We got on the road to seek out a cave and a holy well in town. The first, the Poll a Wee cave, was on an unnamed back road on the edge of town. Having no map with us, we had to rely on instinct and the memory of having passed such a road in the vicinity the previous day. The directions on the map we had researched the previous day said you could reach it by crossing a stile and entering someone's field, which we assumed would be okay since they told us how to get there. We drove down the road till it ended in a muddy rut by a farm, and turned around. There was no sign of a gap in a wall for pedestrian access, so we had to give up on it. The well was a bit easier to find, since it was on the main road just past the castle.
It was overgrown and under-visited, just a cross sticking out of a patch of ivy surrounded by high grass, but it was our last chance for such holiness so we took it. I felt compelled to at least attempt to cut the grass with a conveniently-located mower.Then we got on our way in earnest, passing the shores of Lough Rea and any number of small towns, and stopping briefly in Bullaun to see the rather disappointing Turoe Stone, which was practically invisible inside its unlit plywood shack. Fortunately, Turoe Farm and Leisure Park, which shares space with the stone, wasn't open for the season yet, or I would've felt strange tramping around their property looking for a large stone phallic symbol.
We got on the highway for a while, then got off again once it ended (the east-west thoroughfare is still under construction). After a fashion we found ourselves in the town of Kilbeggan (Ireland has more great town names per square mile than even one of them crazy southern states, I reckon). We passed another distillery and, having time to kill, decided to check it out. We paid our entrance fee for the self-guided tour of Locke's whiskey distillery.
They don't actually produce any whiskey there, but when the place closed in the 1950s they left everything in place, as if just going on vacation for a few weeks. So everything is ancient and grime-covered and just waiting for it all to be resurrected. The self-guided tour was actually quite entertaining, as it went into the day-to-day conditions of the plant, down to the fact that workers apparently devised a lot of ways to secretly steal alcohol from the place. It was the main livelihood that supported the town, and when things would break the citizens would band together to pay for repairs so they could keep collecting a paycheck. They are currently storing and maturing whiskeys there, so we got to taste a sample given to us by a woman who clearly wanted to get back to chatting with the woman at the front desk. I got one question in before she abandoned us. Probably we should've gone around to the other side of the bar and helped ourselves to additional drinks to spite her. Helpfully, there was an attached cafe which allowed us to ignore our picnic lunch. It was after the midday rush of tourists and there were just a few straggling locals at that point. The food was fairly standard and we didn't linger too long, having places to be. Back on the road to Dublin we picked up another section of actual highway, and listened to the afternoon shock jocks convincing one of their coworkers to go into an office building across the street from theirs, get past the lax security and make herself a cup of coffee. Titillating! Then it was two times 'round the airport to get to the gas station they clearly don't want you to use to fill up your car before returning it, as the place can only be entered while exiting the airport grounds. We checked in in plenty of time, had our last Irish Guinnesses, hopped on the plane and went home. For dinner: picnic sandwiches.
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