Pumpkins and Bog Walk

Written By:  Amy sitting in Ker’s chair in Bettystown

We need to do Halloween up this year because County Meath is where Halloween was born.  So, being as how we are living in the county where all this awesomeness began we’re going all out.  Bring on pumpkin pastries, pies, soups and other pumpkin goodness.  We are too far away from our decorations, but we are definitely going to hit some scary movies, haunted houses and ghost stories.  Colleen is especially excited because Bram Stoker was from Dublin so there’s a lot of Dracula stuff here. 

We needed to get some jack-o-lanterns to kick off the festivities.  I was able to use THIS website to find 2 pumpkin patches that sounded similar to ours.  It doesn’t appear that the concept of a pumpkin patch has really taken off here and I couldn’t find anything equivalent to our annual pumpkin patch tradition.  So, I chose to do the next-best thing and go to Alright Pumpkin (yes that is how they spell it...).  After breakfast and some laundry on Sunday we went on a road trip through much of the impossibly beautiful county of Meath and into Fordstown to hunt down the perfect pumpkins. 

It was awesome.  The weather was beautiful and we were the only ones at the patch.  There were no lines, no snot, no screaming kids, no screaming parents, and no mud.  There were spiders. But, that was balanced out by a terrific pumpkin selection, free tea, free brownies, free merengue cookies, and a still no screaming children. 

I can pointedly ignore the existence of spiders with enough motivation.  Plus, the spiders were way far away from me.  It was expensive--€42 (I’ll let you do the conversion) for 4 medium to large pumpkins.  But, it was fun anyway.

After pumpkins it was time to do some hiking.  Ker found a bog that has a 5.6 km hiking trail.  They don’t call it hiking here.  Instead, they call it walking.  We had packed our lunch and snacks, so when we got to the trailhead, we ate our lunch under the watchful eye of a herd of cows.  They were some big cows, too.

The bog was of a type that come from what used to be a small lake after the last ice age.  The water was displaced by dirt and other natural debris over 10,000 years and the bog is literally growing up out of that old lake.  The peat that comes from bogs like this one have heated Irish homes for centuries.  Once the peat logs are properly dried, they burn for much longer than wood.  However, bogs take thousands of years to develop.  Like so many other resources of their type, bogs are beginning to be over “farmed” and are in danger of being lost.  This bog was preserved by the state and is no longer harvested.  The views were just incredible.

The hike was awesome.  It was an easy loop around the raised bog.  Perfect weather too.  However, after a time, all that tea and water caught up with me.  Now, I have to admit something here.  I have never had an occasion where I had to use anything more primitive than an outhouse.  I have never done my business outside.  Ever.  But, it was becoming clear that there just weren’t that many options in this scenario.  Well, I now have experienced that, ahem, joy and I’m hoping never to have to repeat it.  While I was in the forested part looking for a private spot, Ker and the girls were hanging out on the edge of the forest at another trailhead.  Of course, a car pulls up.  And, out comes 2 dogs. This meant that Ker and the girls had to pretend that I hadn't just ventured into the woods to relieve myself.  They said it was awkward.  Well.

So, on my slog around the peat bog, I had jog to find a log—away from all dogs—to unclog so I could write about it on my blog.  No, I really had too. 

Tina….snicker….snicker.