'Irish Inheritance' - Dalkey

I’m continuing to feature some of the places that appear in my soon to be published new novel ‘Irish Inheritance’ –and today we're in Dalkey with Jenna and Guy.

Dalkey is now considered  to be a suburb of Dublin, but it was originally a town in its own right and still retains a ‘small town’ feel about it.

 

 

Its main street houses a variety of shops, serving both the locals and the tourists. There are plenty of pubs and restaurants too.

 

Originally founded as a Viking settlement, Dalkey became an important port during the Middle Ages, and there are still two harbours in use today. Bulloch Harbour is the larger of the two, but Coliemore Harbour is more picturesque with its view of Dalkey Island.

Dalkey Island, now uninhabited, apart from a herd of wild goats, was first occupied in the Stone Age. There are the ruins of a 9th century church which was probably abandoned when the Vikings used the island as their base. Today the island’s most striking feature is the Martello Tower, one of several erected along this part of the Irish coastline by the British Admiralty in the early 19th century, as part of the defence system against the threat of a Napoleonic invasion.

Dalkey once had seven castles, built in the 15th century as fortified townhouses. Only two still exist, and one of them (Goat Castle) dominates the northern end of the main street. It now contains the local heritage centre, and ‘Living History’ presentations take place during the summer months, with actors portraying maids and merchants, and describing life in the castle in the past.

Dalkey boasts a long list of famous people who have at some point made their homes here, from George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce in the late 19th/early 20th century, to modern musical stars like Bono, Enya, Chris de Burgh, and Van Morrison. An area south of the town, overlooking Killiney Bay, is home to the mansions bought by some of these millionaires. But then, who wouldn’t want a view like this from their house?

Killiney Bay, south of Dalkey, is sometimes compared to the Bay of Naples – and, according to some, is better than the Bay of Naples!

"Irish Inheritance" - The Wicklow Mountains

I’m continuing to feature some of the places that appear in my soon to be published new novel ‘Irish Inheritance’ –and today we're travelling through the Wicklow Mountains with Jenna and Guy.

The Wicklow Mountains form the largest upland area in Ireland. They occupy the centre of County Wicklow, and extend over its border into the counties of Carlow, Wexford, and Dublin. The highest mountain is just over 3,000 feet, and several river systems have their source here. The upland areas consist mainly of blanket bog and heathland.

The mountains have been inhabited since Neolithic times, and several passage tombs can still be found in the area. After the English invasion in the 12th century, the mountains became a stronghold and hiding place for Irish clans who were opposed to English rule. They also harboured rebels during the 1798 Rising. At the start of the 19th century, the ‘Wicklow Military Road’ was constructed (and still used today as the R115 road). It runs for about 36 miles from north to south across the spine of the Wicklow Mountains, and was intended to make it easier for the British Army to seek out rebels and keep control of the area.

Four barracks were built along the road, including this one at Glencree, which housed 100 soldiers, from 1806 until the 1850s. The buildings later became a reform school for 300 boys, and the, during the 2nd World War, they became a temporary Refuge Centre for German and Polish war orphans, who were looked after by the Irish Red Cross.

The Glenmacness valley from the top of the waterfall

'Irish Inheritance'- Glendalough, monastic remains in County Wicklow

After a short break over the holiday season, I’m featuring again some of the places that appear in my soon to be published new novel ‘Irish Inheritance’. Today we're visiting Glendalough in County Wicklow, which Jenna and Guy visited on their trip across from County Galway to the east coast of Ireland.


Image from Glendalough Visitor Guide

The monstery at Glendalough was founded by St. Kevin in the 7th century, and became an important monastic community until it was destroyed (by the English) at the end of the 14th century. The church remained as a place of worship and pilgrimage, and the buildings which survive probably date from about the 11th and 12th centuries.

The Round Tower, probably the most famous round tower in Ireland, is about 90 feet high, with an entrance about 10 feet from the base. Towers like this may have been built as bell towers, but also served as storehouses and sometimes as places of refuge.

The Cathedral is the largest and most imposing building at Glendalough and dates from the late 12th/early 13th century. This photo shows the square headed west doorway, and you can see the remains of the chancel arch, and the east window.

Nearby, St. Kevin’s Church has a steep stone roof, formed of overlapping stones and supported by semi-circular vault. The belfry, with four small windows, rises from the eastern end of the roof.

There are several other churches at Glendalough, and further up the valley with its two lakes, are the foundations of St. Kevin’s cell, which was about 10 feet in diameter, and probably had a bee-hive type of roof.

I'm sure that Guy, my hero, being American, would have been as impressed by these ruins as my Canadian friends were when I took them to Glendalough a few years ago!

My Writing Process #mywritingprocess

Today is "My Writing Process" blog tour day, when writers answer questions about their writing process. Last week, fellow author Beth Elliott posted hers. You can check it out at http://regencytales.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/my-writing-process-mywritingprocess_9.html.

Beth writes Regency stories – but with a difference, as they are set in exotic places.

Many thanks for the invitation, Beth.

