Day 5. Spooky adventures at the Abbey of the Black Hag...

It was most odd. I spent a (very) wet afternoon trying to track down the Abbey of the Black Hag (or St. Katherine's medieval abbey) in Shanagolden. I stopped off on the way to photograph the magnificent Askeaton Castle which stands, overwhelmingly huge, in the middle of the tiny, old-fashioned village of Askeaton.

I reached Shanagolden without any real trouble, but finding the Abbey was another story. With the help of some local directions I located the Old Abbey Road, then drove up and down the damn thing for almost an hour, trying to locate the Abbey ruins in the pelting rain. Seriously, the rain came down in torrents all the while, drumming so hard on the roof of the car I could barely hear the Royksopp CD in the car. GPS didn't work due to lack of internet signal - actually, once I started driving on that road there wasn't even a radio signal.

FINALLY found the correct spot, thanks to an elderly lady whose house I drove up to in desperation. Her granddaughters shrank away from me at the window, as I stood, pink-haired and sodden, in the driveway. But she was excessively helpful and pointed me in the direction of a nearby farm - 'You'll have to drive up by the farm to get to it.'

Of course when I got to the farm, despite the presence of a car in the driveway, no-one answered. At that stage, there was a strong temptation to give up but after spending so much time, I was bullishly determined to find that damn abbey! Drove up past the house, jeep jolting from side to side down the rutted track, spraying great gouts of rusty water to the left and right. Finally I came to a stop at a collection of ruined buildings with a recognisable stone doorway.

I swathed myself in a raincoat and hopped out of the car, relieved...but almost immediately, things started to go wrong. That's the best way I can put it. My camera stopped working properly, half-freezing, resulting in images that were partly blurred. In retrospect, they look as if something was running at speed through them.

[Ugh. I just creeped myself out with that idea as I was writing this.]

That started to make me nervous, so I snapped as quickly as I could, then jumped back into the car. That's the next thing that went wrong. The car refused to start. I tried to wind down the window. Nothing. The electric winding mechanism had broken. So there I was, stuck in front of the Black Hag's Abbey (where, incidentally, medieval nuns had practiced black magic, and where the bones of children had been found).

Finally, the car started, and I drove away, as fast as the awful terrain and the driving rain would let me.

The car window started operating normally as soon as I turned back out onto the road. But when I got home it was permantently broken. So that, and the blurred photos, are the relics from my visit to the Black Hag.

She's not the welcoming kind.