Today I went to Tara. Or rather, Fionna drove and James took the final batch of intrepid pictures in the driving rain. Today three of us went to Tara, then. This first picture is not Tara. It’s the church at Slane. I would hate you to miss it.

Slane is all about St Patrick according to everyone I’ve talked to. The lady at the tourist information at Tara was worried that I didn’t understand how hard it is to know when mythology is history and history is mythology and she heaved a sigh of relief when I understood that there’s a certain paucity of evidence for a fire on the hill. She gave me the gift (as a thank-you) of explaining which hilltop could see which hilltop: the High King at Tara might have been able to see the fire, but he would probably not have seen the hill itself. This means that we were invisible from Tara when we took these photos. (I took most of them… but James took the really interesting ones from Tara.)

The abbey St. Patrick is said to have founded is on the hill of Slane. That church was on a hill (there were many hills today, most of which were natural but one of which was diagnosed by Fionna as farmer-created). The hill at Slane was not your average hill: it’s where St. Patrick may or may not have lit a tremendous bonfire that changed Irish history. This is why it was so important that a fire could be seen on it from Tara or from Newgrange. A political statement that no-one can see is not that effective.

Where there are hills, there are also valleys. The valley in the next picture is not that close to Slane, and it’s important in different ways. Highish Medievalish ways, for the most part, rather than Earlyish Medievalish.

I fell in love with the area around the abbey at Fore. There was a very solid bit of medieval wall, the remnants of an abbey, an old church safely protected from the hillside by a cemetery … and more. The valley was tucked into granite hills and at the centre of it all was an ash tree growing out of an ancient well and decorated by so many people. I was expecting Tara to be the highlight of my day, but this valley gently nudged it aside.

On the way to Tara from there, we had lunch in a pub. Of course we did. The picture is not of where we had lunch, it’s the pub down the road that didn’t serve food, but it called itself an Irish pub and I’ve always wondered what an Irish pub would look like in Ireland.

My eyes were boggled by the castle at Trim. Why were my eyes boggled? Such an intimidating castle, even half-fallen down. Oisin McGann wrote about this, so you’re spared an hour of medievalish thought. Fionna and James were not so lucky.

It was a bit wet, and a bit cold (even for me – and I left winter on Wednesday) which meant I could only see the edge of Tara. The moral of the story is quite possibly that disabilities do what the description says. James took photos of the bits I couldn’t see, for your benefit (thank him nicely, please, for it was pouring ice-rain) and for mine. My photographs include critical objects like… jam.

What did I see? I saw the modern settlement spilling down the hill: graves and houses and a church turned into a tourist centre and a rather nice gift shop. From there was the road and the town and the everyday. The top of the hill is the Tara we dream of. The underground bits we cannot see, the half-visible avenue leading to the carved earth, the pillars and the hollows and the memories of the high kings.

Even with the rain pelting down, that hillside was worth visiting.

Gillian is an Australian science fiction author and fan with doctorates in medieval history and creative writing. She lives in the centre of the known universe (Canberra), and was GUFF delegate in 2014.  Her new novel, Year of the Fruit Cake, is available from all the best book stores and webshops. If you spot her at the convention, be sure to pick a surprise from her lucky dip bag.

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Anyone visiting Ireland for the first time will quickly discover that County Meath has a number of the most significant archaeological and historical sites in the country. Whether it’s the Hill of Tara, former seat of the High Kings, or Newgrange, the five thousand year-old passage tomb, or Tlachtga, the original site of Samhain and birthplace of Halloween, Meath has been the location of more than its fair share of Ireland’s heritage.

It also boasts the largest Anglo-Norman castle in the country. Less than an hour’s drive from Dublin, with a direct bus route from the city centre to the entrance of the castle itself, this is a must for anyone with an interest in history, architecture or who just likes big-assed castles. It was also one of the key locations for the film Braveheart.

