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TUBBRID CASTLE HAS the ‘wow’ factor on many levels. Firstly, there’s the impressive fact that you’re staying in a castle. Secondly, there’s the stunning contemporary design that still leaves the ancient walls to do all the talking.
Thirdly, there’s the touching story of its restoration journey. After almost 20 years of interior and exterior works, Tubbrid Castle – a 15th century tower house – officially came back to life last month.
“Seeing each guest’s reaction as they walk through the door is very special, as there were times in the past few years when I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the castle to that point,” says owner John Campion.
The northwest Kilkenny tower house was an uninhabited, roofless ruin for over a century, but you wouldn’t know it today.
Campion’s father, John Sr, was one of eleven children who grew up in a nearby cottage:
When my dad and his siblings were young, they used to race along the top of the roofless castle’s walls, 70 feet in the air.
After John Sr retired, he turned his attention to a lifelong dream: restoring the ruins.
“It was a mammoth undertaking,” recalls the younger Campion. “My mother thought it was a crazy idea, and it was, but she was by my father’s side every step of the way.”
When the elder Campion was diagnosed with a form of dementia that left him unable to complete the project, his son took over the work.
Dad had put such huge effort into saving the castle from falling down, I felt it would be a shame not to complete the task.
Despite moving to Dublin for work midway through the project, Campion was able to finish oversee the final restoration of Tubbrid Castle and open the door to guests in April 2019.
Sadly, John Sr passed away in August, 2018, just missing the end of the restoration. “He was laid to rest in the local cemetery, within sight of the castle he saved.”
Campion employed local builders to install Kilkenny limestone flagstone flooring, doors of Irish oak, and a roof of local slate, supported by impressive oak beams held together with dowels and pegs — there’s not a single nail or screw to be found.
Campion engaged a local designer to help put a light touch on the interior that would allow the original architectural features to shine through.
For guests, the castle is far from a rustic experience, though. Super king beds, rainforest showers and a bathtub that fits neatly into a century-old breach in the eight-feet-thick walls all bring luxurious touches that make it a retreat fit for a king or queen.
And when you tire of gazing out those eight-foot-thick walls onto the surrounding countryside, there is, of course, much to do in the surrounding area.
Campion makes a few recommendations:
In Kilkenny City, the Medieval Mile Museum gives an accessible and immersive introduction to the city’s history. The top of St Canice’s Cathedral is a steep climb but you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful vista over the marble city.
For foodie guests, great restaurants include the Michelin-starred Campagne and classic Italian fare at Ristorante Rinuccini, while the Smithwicks Brewery has recently started giving tours and tastings.
Meanwhile, closer to Tubbrid Castle, the Valley Inn is a traditional rural pub that often has live music at weekends, and the Crag Loop is a gentle 6km hike that’ll help shake off the cobwebs next morning.
As staycation venues go, Tubbrid Castle would certainly make for an impressive Monday-morning tale at the office.
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Everything can be a UFO if you’re bad enough at identifying things
What do you mean by ‘believe’? It is a fact that some objects are unidentified. Does this mean that they are aliens? No. Does it mean they are UFO’s? Yes.
@Sorcha Ní Shúilleabháin: It depends on what you mean by ‘mean’, doesn’t it?
@Ajax Penumbra: and that depends on your meaning of the meaning of what mean actually means…..:)
UFO. Unidentified Flying Object. Something in the sky and you don’t know what it is. Yep, I believe. But I do NOT believe in little green men.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: Exactly. They’re not green, they’re grey.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: purple men? have you not seen thanos in avengers??
@LFC_MAD94: the purple ones were all eaten
@sean o’dhubhghaill: so do you believe there is no other intelligent life, Aliens, in the entire universe?
@Damien Leen: There may well be none close enough in space and time for us to meet them. The average life of a species is in the region of a million years, the universe is around fourteen thousand times that old and it is very big.
@Damien Leen: None within communication distance with us, anyway! The nearest major galaxy to us is Andromeda. 2.5 million light years away. Send a radio message and IF anybody is listening and IF they understand and IF they choose to reply you might get an answer in 5 million years.
Call me mad, and I’m sure most will, but I do, the universe is to big, maybe we haven’t been visited ( I think we have ) but surely it’s an open your mind type thing ?
@Bopper Bops Holland: Thats not mad, its entirely logical. Of course there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, its a mathematical certainty. Whether any of that intelligence has managed to overcome what we humans understand as the limitations of the laws of physics (vast distance, speed of light, relativity, life span) and travel successfully between star systems, is another matter entirely.
@Eoin Roche: as someone once said. Yes there are intelligence in the Universe, the question is would humans be counted among them! Jim Carey I think.
Its not a question of beliefe. A UFO is a term for something unknown. Aliens on the other hand 100% yes bit intelligent aliens not so much. Intelligence on a galactic understanding level on our planet is extremely rare and that includes humans.
I’d say there’s definitely other life forms considering the size of the universe. But they don’t visit us, since the place is such a kip now.
UFOs yes. Aliens not so much……
@antisocialbarber: exactly kinda silly question… no doubt there is alien life too another question is why they would have any interest in coming here…. given that the universo is so vast
@yoloboyz: In the infinite number of chemical permutations on an equally infinite number of planets and an infinite number of right places right time situations and so on. There has to be “life” somewhere out there. Possibly not carbon based. To misquote Mr Spock “It’s life Jim, but not as we know it”.
