KAYAKING
On a recent Saturday morning we heard there was a kayaking competition on our river (Suir, pronounced sure). We went down to check it out. It turns out our landlord family is big into kayaking and several of their children compete (and win medals at international competitions). It was a fun morning.
There are two separate but similar sports: kayaking where you sit in the boat with a double-bladed paddle, and canoeing where you kneel in the boat with a single-bladed paddle. And then kayaking can be racing "slalom" through gates against the clock (which is what we saw), or it can be more acrobatic "freestyle", where you sit in the rapids and do a variety of rolls and spins and maneuvers for the judges. And recently the Olympics added "kayak cross" where four kayakers compete against each other down the river rather than against the clock.
We ended up talking with one of the coaches who was super friendly. Apparently Ireland has a pretty good kayaking/canoeing program, but it is dependent on natural water ways. If you get good enough you go elsewhere on the continent to train where they have custom-made training facilities.
Rules: there are 20 numbered gates, each gate has a direction given (the red-striped gates are against the current), your helmet has to pass inside the gate in the proper direction, if any part of you or your equipment touch the gate there is a time penalty. The river was really moving.
GAELIC FOOTBALL
Soon thereafter we went to see a local Gaelic football match featuring the hometown Clonmel Commercials. The weather was pretty dreary, but it did not dampen our spirits (see what I did there?). The origin of the team name is ambiguous. One idea is that it was formed by a group of business men (recall it is amateur, so everyone on the team has a "real" job). Another theory is that it was named after The Commercial hotel. A third explanation is that the team used to play on the pitch during the halftime break in larger matches, and thus they were the "commercial break" when people could go buy more alcohol. There are a few "Commercials" teams in Ireland.
What I found fascinating was that Gaelic hurling and Gaelic football are essentially the same sport with the same rules and same field and same scoring and same penalties and same strategy, except that hurling is played with a stick and small ball, whereas football is played with your foot and a large ball. Imagine if MLB looked like an NFL game on an NFL field, but every player wears a baseball glove and the QB throws a baseball instead, and the rest of the game (touchdowns, field goals, first downs, interceptions, tackles) is otherwise identical. That's the relationship between Gaelic hurling and Gaelic football.
The Gaelic football seemed more "intense" than hurling, but it might have been because we were right on the sidelines, and it was raining, so it was probably louder with more collisions.
If it looks or sounds similar to Australian rules football, there is some question which came first (well, Gaelic football came first thousands of years ago, but the modern incarnation of both are about 150 years old). And if it seems odd that two countries on opposite sides of the world would develop something so similar, remember that many Irish convicts were sent to Australia by Queen Victoria around the same time, plus a lot of voluntary emigrants during the Great Famine - Australia is actually the most Irish country outside of Ireland.
HOLY YEAR CROSS
Soon thereafter we went to a local hill/mountain that had our most precarious drive so far, but at the top we were able to hike to a religious site where there is one active mass each August. It has the 14 stations of the cross, and a beautiful view of Clonmel.
The cross was set up for the pope's Holy Year (Jubilee) of 1950, as were many across Ireland. They all seem to be at great heights, almost like the Beacons of Gondor. From a local website:
"What is a Holy Year? It’s a year of special devotion and penance, and a year in which, through following certain prescriptions, you can gain a Plenary Indulgence. The concept of a Plenary Indulgence isn’t quite the same as the Cash-For-Forgiveness schemes that brought about the Reformation – you earn it, rather than buy it, and it gives you a Time Off For Good Behavior Card to shorten your sojourn in Purgatory. As you can imagine, this is an attractive proposition for an ardent believer, steeped in all the ritual and dogma of Catholicism – and that described almost all of us in 1950s Ireland. At the time, there were fund-raising drives and committees and huge ceremonials attached to the actual situating of the crosses."
UPDATE: Here is the reverse view, a picture of the cross as seen from town:
BONUS
The girls were studying late one night, so I got pictures of Lily's room lit up, and Kate outside reading To Kill a Mockingbird by sun and moon light.
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