Saturday 26 February 2000
Highlights: St Mary’s Cathedral, King John’s Castle

Today we explored Limerick City starting with St Mary’s Cathedral was built in 1172.

Next was the excellent the King John’s Castle.  King John is often portrayed in fiction in Robin Hood stories.  In reality he was forced to sign the Magna Carta.  The audio-visual presentations were brilliant, highlighting the siege of Limerick in 1690-91 by the English and Dutch against the Irish and the French.

After the Irish surrendered they signed the ‘Treaty of Limerick’ which was supposed to treat Catholics fairly but was instead broken fairly quickly leading to future struggles and fights and eventually the creation of the Republic of Ireland.

From here we caught a train to Rosslare Harbour to catch an overnight ferry to Wales.  The sea was very rough with Jon really struggling with seasickness.