 

So, what is my writing process? I’ve converted one of the bedrooms in my house to a study (or office, or whatever you want to call it!) and my desktop computer sits in one corner. I probably spend 80% of my time here, except for the days when I go out for pub lunches and other visits with various friends.

When I first started writing, back in the 1960s, I wrote longhand, and then typed my manuscripts. Now I type my stories straight into the computer –so much easier to delete, change words and phrases, and move paragraphs around!

 

What are you working on?

My current ‘work in progress’ is one I’ve been working on longer than any other previous novel. I started it about 2 years ago, got about half way through, and realised it wasn’t ‘right’ somehow, so I put it on the backburner while I wrote another novel. I came back to it last September, hoping a fresh look at it would help, but I am still struggling with it! The main theme is the ‘Different Worlds’ in which a successful actress and a Lakeland vet live. Despite being attracted to each other, they think their lives aren’t compatible, and there are other factors which make them both wary of embarking on any new relationship. I’ll get there eventually, but in the meantime, it’s like carving granite with a teaspoon!

 

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I like to think it’s because I write about real people with lives that the reader can relate to. I don’t go for billionaires, or landed gentry. My heroes and heroines all have their own careers, and live in the ‘real’ world. My heroes are definitely not alpha males, who might appeal to some readers, but who (in my opinion) would be a huge turn-off in real life. Mine are what I call alpha-minus, beta-plus heroes, combining the best aspects of both alpha and beta, and losing the more negative aspects of each. They’re confident and self-assured, but at the same time caring and considerate. My heroines are intelligent and independent, willing to give and receive love in equal measure. One of my Amazon reviewers, to my delight, said that I “created likeable, interesting characters who lead life like real people.”

 

Why do you write what you do?

The easy answer to that is because it’s what I’ve always written! As a child, I wrote school stories, but once I got to my teens, I was writing romances. Very cheesy romances, I readily admit, but when I was in my 20s, I turned one of those stories into a full-length romance which was accepted by Mills and Boon. Since then I’ve always written romances. Maybe one day I’ll stray out of my comfort zone, but at the moment I’m quite happy with it.

 

How does your writing process work?

The best way to describe it would probably be haphazardly! I’m a pantser, not a plotter. I get a basic idea (sometimes from what I've seen or read) and have a vague notion where the story will go. In that sense, I have the beginning and the end, but most of the time I rely on my characters – and my own sudden flashes of inspiration –to fill in the middle of the story.

I agonise over the first draft, which usually takes me about six months, but once that is done, I really enjoy revising, polishing, and detailed editing – which probably adds about another three months to my writing process.

 

Next week the following three authors will be telling you about their writing process:

Jennifer Wilck - contemporary romance writer of love, laughter and happily ever after.

http://jenniferwilck.blogspot.com

Sherry Gloag - author of regency and contemporary romance - with a dash of suspense.

http://sherrygloagtheheartofromance.blogspot.co.uk/

Viola Russell - author of contemporary and historical romance

http://www.violarussell.blogspot.co.uk/

November 22nd, 1963

It has been said that everyone who was over about 10 at the time can remember where they were when they heard Kennedy had died. Ask anyone over 60 now and they could probably tell you.

50 years ago today, I was a student living in a small room in an old Victorian house in Manchester. I can still visualise it vividly. We called it a bedsit, which was short for a combined sitting room and bedroom, and it also had a tiny gas cooker and a sink, so it was a kitchen too. Maybe today you would call it a studio apartment.

I didn’t have a TV, just a small radio. I can’t remember what I was listening to when they broke into the programme with a newsflash. Shots had been fired at the motorcade in Dallas and the President had been injured. Half an hour or so later came the news that he was dead.

I remember feeling a sense of total shock. It was the first major assassination in my lifetime (I was too young to remember Gandhi’s death) and it felt like the end of an era. After growing up with older Presidents (Truman and Eisenhower) and even older Prime Ministers here in the UK, Kennedy had been a charismatic – and young – world figure. I remember watching his inaugural speech on TV, and also the famous ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ statement. Okay, we all held our breaths for a week in October 1962 when he challenged the Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he (and Jackie too) really was different from anything we’d known in the political scene.

All the controversy following JFK’s death has fascinated me ever since. Different theories continue to appear. The most recent one I heard was that the 3rd shot came from the Secret Service car behind the President’s car. Most people, it seems, reject the 'lone gunman' theory. Jack Ruby's killing of Lee Harvey Oswald adds credence to this, in my opinion, as well as so many other unanswered questions surrounding Kennedy's death. Maybe eventually the truth will be revealed.

Despite the inevitable later criticisms of different aspects of Kennedy’s political decisions and personal life, the fact remains that he is still seen as a symbol of change and hope at the start of the 1960s. Because his presidency was cut short, we can never know just what he would have achieved in the spheres of civil rights and other social issues during what almost certainly would have been his second term of office. We don’t know, either, whether he would have embroiled America in a long war in Vietnam.

All we do know, those of us who lived at the time, is that the world changed on November 22nd, 1963.

R.I.P, JFK

 

We Will Remember Them

In 1918, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent along the Western and Eastern fronts in Europe. An armistice had been signed, and the Great War had ended, after over four years of the bloodiest warfare ever.

