Plank Road: Cobh

The streets of Cork are really quiet on a Sunday morning. We walked from our apartment to the train station to catch the 9:00 a.m. departure to Cobh (pronounced Cove), which is a short half hour journey. There were very few passengers on the train, and even fewer stayed on as far as Cobh.

Cobh is a fishing town on a small island in the harbour of Cork. It is a natural, deep water harbour that saw a lot of Irish emigration. This would have been a place of heartbreak, as parents and relatives would have bid a final farewell to their loved ones, knowing they would never see them again. During the famine years, and up to 1950, about 3 million Irish left from Cobh.

Cobh was also the final port of call for the Titanic, which sat in the harbour, while 123 passengers took the tender ships PS Ireland and PS America out to the Titanic to board. Tender ships were smaller ships that took passengers and supplies from the port to the ship.

There is a Titanic Memorial Garden in Cobh that overlooks the final anchorage of the Titanic in Cork Harbour, and the garden commemorates the 123 passengers that embarked from Cobh. Of the 123 passengers, 77 died in the waters of the Atlantic.

It was a beautiful morning with virtually no wind and sunny skies when we were in Cobh. We had the most fun talking to the locals who were out and about on the streets. The old men are always the most animated, the most interesting, the most opinionated, and we love talking to them. The people of Cobh are very friendly.

On one particular street, we noticed a lot of people carrying something wrapped in foil. When we walked past a doorway, there was a sign indicating that a girls sporting team was having a cake sale. Given the Irish love of cakes, the sale was doing a brisk trade.

We caught the train back to Cork and went for a tasty latte, then did our shopping for flight food in preparation for our flight on Monday. Since the majority of airline food is inedible, we make sure we have our own food supply.

Tonight we will pack up and then walk quite a distance to catch a bus to Dublin in the morning. The regular bus line is still on strike so we had to book with the company that operates the airport bus. We opted to book a hotel near the airport, so this bus will take us to the airport where we will then catch the free shuttle to the hotel.

The tenders departed from this pier to the Titanic