Goodbye to the west

Today we headed inland. I was sorry to say goodbye to the west coast. I had hoped to see more of it but time again prevented me from getting beyond Galway. We crossed the Shannon at Shannonbridge and arrived in Clonmacnoise. If I thought the tourists yesterday were bad they were nothing to what I saw today. A "lady" had decided to walk her two dogs through the Conmacnoise site. As all dogs do they defecated and urinated, only this time it was on the graves of saints and schoolars. I later wrote to the office of Public works about it. It was simply not right and we should respect such sites not just for the money they bring in but more what they really are- monuments to the faith and civilization of our ancestors. Here again I saw the differences in people as an Italian man chided his son for not having respect when the kid jumped over a grave.
We later discovered a back way into the site as we looked for a way into Mongan bog.
The bog was more interesting than I expected. It consisted of two parts. One part is preserved the other is being harvested. I spoke with one of the train drivers whose train takes away the peat after it is cut and dried . The peat is used as garden compost or a a fuel for heating houses or powering electricity stations. It will very soon be a thing of the past as more bogs are being preserved and so peat ot turf as we call it will be left in the bogs, and rightly so. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Birr and spent the night in the Ring farmhouse just outside the town.