Approaching from the main road, the castle is an impressive sight. Situated on the south bank of the River Boyne in the town of Trim, it was built over a thirty year period by Hugh de Lacy and his son Walter as the home of the Lordship of Meath, after de Lacy was granted the liberty of Meath by King Henry II in 1172, hoping to keep that rebellious upstart, Richard ‘Strongbow’ de Clare in his place. The site was chosen because it was on raised ground overlooking a fording point in the river, during a time when the area was an important early medieval ecclesiastical and royal site and the Boyne was a major transport route.

There’s a lot to see from the outside, and you can get a good sense of its scale and some of the main features just from the view out on the road, or from the hill on the far side of the river. There’s an admission charge to enter the grounds, and you walk in through the arch of a gatehouse which gives you a dramatic view of the keep and curtain wall. There is a tour of this outer section if you choose to take it, but you are otherwise free to wander about. There’s plenty to see and kids love running around and exploring. If you want to go into the keep itself, you have to take one of the scheduled tours, for which there’s an additional charge that you pay for with your admission ticket. These tours are very popular during the summer, so get in early.

The extra couple of quid for the tour is well worth it, there’s a lot to see inside and the tour is excellent, giving you a superb insight into life in that era, the culture, technical advances, politics and strategic thinking that went into the construction of these buildings. It also helps you understand the awe-inspiring scale of operation it took to build one of these. There are so many interesting little features you are shown along the way: everything from how they built the stairs so that a right-handed swordsman was at a disadvantage fighting his way up, to learning that the bare stone walls we’re so used to seeing in films and artwork were often actually covered with a lime plaster, to which might be added a pigment to make the castle all more visible and intimidating from a distance. Trim was most likely white in colour, but some of the most fearsome Norman castles could be yellow or even pink.

Construction of the three-storied central keep began around 1176 on the site of an earlier wooden fortress. This huge twenty-sided tower, which is cruciform in shape, was cupped by a curve in the river and was further protected by a ditch, curtain wall and moat. Apart from the keep, the main structures consist of an early 14th-century three-towered fore work defending the keep entrance and including stables within it; a huge late 13th-century three-aisled great hall; a stout defensive tower; a smaller aisled hall; a building (possibly the mint) added to the east end of the latter hall; two 15th- or 16th-century stone buildings added inside the town gatehouse, 17th-century buildings and a series of lime kilns.

The tour takes you right to the top of the keep, and you can do a full circuit looking out at the land for miles around. The castle was a centre for administration in Meath in the 15th century and marked the outer northern boundary of the Pale, the area around Dublin, beyond which lived the wilder Irish tribes our civilised conquerors were reluctant to mix with. The castle would remain an important stronghold up into the 1600’s, including being occupied by the army of Oliver Cromwell (a right evil bastard, for whom the Irish reserve a particularly passionate hatred), but the site eventually fell into disuse and ruin.

The Office of Public Works began a major programme of works and conservation, costing over six million euro, including partial restoration of the moat and the installation of a protective roof on the keep. The castle was re-opened to the public in 2000. It is a beautiful, fascinating and hugely impressive site and if you only have time to see a few attractions in or around Dublin while you’re at Worldcon, this should absolutely be one of them.

Admission Prices (at time of writing):

Public car park close to the site (paid parking with a 2 hour limit).

You can find more details here: http://www.discoverboynevalley.ie/boyne-valley-drive/heritage-sites/trim-castle

Oisín McGann is one of Ireland’s best-known writer-illustrators, producing books for all ages of reader. He is the author of the Mad Grandad books, the Forbidden Files and novels such as Rat Runners, The Gods and Their Machines and The Wildenstern Saga. He is a winner of the European Science Fiction Society Award, the Bisto Book of the Year Merit Award and has been shortlisted for numerous other awards, including the Waterstones Childrens’ Book Prize in the UK, le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and Locus Magazine’s Best First Novel Award in the US.

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