Lough Gur Ireland

Lough Gur is located 21 kilometers southeast of Limerick City where "deep in the rolling hills of County Limerick, an enchanting and rich archeological landscape is simply waiting to be explored." We had arranged to visit Beth's friend Anna's Mater who lives nearby and decided to take in the landscape as well.

A hard frost greeted us as we awoke for a tour of the local sites and after breakfast we began a counter-clockwise circuit of the Lough with a stop at The Great Stone Circle, which dates to 2000 BC.

The circle is the largest of its kind in Ireland, measuring 150 feet in diameter and consisting of 113 upright stones. It is believed that on the 21st of June each year, the Summer Solstice, the morning sun shines through the entrances and illuminates a pattern, suggesting astrological use of the enclosure.
After talking to the cows on the adjacent farm

we met their owner, Timothy Casey, who also maintains the site for visitors and provides his own unique explanation of the circle, sells postcards for the site and accepts donations for maintenance.

Next stop was the New Church, built in the 15th century by the Earls of Desmond as a Chapel of Ease, in ruins by the middle of the 17th century, rebuilt and now in ruins again, with only a shell currently extant.

The scene overlooking the Lough with its surrounding gravestones had a mystical quality under the still heavy frost.

Driving past Wedge Tomb a burial site dating to 2500 BC, we parked at the east end of the Lough in the Visitors Center, closed at this time of year. From the parking lot we climbed above The Spectacles, a replica of a farmstead from 900 AD, to a viewpoint overlooking the Lough.

I can't recall many more beautiful vistas, although I seem to say that about alot of the spots we visited in Ireland.

Here's a compilation of our photos set to Bill Cooley's "Isle of Inishmore."