There is an almost cruel irony in the fact that the first and also some of the last shots of the war were fired within fifty metres of each other.


4th Dragoon Memorial,
Casteau, Belgium

On August 22nd 1914, a British cavalry troop, the 4th Dragoon Guards, were involved in the first skirmish with the Germans at a small village called Casteau, near the Belgian town of Mons. During this short battle, Captain E Thomas fired the first shot at the enemy, and killed a German cavalry officer.

Canadian Memorial at Casteau

On the morning of November 11th, 1918, a Canadian Infantry Battalion were on the trail of retreating German soldiers, and after firing their final shots, they stopped firing at 11 o’clock at the village of Casteau.

In the four years between those first and last shots in the small Belgian village, hundreds of thousands lives had been lost in the trenches and battlefields on the Western and Eastern fronts.

August 22nd, 1914                      November 11th 1918

In 1915 Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote a poem after presiding over the funeral of a friend who died in the Second Battle of Ypres:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

The references to the red poppies that grew over the graves of fallen soldiers resulted in the poppy becoming one of the world's most recognized memorial symbols for soldiers who have died in conflicts.

In Britain, a Festival of Remembrance is held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on the Saturday nearest to November 11th. It commemorates all who have lost their lives in conflicts. Part concert, part memorial service, it concludes with a parade of representatives of all the armed forces as well as the uniformed volunteer organisations. Once they are all in place in the large arena, there is a two minute silence, and thousands of poppy petals are released from the roof. It is said there is one poppy petal for each person who has died in conflicts.

Image by Sgt G Spark, RAF

The following morning, another service is held at the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall, and at the same time, similar services are held at hundreds of war memorials in every part of the country, and also wherever British troops are serving overseas. If  November 11th doesn't fall on a Sunday, a two minute silence is observed 'at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day'.

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

(Lawrence Binyon)

My great-uncle's grave in a small cemetery
in the Somme area of France.
He died in March 1918, aged 20.

Stanley Charles Garnar
1897 - 1918

 

 

Dublin's Fair City

I’m continuing to feature some of the places that appear in my soon to be published new novel ‘Irish Inheritance’ –and today we're visiting Dublin. Jenna and Guy first meet at Dublin airport, visit a lawyer on St. Stephen’s Green, and then spend the rest of the afternoon and evening together.

In such a short time, they don’t see a lot of Dublin, but they do go to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College. The illuminated manuscript, considered to be Ireland’s finest national treasure, was created by Irish monks about 800 A.D. It contains the four Gospels in Latin, and is a wonderful example of medieval calligraphy and illumination.


On the way from Grafton Street (the main shopping street in Dublin), Jenna and Guy would have passed one of the city’s many statues. It’s unlikely that this one represents a real person (although some would argue differently) but she features in one of Ireland’s most well-known songs – ‘as she wheels her wheelbarrow, through streets broad and narrow, crying ‘Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive-oh’. Of course, it’s Molly Malone – or, as this statue is sometimes called, ‘The Tart with the Cart’.

They spent the evening in Temple Bar, known as Dublin’s ‘cultural quarter’, due to the photographic and artists’ studios in the area. However, it has become more of a tourist centre, regarded by the locals as having ‘ye olde Irish’ pretensions. There are plenty of bars and nightclubs in the area, as well as street performers and musicians.

On a later visit to Dublin, they crossed the River Liffey on Ha’penny Bridge, a cast iron footbridge which was built in 1816, and known originally as the Wellington Bridge (after the Duke of Wellington). Before the bridge was built, William Walsh operated seven ferries across the river. They were in bad condition, and Walsh was told either to repair them or build a bridge. He chose the latter, and was allowed to charge half a penny from anyone crossing the bridge. The toll was later increased to a one and a half pennies, but was finally dropped in 1919. Officially, the bridge is the Liffey Bridge, but is known to everyone as the Ha’penny Bridge.

What did Jenna and Guy miss seeing in Dublin? The list is probably endless, but here are some of the places I have visited in this wonderful city:

The Guinness Brewery, founded by Arthur Guinness in 1759, has an excellent exhibition (including a tasting experience!) and also one of the best views of Dublin from the Gravity Bar at the top of the building.


Kilmainham Gaol, built in 1796,  has held many famous people involved in the campaign for Irish Independence, including the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, some of whom were executed here. It has also been used as a location for several films, including The Italian Job.



Licensed under  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
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Attribution: Stephen Sweeney

O’Connell Street is Dublin’s main thoroughfare, named after Daniel O’Connell, a nationalist leader in the early 19th century, whose statue stands at one end of the wide street. Part way along the street is the large Georgian General Post Office, which served as the headquarters of the 1916 Rising. Near the Post Office is the Spire, a stainless steel monument almost 400 feet high, erected in 2002-3, and sometimes referred to by Dubliners as ‘The Spike’ (or even ‘The Stiletto in the Ghetto').

This post would go on forever if I added all the other interesting places in Dublin. Maybe I’ll write about them in a later post.