Pi Day...

...and still Saint Patrick's Day Week!


Gleann Colm Cille is one of my favorite places in the whole world, ever. And I've been almost everywhere (LIES) so you know it's got to be superduper if I say so (LIES!). It's very small and down in this little valley on the west coast, in County Donegal. This is a view of the beach looking north toward Glenn Head as I went a-wandering one afternoon up the cliffs.

Across the way, there, on the next cliff-like outcropping, there is a watchtower you can't see due to a combination of the fact that my camera was not so great, and I let the film sit for two years after I got back before having it developed (it's expensive!). It's really there. The idea was that the Irish would build these watchtowers up and down the entire West coast of the island, and when Napoleon came to invade, the watchtowers could light their grail-shaped beacons. Thus, the signal that Napoleon was coming would travel up the coast a'la Return of the King. I think my favorite thing about this story is that the Irish absolutely knew Napoleon was going to invade, so they actually built some of these things. (Though, if I were Napoleon and decided to invade Ireland, I think I would've invaded England first and come from the East. That's why I'm not an emperor, though.) Anyway, they never actually used them for that, though from the look of it, local teenagers have been climbing inside for several hundred years to get drunk.

The beach looks fake. I promise it really looks like that, only prettier. And with more sheep.