Kilkenny to An Rinn /Dungarvan

We continued our exploring of Kilkenny this morning. Up to the Black Abbey that is celebrating 800years of community use this year. Beautiful windows and organ!!

Then to see St. Canice's Cathedral and the Round Tower. We climbed to the top of the round tower... it is 30m tall, had 121 steps and was built in 1111 !!!
Obviously built and used by little monks as the doorway was tiny... not even my shoulder height and as we got to the top it got thinner and thinner. Gary and I struggled to squeeze through the entrance to the roof. AMAZING 360⁰ view from the top!!!

Back down and into the cathedral. Gorgeous stained-glass windows and organ again as well as numerous crypts with effigies on them.
A priest from Rome offered to buy the main windows for the equivalent to £1mill to take them back to Rome and the monks declined. 2 years later Oliver Cromwell arrived and destroyed as much of the cathedral as he could... including the windows. He opened the crypts and threw the bones to the dogs and allowed his horses to drink from the baptismal font. He also knocked down the top of the tower. He was a nasty man.

There were many slabs in the floor dedicated to different people... too many to remember the stories of. One crypt was of John Butler 9th Earl of Ossary had a huge tomb with a magnificent effigy... he died and was buried and only his heart was brought back to Kilkenny... a huge tomb for a heart.
We wondered back past the last of the medieval mile to the RV... and off we set... to Waterford.... until we saw some vintage cars going in the opposite direction to us.. so we decided to follow them... of course. We backtracked and chased them for 30kms before they ended in Stoneyford. We said hello, showed them a picture of our cars and we were invited to join them for tea and scones... they were a mixed car club so there was everything for a 1926 Buick, a 1926 Austin 10 through to Mercedes, MGs, BMWs, Worsley, Fiat500, VW beetle, Morris 1000s and a Morris Traveller... up to about late 1980s cars. About 30 cars in total. This was their annual run.
Tomorrow, we plan on visiting their car show in Clonmel. We may have even got another entrant for our 2026 rally in Albany (they aren't Model A owners but they are excited about it)

We said farewell and headed to Waterford... did a tour of the House of Waterford Crystal and dreamed of the pieces we'd like to buy.... even duty free they were a dream.

Decided to drive a little further down the coast to park up... Dungarvan... went to one RV site that has space for 10... there was over 30 already there... so we went to the lookout on the other side of the bay... in An Rinn... space for 5... only one other RV and the view was beautiful... sucked in other RV owners... you missed out.
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