On Sunday me, my flatmate Gergu and his father hired a car and did some sightseeing.

It was a great feeling to be in a car again, not tied to bus timetables and destinations, and we managed to pack a lot in.

The first stop was the site of the Battle of the Boyne, where George of Orange defeated the Jacobites, thus laying the foundations for English dominance in Ireland over the following centuries. Its also known as the battle in which the protestants defeated the catholics, and is celebrated on 12th July (see last post)

Next stop was the Neolithic passage graves of Knowth, with hundreds of beautifully decorated stones. Knowth has more than a 3rd of the total number of megalithic art works in the whole of western Europe, and it was well worth seeing, even if it just looks like humps of earth from a distance.

After Knowth we drove through some storybook Irish villages, with coloured houses and, of course, lots of traditional looking pubs and the odd fish and chip shop with nackers slouching outside. We walked through Kells (origin of the book of Kells)- a really pretty town- and drove past some similarly quaint looking places.

We dropped Gergu's father off in the tiny town of Glenlough, right on the Northern Ireland border, where he will work on a farm, and headed back to Dublin.