Today we set out for Birr for some horseback riding for the children.
We wound up opting for the Five Roads Equestrian Centre just outside Banagher,
though, since we saw it signed well before we got to Birr. We settled
on a one-hour round trip to Shannon Harbor and back, on a jarvey drawn
by a Clydesdale named Jessica, followed by led pony rides for the children.
At Shannon Harbor we got out for a bit to see the Grand Canal that goes
all the way to Dublin, and the boats that ply this inland waterway.
Afterwards we went to Birr castle, which the resident Parsons family, including
the Earls of Rosse, had made a center of science and innovation especially
in the nineteenth century. The place is now largely a museum of the
history of Irish science. Notable contributions by the family included
the steam turbine engine and the world's first six-foot telescope, a Newtonian
reflector with a metal mirror, built and mounted by the Third Earl in the
late 1830s and early 40s, for the discovery and cataloging of unknown nebulae
and the closer observation of known ones. The crude but massive telescope
mounting was inspired (as was the whole project) by Herschel's. The
Parsons had also been much involved in early photography, and also gardening,
for which the climate is vastly better suited than it is for astronomy.
We got a very substantial sample of the climate's less clement side, after
the fair morning had seduced us into venturing out on the day's outing
without our umbrellas. It was not primarily interest in the Fuchsias
that led us to spend more than a few minutes in the greenhouse that stands
in the middle of the most formal section of the garden.
When we returned the weather was already ahead of us in trying to dry out,
and we even saw a rainbow when we emerged from the car at Eyrecourt.
I photographed it across a patch of donkey pasture just across from our
house.