Meeting the McEntees

County Meath & Louth

Woke up and turns out this B&B has broadband, but for whatever reason we can’t post pics which kind of sucks. I blamed the upload speed at this place, but I'm beginning to suspect it may be the Blogger we site getting too big, so I may have to go in and blow out some prior pictures. If that’s the case so be it.

Headed south through Navan and we hit the Hills of Tara. The Irish Kings once lived here and its one of the higher rises in Ireland, however due to the rain it kind of washed our view. Then we bounced over to New Grange, which told us to go to the visitor center, which we figured was a money making scheme and we refused to play along. We got to New Grange only to learn our fears were true. 2 hrs wait for a tour and $9 US which we’re glad we passed on. Instead, we use some Farrell “Cheap” ingenuity and found a way to get around the Irish Tourist Bureau. Let’s just leave it at that.

We got lost a bit before coming to the Famous 1625 Battle of the Boyne site, where again they wanted money for stuff that we could skirt around and zoom in and get good pics of anyway, so we “cheaped out” again, but felt we saved good money while still getting good info and pics.

After lunch in the Morning Star Pub, south of Collon, we happened across a sister abbey of Cong’s named Mellifont abbey. We were very impressed with its layout and enjoyed touring the grounds. At about 4 PM we found Maura (McEntee) Rafferty’s dairy farm. Phil brought the kids tops and we talked and had tea before heading over to Moynalty, and the McEntee homestead which dated back prior to the year 1800.* The old family house got bulldozed last year and is no longer there, so good thing I got pics back in 1992.

The McEntee family took us in and fed us. There were about 20 people who showed up to meet us, and for Phil, it was the first time since the death of Bill McEntee that he met a male McEntee relative in his family. Seamus and Noel both bear resemblances we all think. You be the judge. (provided I can post this pic)

Day 7 will be the journey back across country and should take about 5 or 6 hrs to Killarney. We factored this all in for the trip, so we should be ok. We’ll now have begun phase 2 of our Ireland tour south of the Shannon as planned. Probably spending 2 days doing the Ring of Kerry, and 4 days in Dingle. Up to this point, it’s been magical, despite the Sun being shy. Phil and I really connected with our relatives (again) and it was well worth the few extra hours on the highway to be with family.

* A freaky twist of Irony has to be pointed out. Moynalty was a Manor Economy village, which is to say that it was run by an Irish Landlord family which of all names on the planet happened to be …. Yep, you guessed it. The Farrells!!! Don’t think this went unnoticed by my father! We now have been riding Phil about this the entire trip, calling him lackey boy, or serf and we’ve been getting some good mileage out of this historical quirk. Anyway, the jokes continue to fly all night long as to the fact that the Farrell family (at least of Moynalty) seemed to dominate the farmer McEntees. Poor serf boy Phil.