Carrigogunnel is a castle ruins that we found by accident while driving down the road on a spring afternoon. Just driving along we saw this jumble of stuff on a hilltop. We stopped and asked someone if we could check it out. As always during our visit to Ireland, the answer was yes, please do!

We did a little research later and found that this castle was used to stage attacks against the occupying British forces in the middle of the 17th century. Britain's "Lord Protector" Oliver Cromwell ordered Carrigogunnel blown up so the place was pretty much just of bunch of overgrown ruins, but what ruins!

In this photo you can see a standing wall with fireplace still intact built into the wall. Just below the fireplace you can see a series of floor supports along the wall.

There was a spiral staircase (common in nearly all castles we saw) that was partially blown apart, with one section laying on the ground, here:

And the other section standing in the air. Here you can see how the stair steps are made. The rounded tip of each step stacks on top of the lower one, forming a sort of central column. Just amazing construction techniques.

Here is the view looking at the spiral staircase from outside, with the doorways leaving the staircase with prefabed arches leading to the rooms on higher and higher floors. Through the lower doorway you can see the three "orphaned" steps that you saw in the previous picture.

A couple of pictures with us in various parts of Carrigogunnel. Notice April is dressed like a native. She often had people just walk up to her and start speaking in Galic.

Shot of several of Carrigogunnel's standing structures.

Just a fantastic place. We actually went there twice, it was hard to get enough of the place.