@antisocialbarber: I’m the opposite, yes aliens exist. They have to, the universe is too big for there not to be other forms of life out there but have they visited us in flying hub caps? No
@yoloboyz: The universe is vast in both space and time it is possible for there to be a great deal of intelligent life in the universe without any two species ever being able to reach or even detect each other while both are still alive.
@Steve O’Hara-Smith: Yeah, definitely the most logical way of looking at it. The scales involved are un fathomable. The chances of an encounter are slimmer than slim
@Neil Reilly: Yeah… I like the idea of “Aliens” ( not the Sigourney Weaver variety) in general but vastness of space and our level of detection and technology, as impressive as it is, is still a couple of development/technology revolutions into the future away.
There seems to be a serious decline in ufo’s n ghosts since everyone has a quality camera in their pocket nowadays……..
@Brian Murphy: Take a picture of a passing airplane with your smart phone, just a blur.
@Brian Murphy: There’s a massive increase actually. Type ufo into youtube and you’ll see thousands of videos from all over the world. US military pilots are now being encouraged to report UFO encounters. That’s a big change in attitude. We are at the beginning of a change in attitude on the topic of UFOs as a whole. A lot of media coverage lately is not writing it off as a joke like it always has. Interesting times.
So aliens are going to travel billions of miles only to fly around in the sky and then disappear? Think about it
@Irish Opinion: It’s their version of taking a Sunday drive. To a Type 3 civilisation, billions of miles is nothing.
@Irish Opinion: Well, Pluto is billions of miles away so when you think about it on that scale, that’s not really far at all.
@Irish Opinion: to explore and observe…we do the same here…drones etc on Mars…you think we’re the only ones in the universe who would be curious and have the technology to achieve this…think about it
@Damien Leen: How much of the universe do you think we will ever explore in person? There are between one and four hundred billion stars in this galaxy alone and there are a similar number of galaxies in the observable universe.
We’ll be lucky to explore a millionth of our own galaxy before we go extinct, if we’re amazingly lucky we might manage a thousandth of it.
Another movie on the Ufo topic that is based on an event that happened in Brazil in 1996 will be out in October. Trailer here.
https://youtu.be/pE7hVSlk7Zw
Really looking forward to Nope
How can anyone be sure either way?
Only when I don’t have my glasses on.
The aliens are already among us. They have taken on a human likeness to blend in but the orange skin tone is a pure giveaway.
I absolutely do,you have to see one or two strange things in the night sky to believe.
@i.Have.it.Me.: Believe what? Alien visitors or that there are things that you don’t understand and probably never wlll because the facts are unavailable. Me I strongly believe the latter and would want firm evidence for the former.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
Yes…and the earth is flat too !!
@Gavin Courtney: In parts yes, true!
If I see a leprechaun with a crock of gold at the end of a rainbow, I’ll only believe it if I can handle the contents of the crock.
Yes I think the taboo of believing in UAP’s is in the past, https://youtu.be/JE_ujhcxwHY .. a video from a series of recent uploads from this channel, all historical accounts of encounters. Some very compelling/interesting
Silly poll. UFOs exist whether we believe in them or not. The question should be do we believe they are extraterrestrial.
Seeing the comments, I think the spirit of the question has been lost. For this purpose I think they’re asking aliens, not some airplane with its transponder off
@Sean D: Folks are answering the question asked, perhaps they meant to ask “Do you believe UFOs are alien visitors” but they didn’t.
Well the aliens are here already and remember this is we’re we came from as humans the move from having a brain that is slow to what we are can not be explained except we are from another planet
@Anthony Ross: alien identified
I want to believe.
The truth is out there.
Technically speaking, a weather balloon or a satellite is an unidentified object if it has not been identified by air traffic control, NASA or the met office. Do I believe that aliens from another galaxy or dimension are visiting Earth? It is possible. Are they friendly? Don’t know
I like saying from Jupiter ascending: you humans are so arrogant, you don’t even have a numbers to describe vastness of universe yet you think that you are only intelligent been’s in it
Let’s put some salt on this tail.
There are one to four hundred billion stars in this galaxy.
There are about that many galaxies in the universe too. Just remember them for now.
A big SF interstellar empire might be a million stars, just imagine the tiered government needed. There’s room in this galaxy alone for a hundred thousand at once of them without any overlap.
The universe is estimated to be around fourteen billion years old. Species lifetimes are around a million years. If we give an interstellar empire a ten million year life then there’s been time for fourteen hundred of them make it a thousand because the early universe wasn’t so much fun.
So that means our galaxy has had time and space to house one hundred million vast interstellar empires without any of them ever meeting..
The question is nonsense. Of course there are objects that fly that people can’t identify. There are lots of them. Some of them are later identified, but many haven’t yet been. Do you mean do we believe they are extraterrestrial in origin? Do you mean we have another specific belief about them? Please clarify?
I’ve followed this subject since covid came. Watched a lot of documentary’s and podcasts. Subject is full of liars, bullshxt and dodgy cgi videos. Even the best examples are only hear say, some have many witnesses but still only hear say. The best doc I’ve ever seen is the phenomenon bye james fox, hes made a few descent docs. Also ross coulthart has been on a podcast called ‘in plain sight’. In two years i e got one good podcast and one good movie. The rest is b.s :-)
Yes, but they are from this planet and not extraterrestrial.
Define UFO
@Michael Powell: Unidentified Flying Object – there are also USO’s – Unidentified Submersible Objects.
@The world outside the M50: and UAP’s..
Unidentified Areil Phenomenon
There are no Aliens – however there are many interdimensional beings
have your say