IRELAND, DAY 5: The Rock of Cashel with kids

With incredible scenery, fascinating history and plenty of room to run around, visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids turned out to be an excellent choice for our Ireland trip. Located in the middle of the country, the Rock of Cashel feels “on the way” to so many attractions if you are leaving from Dublin. If you are looking for a day trip from Dublin, visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids can also be a reasonable option as it is only two hours away by car.

This visit was the fifth day of a six-day long trip in Ireland with my in-laws; for details on the the rest of our trip, see here and here and here and here. 

When we started planning our trip to Ireland, I knew very little about what exactly we should go see other than a vague notion of seeing “the countryside.” Once we started researching, it turned out that to cover every sight that seemed vitally important, we’d need about a month. We had six days.

By the way, one of those sights were really interested in seeing was the incredible Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. We didn’t make it this time, but if you are interested in going, check out my friend Elizabeth’s post on the visiting the Giant’s Causeway with kids. 

The Rock of Cashel, however, was nearly a no-brainer (in part because its proximity made it “on the way” to the two finalists for our last two days in Ireland, the Cliffs of Moher area or Ring of Kerry area). It took us about two hours to drive to the Rock of Cashel from the Dublin Airport, with pretty countryside all along the way.

I’ve already talked about all the drama that ensued Thursday with our rental car, but once we got on the road it was smooth sailing. (Or, almost smooth sailing depending on how you view my driving-in-Ireland skills.)

Brief history of the Rock of Cashel

A quick back story of the Rock of Cashel: It was a fortress used by the kings of Munster for hundreds of years, changing hands frequently because it was of such strategic importance. In 1101, the King of Munster decided to donate it to the Church — a strategic move because it a) won him the goodwill and support of the church and b) effectively took the Rock out of play because he wouldn’t have it, but no one else would either. From there, it became an important religious site and home to archbishops and a cathedral was built. The Rock was sacked in 1647 when the town of Cashel’s inhabitants refused to surrender to the forces of (military commander, rebel and future Lord Protector of England) Oliver Cromwell, and an estimated 1,000 people who had taken refuge inside the cathedral were massacred. It went into decline and a state of disrepair after that, and a new cathedral was eventually built elsewhere in the town.

What hapens when we try to take a nice family picture … 

Visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids

We took a guided tour of the place; they have these every 15 minutes and I highly recommend doing this. Without a tour, we wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what we were looking at or why it was significant. Now, I know taking guided tours with kids can be a bit of a risky business — you never know if their attention is going to last and there is always the worry they are going to choose the wrong moment to be loud. Taking the tour at the Rock of Cashel with kids, however, worked out pretty well because it was almost exclusively outdoors. When they got loud, we just walked a way a bit.

Part of the Cathedral built in the 1200s, and the distinctive Round Tower discussed here. 

This was an enormous Celtic cross erected as a monument by a family buried here. Unfortunately they used a metal rod to reinforce it and a lightning strike resulted in the top half cracking off. Another reason to visit the Rock of Cashel with kids: for some reason, broken things seem to interest them. Kids are weird. 

The cemetary here was closed to new people sometime in the 1930s, but before that there was a list that people who had relatives buried here could sign in order to ensure they could join their family eventually. Now there are just three elderly women left, and they will be the last to be buried here. 

Stone fence surrounds the whole thing, which means if you visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids, they can run around! And you can lay down. 

We really liked having a tour of the place, but we really enjoyed that afterward we could hang out for as long as we wanted to look at all the tombstones, rest or run around. Benefits of driving ourselves! Seriously though, kids need time to run around and be kids even while on vacation. At the Rock of Cashel, they had the chance to do that.

Well, that’s adorable. 

The Rock of Cashel with kids — not only was it doable, it was great fun!