Interesting Maps

Well it said 12,987 in a 5km circle for me, which is impossible. You could count the individual houses quite easily and the only reasonable centre of population is cut in half by the 5km line, and it has a (scattered, rural) population of 1,200. I'd guess that if you got to 3,000 in a generous estimate that would be about it. It also said there were 3 bus stops and 2 train stops. I am pretty sure there are no bus stops and certainly no train stops!

I reduced it to 3km (minimum you can do) and it said there were 494 people which is a much more likely figure (and no train stops).

I tried it on Tramore in Co. Waterford and it said in a 5km circle there are about 11.5 thousand which is about right. Though I don't know where the train station is that they claim.

Needs more bike paths

You'd think if herself was going on holiday, she would pick somewhere other than Mayo.

Ended up as far as Merv in Turkmenistan, the furthest point from Rome itself is supposedly an island off the coast of Saudi Arabia.

Dal Riata . 6 century Gaelic kingdom. I’d love to go to the western islands of Alba . I knew lads from Donegal ( gaeltacht ) who would travel over to Scotland. Basically the same country to them.

This map shows the language distribution in Scotland at this time - 4 different languages were spoken. It is not even known what language the Picts spoke.

Yes been out to the outer Hebrides a couple of times - really is a different country. Southern islands are Catholic and northern ones "Wee Free".

I read a book that had interesting points on this. At some point in history there was a divergence between Irish and British Celtic - how big this divergence was and when it happened is not known. The book also said that the current quite big divergence between Irish and Welsh occurred around the 3rd century as a result of the Roman conquest - hundreds of words and the sentence structure were introduced into Welsh as a result of this. As the Picts were not conquered by Rome and were cut off from the rest of Britain by Roman walls, it is unlikely that the changes in Welsh would have been reflected in Pictish. However there was significant interaction between the Picts and Dal Riata (ie Columba's missionaries). Perhaps this resulted in Pictish at this time starting to converge with Irish. So possibly the Picts at this time spoke an old P Celtic language with no Latin influences but with significant Gaelic influences

Don't really know but it is interesting.

………..

Yes this is the kingdom of Dal Riata.

The Wee Free's are like the Church of Scotland, only more so - here is an example of the differences in the islands.