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On Location: From urban farms to viking victories – a bounty of experiences in Ireland
10-02-2024
10:55 am
STORY BY STEF BEREZNAI
“The beauty of Ireland is it’s a small island with so much variety,” says tour guide Ilona Madden. That means it’s easy to experience a ton of different things in a short amount of time, from nature to history to foodie delights.
PAX learned this and more during Air Canada/United Airlines’ recent FAM hosted by Tourism Ireland. The experience focused on the country’s east coast, which fully fulfills the promise of a varied experience condensed into a small footprint. That includes changing weather systems in a single day.
“I have four weather apps and some days all four have a different forecast,” said Madden. “My advice, just be prepared.” The good thing is that it rarely gets cold and when it gets warm. “It’s pleasantly warm.”
It rains, but solar power is everywhere because the sun is equally quick to come out.
While the forecast is predictably unpredictable, true surprises abound. When we drive into Wicklow County, which has two movie/TV studios, Madden tells us it’s the “Hollywood of Ireland.”
We cruise past the quaint town of Enniskerry. Its main street is prematurely decorated for Halloween; word on the street is that Netflix is filming the new season of Wednesday. Instant fangirl squeals of glee.
Powerscourt House & Gardens
We leave Addams Family creepy kookiness behind as we arrive at Powerscourt House and Gardens, an estate with a Palladian mansion (used primarily for corporate events in its ballroom), a beautiful hotel (formerly a Ritz Carlton) with deluxe rooms and suites, a distillery with whiskey tastings, and two 18-hole golf courses.
But the main draw for us are the stunning 47 acres of carefully curated and maintained gardens, which National Geographic rated the third most beautiful in the world.
“It’s Ireland's first sustainable visitor attraction,” says Lisa Moran, sustainability marketing and communications manager for the estate.
Our guide tries to rush us through the estate so we stay on schedule, but there’s no way we’re going to pass by the stairs descending through mossy stone arches into what remains of a ladies’ area “where they could undo their corsets.”
This leads us to the Japanese garden, where we stroll over arched bridges and past a wooden pagoda. We also insist on taking a group photo between a pair of rearing Pegasus statues with Sugar Mountain (which has great hiking) in the background.
Potential husbands take note: I could get married here.
Glendalough ‘Monastic City’
About a 30-minute drive away, a very different nature experience awaits us at the ruins of an early Christian settlement founded by Saint Kevin: Glendalough "Monastic City."
“Tourists mainly come here for the scenery, because it is absolutely stunning,” says Madden.
There are lots of trails for easy walking and hiking while myths of miracles abound.
“And you have the old monastic site, so you also get history, and with the ruins [including a church and graveyard], it's a bit of a mystical place,” she says.
Scones and jam
When we head indoors, we bring the taste of the Irish countryside with us at the Bollyknocken House & Cookery School. Surrounded by greenery, they offer a lot of options all in one spot, like much of Ireland.
The short list: sheep herding, Irish dancing, crafts (like spinning wool from local sheep), along with barn weddings, banquets, and team building.
They also rent out their farmhouse for overnight stays; an option that’s proving popular with Canadians looking for a homey experience.
We learn how to make scones from scratch, taught by the delightful owner/author/TV host Catherine Fulvio. She’s quick to slip in a Canadiana sports reference while encouraging correct flour mixing technique.
“We’re making scones, not stones. You do get those hockey pucks sometimes.”
The ingredients all have Irish built-in goodness. The year-round combination of sun, rain, and mild temperatures means sheep and cows are grass fed and finished as the default. This makes Irish meat and dairy of exceptional quality, including the butter we slather on our oven-hot scones topped with organic jam grown that’s made onsite.
“Ireland really needs to brag more about our dairy,” says Fulvio.
From Urban Farm to Vikings Victories
We get more Irish food bounty at Grow HQ in the city of Waterford. It’s truly farm to table, “only 112 steps from the veg garden to the kitchen,” says Head Gardener Richard Mee.
They serve us a generous organic vegetarian lunch (they also serve chicken and fish), which is all organic. Mee gives us a tour of the gardens, greenhouses, orchards, and worm-compost heep, which “always goes well with the kids…You can tread lightly on the earth and grow a lot of food as well.”
After ravaging platters of carrot falafel, cooked beets, and creamy quiche, we work it off with a different conquest: an award-winning Epic Walking Tour of Waterford’s famous Viking Triangle.
I’m expecting a stereotypical Sven to be our guide so it takes a moment for me to pivot when petite, knowledgeable, and funny Curator Cliona Purcell introduces herself.
This tour is like “a thousand years in a thousand places,” she explains, and “it’s a bit of a flavour of everything.”
The triangle itself could be walked in five minutes, but like much of the country, it packs a lot into a small space. That includes the hilarious backstory of the rebellious Thomas Francis Meaghre.
She points to the building where he first unfurled what’s now the flag of Ireland (which was treason back then; to be fair, he’d just been on “holiday in France to learn how to put on a revolution”).
We round a couple of corners and enter a little square with four museums (the Medieval Museum, the Irish Silver Museum; the creepy yet cool Irish Wake Museum, and the Museum of Time, showcasing clocks and watches).
There’s also the nearby House of Waterford Crystal factory (where the world-famous Waterford crystals are made); Bishop’s Palace (which is all about scandal, excess, and dirty stories, including an audacious lady family member who became an astronomer and was insultingly nicknamed “Molly the Moon.”
And for art fans, no need to go far or indoors thanks to the many murals from the yearly Waterford Walls street art festival in September.
I almost forget that the Viking Triangle has some Viking stuff, too.
“We have two kilometres of city walls and six towers still standing,” says Purcell, along with a longship replica. Some of the walls run right into buildings, including a pub, the Medieval Museum, and the city’s Theatre Royal.
“You can find them all over the place,” says Purcell.
She jokingly says the Vikings were the original tourists to Ireland. “We were a holiday destination for them. When Norway got really cold, they headed down here.”
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