Fundy, which has about the highest tides in the world, which suggested this painting for this haiku.

The middle line, makes sense –tidal power to the grid: Marine currents, unlike many other forms of renewable energy, are a consistent source of kinetic energy because of regular tidal cycles influenced by the phases of the moon. Unlike wind, wave and solar power, intermittency is not a problem, so tidal power can be a reliable input to the electricity grid.

But, as with most of my haiku, where the lines really are randomly selected and grouped, the end result is kind of a non sequitur. Eventually I will try to make sense of these non sequiturs…

Another not-particularly-random haiga selection

This haiku reminded me of  the Cave & Basin National Historic Site, the 1885 birthplace of Canada’s National Park System.   At this location, in Banff National Park, naturally occurring warm mineral springs can be found inside the cave and outside in an emerald-coloured basin.

When I worked there I was completely unaware of the lovely springs and pools above the cave shown here. I think the same can be said of most of us even now. Although there are lots of warm and hot springs all along the mountain chains in Alberta and British Columbia, nobody gives them much thought except as a place to swim. We should be looking at geothermal power potential more seriously, though probably not at any spring that’s given birth to a National Park System. 

Possibly the prettiest place in Saskatchewan

LeBret

Watercolour and crayon

Charlene Brown

My discovery of this lovely village wasn’t entirely accidental as I concentrated my search in the famously beautiful Qu’Appelle Valley.  

LeBret is well known for its Stations of the Cross leading up to the Qu’Appelle Mission seen in the foreground of this painting.

Another Canadian Landscape not in Alberta or British Columbia

Niagara

Watercolour and crayon

©2017 Charlene Brown

This view of Niagara Falls only shows about half of the Horseshoe (Canadian) part of the falls, giving precedence to the (smaller) American Falls in the foreground. It seems more paintable, though, than the better-known straight-on view of Horseshow Falls shown below.

 

I probably shouldn’t add it to my collection of Canadian landscapes, given that it’s less than half Canadian... but I’m a little short of Ontario locations, so I’m counting it.