Welcome to St. Rynagh's N.S. Banagher, Co. Offaly

Fourth Class Tour - September 2011

On Thursday 22nd of September 2011, we went on our first school tour of fourth class. We left the school at 9:15. We were going to three places on the tour: Clonmacnoise, Belmont Water-Mill and Shannon Harbour. First we went to Clonmacnoise. We got a guided tour from a girl called Darína. She was really nice. We learned about St. Ciarán and we watched a short movie about St. Ciarán's life and what he did. Darína showed us three High Crosses inside. Their names were The South Cross, The North Cross and The Cross of the Scriptures. We learned about The Whispering Arch where someone goes to a corner and whispers something and someone goes to the other side and you can hear what the other person said. Then we went to Belmont Water Mill at around 12 noon. It was really fun. We saw all the machinery that was used there. There were stones that were used to grind the oats. But you hah to grind them by hand. There were two tour guides. Their names were Tom and Sandy.
I had Sandy for the tour. She was really nice. There was a gallery of art there. When Tom and Sandy found the building all the machinery was in there. After the tour inside we went outside and met two men who were weaving coffins out of willow sticks. On our way home we stopped for a few minutes at Shannon Harbour where we looked at the old hotel. Everybody had a great day and we all really enjoyed ourselves.

By Heather Moran in 4th Class