799 Irish Oddities; Viking Sights; Cycling the Silk Road

·52 min·4 clips

Three men drove from Dublin to smash a moving Virgin Mary statue in front of a crowd, ending a national sensation.

1. Travel with Rick Steves episode 799 covers Irish folk curiosities, Scandinavian Viking heritage sites, and a 6,000-mile bicycle journey across the historic Silk Road. 2. Brinsley McNamara, who posts as Weird Ireland on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, joins from County Westmeath to discuss his book Weird Ireland; Oslo-based licensed guide Paul Johansen, who co-researched the Rick Steves Scandinavia guidebook, covers Viking sites; and Canadian explorer Kate Harris, author of Lands of Lost Borders, describes biking from Turkey to India. 3. The episode's core thesis is that off-the-beaten-path cultural phenomena — moving statues, Viking burial mounds, Silk Road desert crossings — reveal dimensions of travel that standard itineraries miss. 4. The 1985 Summer of the Moving Marys began when a woman tending a grotto in Ballinspittle, County Cork reported a Virgin Mary statue moving; within a week, thousands were arriving nightly with camera crews, and the phenomenon spread to statues across multiple counties by October. 5. The event ended abruptly in October 1985 when three men drove from Dublin, smashed the Ballinspittle statue with hammers in front of a crowd, and drove away; they were arrested shortly after but served no prison time, and the statue was repaired by its original maker who was still alive. 6. The Holy Stump of Rathkeel, County Limerick appeared in 2009 when maintenance workers cutting a tree trunk saw what looked like the Virgin Mary in the wood grain; crowds prayed at it for weeks before it was vandalized with graffiti, though it remains standing today. 7. McNamara notes that the Catholic Church was notably reluctant to endorse either the moving statues or the holy stump as miraculous, a consistent institutional stance across both events. 8. The annual Pocfada Championships in County Louth require competitors to drive a hurling ball across a five-kilometer mountain range using a hurling stick, with the winner determined by fewest strikes rather than speed; McNamara calls it a once-a-year, one-place-in-the-world event. 9. Loftus Hall on the Hook Peninsula in County Wexford carries a legend in which a shipwreck survivor welcomed inside was revealed to have goat hooves; the figure then turned to fire and shot through the ceiling, and the hall remained a popular ghost-tourism destination until recently closing. 10. Paul Johansen explains that the Viking Age spans roughly the late 700s to 1066, ending at the Battle of Stamford Bridge where Norwegian Viking Harald the Ruthless was defeated attempting to conquer England. 11. Johansen describes the transition from plundering to trading as pragmatic: 'What do you do when you can't steal it? Then you trade instead,' as European coastal communities grew better defended against raids. 12. The word Russia is traced in the episode to the Swedish Viking tribe the Rus from the area of Roslage, and Normandy to the Northmen Vikings who settled there; Johansen notes Vikings also reached Constantinople. 13. The Oslo Viking Ship Museum remains closed and will reopen in 2027 as the Museum of the Viking Age, three times larger, containing three original ships and one of the world's largest Viking artifact collections, still located at Bygdøy. 14. Johansen recommends the Stockholm Historical Museum's collection of 2,500 Viking objects and the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum in Denmark — about an hour from Copenhagen — as the best current alternatives, with the Roskilde site featuring an outdoor working shipyard. 15. Approximately 29 stave churches survive in Norway, mostly in fjord country on the western side; Johansen notes they were built with Viking craftsmanship and often feature both Christian symbols and dragon heads, reflecting the transition from paganism to Christianity. 16. Kate Harris biked through 10 countries over 10 months covering approximately 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles), starting in Turkey and ending in Kashmir, northern India, looping through China. 17. Harris describes visa logistics across Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan — as 'an elaborate game of chess' because each country assigned fixed entry and exit dates; the only embassy issuing Chinese tourist visas in Central Asia was in Uzbekistan, making their route through Uzbekistan critical. 18. The tone across all three segments is conversational and exploratory, with Rick playing the curious generalist asking clarifying questions; McNamara is dry and deadpan, Johansen authoritative and precise, Harris reflective and literary. 19. Travelers interested in folklore, medieval history, or long-distance adventure travel will find each segment substantive. 20. Listeners seeking destination-specific practical trip planning with hotel and restaurant recommendations will not find it here.

As heard by us

Irish oddities, Viking artifacts, and Silk Road night rides make for a brisk, curious travel sampler.

Travel with Rick Steves moves through places where travel gets agreeably strange: the moving Marys of County Cork, Viking traces in Scandinavia, and Kate Harris's bicycle journey along the Silk Road.

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For when you want a trip that starts in Ireland and ends under Uzbek stars.

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