Being a romantic with a taste for the ancient, when I learned we were going to Ireland I knew we just had to stay in a castle.
We actually had the opportunity to stay in three castles, and one of them was beautiful Ashford Castle on the shores of Lough Corrib in County Mayo.
We enjoyed two fabulous nights at this splendid hotel, which afforded plenty of time to relax and wander its grand gardens by day.
Naturally I put on my shutter-bug hat.
This photo depicts an old gate approach which is no longer in use.
Because it was early spring tree branches were still bare. This, and the muted light of a slightly overcast morning, gives the gate an etheric quality which transports my mind back in time and to imagining ghosts. I imagine the clatter of horses hooves on gravel and dirt and the jingling of harness; the voices of guards and the unlocking of the gate.
Did lovers kiss under this arch?
Ooh, if these walls could talk …
Copyright Aimwell Enterprises 2012
Eyes to Heart 
Yes, it’s fascinating to think of the loves and lives that went before, isn’t it? Like that ghost town we visited in Alberta – Rowley – with the storm rumbling in from the west, and all those lives and memories preserved in the infrastructure. Memories for some; suppositions for most. Magic.
Not the same historicity of the old world, of course, but fascinating even so.
You and I are on the same page on this one. Maybe it was growing up in the old country …