bad point well made

Bunratty Folk Park

If you go to Bunratty, you should check out the folk park. No, it’s not a park dedicated to folk music, as you might hope; it’s something different.

You shouldn’t go in the daytime, because you arrived too late.

You should spend the preceding hour and a half in two of Bunratty’s moderately charming but ultimately tourist-ridden pubs enduring an Irish session with paid musicians using microphones, wedged up on a high single table behind a wall by the toilets reading your book and wondering why you stayed the night in this trap and not out in the country.

You should leave, two pints in, through the 15-degree drizzle, slightly thrown by how light it still is outside.

You should recall that this is because the summer solstice was but two days ago.

You should enter Bunratty Folk Park via the gift shop that seems to be open strangely late and then leave after perusing some expensive AI-generated faeries on fridge magnets because you realise that they’re hosting a medieval banquet for the Americans, and you are not invited.

You should stroll a little further up the road in the direction of your expensive B&B with the Audis parked outside.

On the way, you should walk past some open automatic gates with farm vehicles parked inside and consider exploring, before deciding against it and continuing your walk towards the B&B.

You should reproach yourself for being old, boring and lacking adventure, turn back, and enter through the automatic gates, despite your concern that they might close behind you.

As you walk further in, you should realise that you have found the back entrance to Bunratty Folk Park, and you are completely alone.

You should still wonder what this folk park really is all about, all you’ve seen so far are a couple of picturesque but apparently empty houses with pretty country roads leading between them and various signage.

You should keep turning your head whenever a tree empties some rainwater on the ground or a startled bird flies away, because it is very quiet and you get the feeling you shouldn’t be there.

You should head towards the regency garden because that sounds grand, and should stop and stroke the friendly donkeys on the way.

You should make your way through the pristine garden and towards Bunratty House and share a quiet moment with a hare in the distance before it runs away.

You should start to get a slight feeling of unease as you walk around the large but unoccupied Bunratty house and perfectly preserved but evidently never used church next door, with no services scheduled on the recently painted sign.

You should stop a while to spend some time with the escaped baby goats that are skipping around outside.

You should follow the sign towards “Mac’s Village Pub” because, whilst you think it could lead you closer to the hypothetical banqueting Americans and potentially someone who might point out that you are trespassing, you are unsure as to how such an empty place could support a pub.

Not far from Mac’s Village pub, you should find a sodden map. You should peel apart the folded pages of the map to reveal the full extent of Bunratty Folk Park, and realise you are right in the middle of a fully preserved 100-year-old Irish village, and you are absolutely alone, save the animals (who you feel are starting to get subtly restless).

You should take a few steps and find yourself on an empty village high street, with period pub, pharmacist, grocer’s, print shop, lit street lamps and all.

You should start to feel a greater sense of unease when you notice that the door to one of the shops is open.

You should decide that this door is not one you are entering today, and try not to think about it much further as you move on.

At the end of the street, you should reach the creepy school, which you walk past, away from the unsettling street and deeper into the Folk Park.

As you are rounding the corner, you should glance to the left and spot a “Don’t feed the animals” sign with two large bodies you presume are pigs peacefully snoozing on some kind of low hammock.

You should then watch in horror as one of the pigs notices your approach and sits up to reveal itself as a large Irish hound instead and starts barking violently, waking up its other hound friend next to it.

Fearing attention that you don’t want, you should turn and flee, back up the deserted village street, through the empty roads, past the church and out of the exit again, meanwhile the hounds’ barking has intensified into howling and all the other animals are starting to join in the chorus around you.

You should rejoin the road to the expensive B&B with the Audis parked outside whilst trying not to run too fast so as not to raise the suspicion of the couple who have just seen you coming out.

You should then return to your room, close the door behind you and write down the whole encounter.