An Ireland travel story featuring Newgrange and some questionable ethics
Racing from Clonmacnoise to Newgrange, we sped through serpentine roads, the scenery a blur of emerald greens and ancient stone walls, the dashboard clock counting down the miles as we chased the last tour of the day. A wrong turn—and a gut-punch 20-minute delay—threatened our mission, but Ireland, as it so often does, had its own ideas.

Upon reaching the Newgrange visitor center, a flicker of hope propelled us to the ticket counter. There, the stone-faced ticket maven delivered the crushing blow with a barely concealed smirk: no more tickets for the day. Once again, Newgrange eluded me. This ancient marvel had slipped through my fingers on three previous trips to the Emerald Isle, and our tight itinerary wouldn’t allow us to stay another day. It felt like yet another heart-wrenching missed opportunity, another box on the bucket list stubbornly left unchecked.

*Beneath the grass-topper, a 19m (62ft) long inner passage leads to a cruciform chamber with a corbelled roof—the chamber within has been waterproof for over 5,000 years.*

*Kerbstones, many of which are richly decorated with megalithic art.*

*The exterior is faced with bright white quartz, with darker rounded stones, creating a striking contrast in color and texture.*

Newgrange, a crown jewel among the ancient passage tombs in the Boyne Valley, was constructed around 3200 BC during the Neolithic era, predating Egypt’s pyramids by six centuries. Newgrange’s striking exterior, adorned with white quartzite painstakingly hauled from Wicklow over 40 miles away, gleams brilliantly—a feat of prehistoric determination and logistics. Over 200,000 tons of earth and stone form an impressive grassy mound 250 feet in diameter and 40 feet high. Encircling the structure are dozens of kerbstones, each about nine feet long and weighing five tons, intricately carved with enigmatic spirals that still baffle modern scholars. A guide leads visitors deep into the tomb, navigating a narrow 60-foot passageway to a cross-shaped central chamber beneath a 20-foot-high dome, an Atlas Obscura-type space buried under millennia of earth and human ambition.

As we made our way toward the exit, an older man cut across the lobby, clearly clocking our dejection before we said a word. “Need tickets?” he asked, his eyes twinkling with mischief.

This older man—a Catholic priest and teacher from a Belfast college—explained that four of his students had missed the field trip, leaving spots open on the final tour. Four spots. Just what we needed.

To pull off our little plan, the four of us—two in our 50s and our companions in their 70s—would need to pose as college students. Sure. Completely believable.

Had we not been delayed by our navigational error, this perfectly timed encounter would never have happened. To our astonishment, he and one of our group even shared mutual friends in a nearby town. Kismet. And so, we became college students for a few hours. The ticket maven, noticeably less amused this time, steamed as we waved and walked past her, boarding the tour bus with our newly adopted college field trip. You know, you’re never too old for a little continuing education.