Mischief at Tintern Abbey

Tintern Abbey

All over Ireland are Abbeys. We visited tons more Abbeys than Castles! You would think that it would get boring to visit Abbey's because they are just a bunch of ruins of old Catholic churches. But each one is unique and has its own history. Our favorite one was Tintern Abbey. It wasn't the biggest or most interesting Abbey. But we got to do a little exploring there, or at least Ryan did!

We usually didn't take the tours because we liked to go explore the place on our own and we could just read the little pamphlet while we went through. Also we didn't always have time to wait for the next tour because there were so many places we wanted to visit in one day, and it was much more fun on our own.

There's a lot of those hidden staircases in a lot of Abbey's, usually they were blocked off by big barred doors or something. I always wished I could go venture up them and see what was beyond the stairs. Well here at Tintern Abbey we got our wish.

At the end of our little personal tour, we were about to leave when I noticed a big metal door off to the side. I wondered if it was locked, I twisted the knob and it opened! It was a display room, they had a few models of the Abbey in there, and off to the side we found a midget staircase, and it wasn't blocked off like most of them are. I'm not sure how to explain it, but this one was just covered by a mesh. Like you can see in the picture. If you look closely you can kind of see some mini stairs, (hence why we called them the midget staircase) I started feeling mischievous and rebellious and I tugged on the mesh. It pretty much just fell off! Ryan got all excited and I had to give him a boost up so he could climb up there. I was too scared to go up there because what if someone came up here? Plus I figured there were tons of spiders and lots of dust, and I didn't want to get dust all in my nose and eyes, or else I'd get terrible allergies for the rest of the day. Also, how was I going to get up there if Ryan needed a leg up, and he had hardly any room to walk around in there, let alone try to stretch down and help me up. I figured I'd let him have the adventure and tell me about it, without me suffering allergies. So ANYWAYS, he walked up the stairs, taking pictures from different views, and they turned out to be cool pictures. He saw a dead bat in there so he took a picture of that. He also said he saw a huge, HUGE spider that was all clear with black joints. I thought it sounded gross looking and I'm glad I didn't get to see that!



When he climbed back down he had this big grin from ear to ear and he told me all about his little adventure up those stairs. We got a big kick out of it, everyone else might think its just dumb we got all excited 'cause he got to see what was beyond the staircase, but trust me it was great. While he was walking around up there I started getting nervous thinking, "What if someone walks up here!?" So I put the mesh back on for a minute until I could hear Ryan walking back down and he saw the mesh there and said "Hey take that off so I can get down!!" When we walked back down to the main desk, I asked the man behind the desk what those stairs led to. He told us that they led all the way up into the bell tower, and that it was usually a passageway for the servants so they could warn the entire Abbey if they were about to be attacked. He was a big guy himself and he said even he could squeeze through that tiny hole!

I love that picture of Ryan right here! His cute, but mischievous grin! Look at how tiny and narrow that hole in the wall is! I can't imagine trying to squeeze through there and run up the stairs to warn everyone about an attack or whatever else they used the bell for.

That was our great adventure at Tintern Abbey. You may find it silly, but to us it was another story in our honeymoon book!