Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Ireland

  • Valentia Island Car Ferry

    Crossing Portmagee Channel: Knightstown, Valentia Island to Reenard Point, Cahersiveen (July 2014) There were two ways to cross between the Irish mainland and Valentia Island, one was a car ferry on the northeast corner of Valentia and the other was a bridge from Portmagee on the southern end. Naturally we took the ferry although most…

  • Even More Ladylike Places

    Most readers probably anticipated that after slogging through Manly Places, Even More Manly Places, and Ladylike Places, that the next in this series would be Even More Ladylike Places. That seemed absolutely necessary in my mind to create symmetry and closure. However I’d written a variation on this theme already with the recently-published Ladysmith. I…

  • Counting Down

    Most comments on Twelve Mile Circle are made to articles written recently, primarily to those posted within the past few days. That doesn’t prevent readers from commenting on older articles though. I leave the comment window open indefinitely. People wander their way to the site however they manage to do it, and I assume most…

  • Geographically Coded Plates

    Recently I spotted an automobile with a Nebraska license plate, or more properly a “vehicle registration plate” I suppose. That wasn’t an everyday occurrence here in the Mid-Atlantic more than 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometres) from that Midwestern state. Often I’ve wondered what would bring a driver such a long distance from his home after I’ve…

  • Me and What Army

    The format today will be similar to the “Odds and Ends” series, a veritable pu pu platter of tasty tidbits. However, the primary difference will be that inspiration came almost entirely from the far corners of the 12MC army. I still have several other reader contributions waiting in the wings too. Please be patient if…

  • Ireland, Part 3 (Wild Atlantic Way)

    Ireland designated a tourist route along its western edge between Donegal and Cork as the “Wild Atlantic Way.” Distinctive signs including a logo of what appeared to be something like ww — although stretched out farther like waves — marking the path. We didn’t follow the route on purpose although we encountered its road signs…

  • Ireland, Part 2 (A Distressing Period)

    Somewhere close to 8.2 million people lived in Ireland in 1841. Then came Phytopthora Infestans, a fungus-like microorganism that attacked Irish potato fields with a fearsome blight and utter devastation. The Great Famine killed more than a million people outright through starvation and disease between 1845 and 1850. Two million survivors fled their native land…

  • Ireland, Part 1 (Castles and Ruins)

    My typing fingers grew a little rusty over the last couple of weeks. Those of you who follow 12MC on Twitter already knew that I was in Ireland because I posted a steady stream of photographs. What may have been less understood was that I wrote all Twelve Mile Circle articles ahead of time. That’s…

  • Spit

    I’ve certainly featured spits of land on 12MC before. They’ve come up in the context of Shingle Spits and in a very specialized sense in one of my favorite geographic forms, the always wonderful tombolo. I was able to visit a particularly nice example of a spit in Homer, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. I’ve discussed…

  • The Article That Nobody Will Ever See

    Of course you are not a “nobody”. I mean it in a statistical sense. Sure, you and I both stopped here today although we might be the only ones; visitors totals will still come mighty close to zero. Who’s going to read these words I’ve posted on Christmas Eve? Twelve Mile Circle has a diverse…