Thing 43 Go To Newgrange

It's funny to think that we've a piece of history sitting up the road from Dublin that's older than Stonehenge and The Pyramids of Giza (take that England and Egypt). It's stupid when you realise that you've spent an entire year of your life living in Dublin and never bothered to visit it... but then, stupid is something I've got a sharp grip on.

After a couple of days drinking cider in the sun in Dublin, it's nice to spend a day getting some culture, it sure beats the hell out of throwing up raw fish, and cutting someone's toe nails.

Newgrange is 5,000 or so years old. Class. It's made up of hundreds of thousands of stones, with the base stones weighing between 1 ton and 100 tons. Some of the stones had to be assembled from up to 80kilometres away. Average lifespan back in the day was 30 to 36 years old (mid life crisis at 16, as if teenagers don't have enough on their minds eh?). Which means it probably took generations to put the thing together.

Then there's the design. With the electric lights turned off, the inner chambers are completely pitch black. No light gets in. For a week in the middle/late part of December (it's solstice. I could have just saved words and said solstice), at daybreak, the winding narrow corridor into the chambers allows a tiny sliver of sunlight to crawl up one of the passages and light up the inside. These guys must have been geometry and maths geniuses. I went to college with some people who couldn't build a sandwich... ahem... BandMan and GodBoy, you know who you are.

Pictured: The Frenchman getting some culture. Not pictured: Garlic or a beret.

It's actually properly breathtaking stuff. And the tour guide gives you a real sense of awe about the whole thing too. Which was well done- myself and The Frenchman had both been in Coppers the night before. It's hard to have awe at anything after a night in Coppers. But that's how cool Newgrange is...

Not pictured: Cider.

We also put our names in the hat to be invited back for the winter solstice. But it seems unlikely. No one invites me back anywhere... Now where's the cider...