Archaeology 360: Trim Castle, Co. Meath

Trim Castle sits on the banks of the River Boyne and is mostly famous as one of the locations where Mel Gibson's 1995 movie Braveheart was set. At various times in the movie Trim stood in for the City of York and parts of London. This is unfortunate as the castle should be better know as one of the locations where Samuel Fuller's 1980 movie The Big Red One, starring Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill, was filmed. Here the castle stands in for one in Germany during World War II. Even then, it only appears in the 2004 version of the movie known as 'The Reconstruction' that tried to better recreate Fuller's vision of the movie, before it was unsympathetically re-edited by Warner Bros., but I digress. The castle has a long building history that stretches from the 12th century onwards. You can read all about it (and the movies) on the Wiki page [here].

I’ve compiled the tour into a consecutive YouTube playlist [here], or you can access each video clip individually here:

Part 1 [0:11]

Part 2 [0:13]

Part 3 [0:12]

Part 4 [0:16]

Part 5 [0:12]

Part 6 [0:15]

Unfortunately, the camera was playing up & I wasn't having a great time with it, but I've managed to salvage what I can for your education and entertainment. My distress was elevated because on my journey to Trim I was driving along happily through the countryside when I suddenly found that I was being followed. I looked in my mirror to discover the right behind me was a liveried Garda car, replete with a brace of well-fed peelers in the front seats. I don't believe that I'm paranoid, I just have a well-honed distrust of fascists. This goes back to my undergraduate days when I was 'invited' to assist the Gardaí with their enquiries ... I've not felt the same way about them since, but I digress. Anyway, we're on a lonely backroad somewhere in rural Meath and I'm sure they're just there accidentally and that after a junction or two, they'll go their way and I'll go mine. But they don't! They follow me through the countryside and into Trim and through the town and right up to the castle. Every turn I made, they made it with me. There is no way that they're not following me. I can only speculate as to why they've not attempted to pull me in, but this continuous following feels like harassment. I keep following the GPS to the castle and I find the little carpark beside the site. They pull into a space right beside me. My mental state at this point may be best described as 'wildly paranoid'. What do they want? Worse than that ... What do they know? I had no option but to sit there, hands on the steering wheel, and wait for the inevitable. But the inevitable never came! I looked up to see my pursuers calmly ambling away from their vehicle to the police station on the other side of the street. Although I had escaped, I don't think I recovered my equilibrium as I hadn't realised that the views of the castle are even more spectacular when viewed from outside of the walls and only understood how beautiful the site is as I drove away. Again, it's another good reason to come visit the site again and enjoy the spectacular views and the gentle police pursuits through the countryside.

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