Cliff Hanger!

It's the 10-10-10 day. Well, should be either a bad or good omen, I don't know. To me, it was 50-50 deal. I had a walk to the castle again but this time I went to climb up the hill and be beside the walls of the castle itself, and that was a big deal with a backpack and a camera bag full of tools. The weather is not rainy but foggy a bit with clouds covering the place, but the wind was calm. Anyway, just in any case I put my cap on and the back of my hair was out of order. I think I did look like more of a... gypsy beggar!
I did take the walk as usual by the short cut to the town and I was thinking of going in between the alleys to shorten the way, but gracefully, 3 little dogs in one alley were fighting together so I decided to stop and turn back from where I come from and go back to my old way and path!
I turned to my old way, and found myself being panting like I never did before. The town was quiet even though it was already 10 in the morning. Well, no wonder. It's Sunday. However, the castle side was a bit busy with tourism as usual. Asians mixed with Americans and some Europeans as usual.
Beside the castle, I climbed up beside the castle. This is my second time in fact, as for the first time I couldn't go on further because there was a couple, having some "nice" time together. Anyway, this time, I've been climbing up and resting on some rocks and once I did that, a whole punch of tourists started to follow me and take pictures for themselves upon the rock, while I was sitting and panting trying to rest, and waiting for them to leave the place.
From up there, I took a regular (not-so-fascinating) image for the town of Cashel, and also I ran a handheld panorama for the town of Cashel from up there, almost 90 degrees wide. Just a simple one. The thing is the weather was foggy ad whitish, and I wonder if the HDR will make some interesting venture from these images. I took after that the path to the side of the castle on these slippery soft rocks and wet grass, and I reached a point that I couldn't get past through. This is because a weird structure!

The weird structure.

Seems this structure was put there for a purpose originally as an obstacle to block the way of attackers. To pass this structure you have to jump over it, which in my case was not a good option to do with all my bags and the hevy weight, adding to that, the cliff was directly under this structure. One slip, and you're down.

After this point, I decided to get back from where I came. Eventually, I sat down on one of the benches trying to take some rest and preparing myself for the long way back to my place, but something kind of weird (natural, but weird to me) happened.

Just at the bench, and while getting my camera cleaned a bit and putting back the lenses while I was taking a rest, I've noticed 2 ladies coming from some pathway at my back. I looked back to see that, the gate that I always thought to be closed and locked, was actually open and there is a path that leads to some where. I didn't notice before that this pathway was open and people could go there. So, here we go.

The newly discovered path!

The magnificent thing about this path really is that you can view the castle from the side in a more pleasant view, and away from the presence of the tourists all around the place. So, I didn't miss the chance, and I took some shots for the side and for the back of the castle with my fisheye. 

Cashel Rock Castle (once owned by Brian Ború himself!).

The picture is a bit dark, because it was one slide from the HDR auto-bracketed sequence and I tried to enhance it as much as possible but the DPP that comes with Canon utilities is not that much of a good tool like the Adobe RAW Converter, or ACR for short.

I've continued on the path and I've noticed some fields on the other side of the fence and the hills in the far horizon, and finally, at the end of the sloping down path, there was a locked gate. I don't know how people did cross this gate because I saw already some people come in and out of this path! Anyway, across the gate I've noticed a sign saying "Tipperary Heritage Path" and pointing to some direction. Now I began to wonder, what's hidden in this little town now? I thought I've seen everything so far! Tomorrow, I was planning for going out to Cahir and take a panorama for the main yard inside the castle (although I'm still reluctant about it), but now, I think I have some work to do and chase after this heritage path. Who knows, it might lead me to the ruins I've seen from the graveyard up in the castle.

Back now to my place, processing some images and keeping some for later and organizing some other, I've noticed that actually after settling down my bed after the hot shower, I still feel like the bed is moving and like I'm about to fall! In fact this is the second time this happens, and in the previous time I was also climbing the hill near the castle. I'm wondering now if this is something like the sea-sickness, or land-sickness. Yes, there is land-sickness, and it affects sailors mainly who spend so long time in the sea that when they touch the stable ground, everything seems to be moving for them. The thing lasted few minutes for me though, and I'm fine right now. Thinking about it now, I think I'll be heading to Failaka island at the nearest chance after getting back to Kuwait. I would still be in vacation, until November.

Time for me now to think of how to catch the damn magpie, after failing twice today. This bird really has the actions of a thief!

Cahir again...

It was a long day, for the activities, and for the catastrophes that followed. It was one beautiful morning with sun shining over, but the rain came in in afternoon. However, it was not much of a thing since I already finished shooting by the time the rain came in.

In Cahir, I took that long road to the Swiss Cottage. Many stuff and sceneries to be photographed but I tried my best to be precise at what attracts me the most even though everything there was attractive to me, regarding that I came from a land where deserts play the role! In the last third however, almost, there was a groove in the cliff side with some holes in it and one big hole like a little cave entrance. Well, it was not a cave, but only one big hole. The view with the trees growing on the top of the cliff was amazing, so I decided to stop here and make a panorama of the place. I was not in a hurry so I tried my best to work slowly and not miss a thing, but things did go the way I wanted, as usual. In the middle of my work I realized that I didn't format the CF memory card in my camera the night before and hence the images of the panoramas done yesterday were still in and, since they are mixed now with new ones, I can't format the CF as simply as that! I had to go on one by one and deleting some and then taking more pictures for the panorama and deleting some and so on.

Unfortunately, when I reached the Swiss Cottage, which by the way is not a swiss thing at all, I've found out that taking pictures inside is not allowed. Anyway, taking a picture from the outside was fine. This Swiss Cottage reminded me of the Carnnóg in Brigit's Gardens park.

The Swiss Cottage

The Crannóg

The conical roof is almost the same in both. The cottage was in fact a home for Richard and Emily Butler in 1810. The title "Swiss" was given by the locals to the place because it looked like swiss cottages in Switzerland. This is what the information card says anyway!

After leaving the place I headed back on that long way again, walking beside the River Suir, and I've noticed this little amigo staring at me as it seems...

I've twisted my left foot on the way back, but it's not a big deal really. I've soon returned to normal. But there was another crises waiting for me, on this one damn laptop I'm typing my blog with right now!

Trying to upload my pictures, which are taken in RAW format, I was suddenly surprised by the laptop's message "not enough disk space". I do have another partition of the harddisk that is not used much still with a capacity of 30GB for now, but this is still alarming. I've ran over my images again doing and early filtration that is supposed to be done back home and not here. I've deleting many images trying to make space, but alas, the only space I could free here was 2GB. Now I wonder if there is any computer accessories shops in this little town. We'll see... or I'm in a big trouble...