Holkham bay seascapes - the sea itself 2

A few more ICM pictures from Holkham. The last I assure you (until I go there again, it is the most glorious place).






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The Ancient Agora of Athens

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  After our trip to the seaside we thought we should examine more of the ancient sites of Athens. So we walked to the district of Monasteriki, the very busy touristic area, where behind iron railings lies the Greek Agora. This occupies a large area and was originally a place where the Athenians senate met, as well as holding the market, places for socialising, temples and craftsmen's workshops. We started by walking up the hill to the Temple of Hephaestus which overlooks the Agora. This temple was completed around 430BC and as Hephaestus was the patron god of metal work and craftsmanship it was built on a very fitting site, although it was used as church from the 7th century AD to 1833. We passed workmen tidying as we walked. From the top we got very good views over Athens. Directly under the temple lies the site of the ancient Bouleuterion which was the senate house where political discussion took place and the Metroon where the state archives were kept. The boule was a sort of pa...
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A weekend in the Dingle, a damp drive and exciting lichen

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We woke to a drizzle the day after our 'Tom Crean experience'. We had not enlisted for the Tom Crean 19 mile endurance walk, and luckily that was sold out anyway, and given the weather would not have been pleasant by any yardstick. Instead we did what any old codger would do under the circumstances and go for a drive. The Slea Head Drive to be more precise and part of what the Dingle tourist board call the 'Wild Atlantic Way'. Wet and wild that particular Saturday. It is manners to drive clockwise around this circular route as the road is very narrow and cars coming the other way, as a couple did, cause all the traffic to snarl up. We started in Dingle where we stopped briefly by the harbour, before continuing until we shortly came to a museum. It was a private, commercial sort of venture, run by an American and called the Celtic and Prehistory Museum. And it was actually very interesting, containing some animal skeletons and stone axes and other such artefacts. Th...
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  The evening after we had returned from Piraeus we decided to have a walk around the bottom of the Acropolis Hill. The Parthenon and other temples were lit up so it was very scenic. We strolled to the entrance to the Odeon of Atticus, the amphitheatre at the base of the Acropolis. There were a few other people here taking in the atmosphere. We managed to get a view in through the iron gates of the seating area of the amphitheatre. We then walked to the footpath that led up the Hill of the Muses, another hill opposite the Acropolis. It was quite dark up there and a little creepy. At the top is the mausoleum of Philopappus. He was a prince who died in 116 AD and apparently so greatly mourned by his sister and the people of Athens that they built this monument to him. We got some tremendous views over Athens from the top and on coming back down into the town we could see the massive curtain wall around the base of the Acropolis. 
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A weekend in the Dingle, late afternoon in the graveyard

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As we continued with the Slea Head Drive the weather deteriorated even further, so after lunch in a bar we decided to cut our losses and head towards home, or Dingle in this case. But, in keeping with the Tom Crean theme and feeling sorry for the poor buggers out in the hills on the 19 mile endurance walk, we returned via the cemetery in which Tom Crean and his wife are buried.  This lies just outside Annascaul in the hamlet of Ballynacourty. Howard said it would be a little bit different and he was surely right. The graveyard was overgrown and damp but what was striking about it was that most of the burials seemed to be above ground in little mausoleums. Maybe the ground was too stony and hard to dig, but it made it into a unique place. Some of the tombs were completely covered over with moss and seemed to be sliding back into the earth. In better preserved ones you could see the slabs that could be removed to place the coffins inside. As you can imagine I took a number of phot...
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