Day trippin' in Cork & Waterford

The county of Cork is just south of my home-county,Limerick, but we still had a 2 and 1/2 hour drive to were we headed: Youghal.

Youghal (pronounced Yawl) is said to have been largely influenced by the vikings. Arriving in the 9th century they used it as a base to raid nearby wealthy monastic sites such as Ardmore, Lismore and Molana. It seems the Vikings conquered every place they went until they got to Ireland, conquered it, and were never heard from again? ; ). The town is supposed to have a lot of heritage but everything we came across was closed or not worth seeing.

So, we headed down towards the beach. Youghal strand is the biggest beach and we sat down just long enough to eat an ice-cream as it was pretty windy that day.

  Then we went to '49 step' beach to collect some mussels to take home with us. Shellfish are plentiful in those parts and you can't get fresher than hand-picked out of the rock pools!

After coffee and apple-tart in a local cafe we drove to Lismore, about 20 miles from Yoghal and is just over the Co.Waterford border. Lismore is famous for having one of the best kept castles n Ireland. Its not open to the public as it is home to the Duke of Devonshire as it has been since 1753. The castle gardens are open for a few hours each day, but close at 5pm. We got there too late so we took some photos of the castle before hittin' the road.

The Folly Towers,Ballysaggartmore. We had never heard of them, but saw a sign just as we were leaving Lismore and followed it.

2 miles ahead we found a car park in front of a forest. We didn't even know what we were looking for so we just followed a path that was leading up into the forest. Suddenly, right there in front of us were the ruins of an old entrance tower. We went through and followed the path for at least a mile (it felt about 10). Then we found another set of 2 towers sitting on a stone bridge. It was a very magical setting. When we got home I googled The Towers and found out that they were built in 1850 by Arthur Kiely-Ussher for his wife. The extravagent fairytale gates were the only part of the castle to be built as money ran out soon after they were built and they resided in a house on the grounds (since demolished).  I cannot stress how beautiful this place is, it's haunting as it simply looks like it should not be there. If you have the time and energy there a walk through the rest of the forest and some pretty waterfalls not too far ahead.