Back to Ireland – 5 April 18 June 2018

Welcome back! Sorry for the long delay in posting but I found it impossible to maintain this site while travelling. A recent knee operation has forced me to stay still for a while so I’m going to take the opportunity to bring it up to date. As I will be relying on my diary and camera to jog my memory, it will be mostly photos of our visits to more of Ireland; parts of England and Scotland; Holland, Belgium and northern France; and a different part of Singapore on the way home. Hope you enjoy the trip!

 

Up the mountains

We enjoyed spending times with friends and family in the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains, including a visit to Avoca Mills and the Meeting of the Waters. It was great to be able to have a look around the mill which is still working – the oldest working mill in Ireland I think and free to enter. Afternoon tea in the coffee shop wasn’t bad either!

 

Cobh to Clare

or the scenic route from Dublin to Doolin

 

It was a beautiful sunny day when we left Dublin and we had a lovely drive to Cork to visit my cousin and her family. We took a detour to Cobh on the way so as not to arrive too early. By this time the wind had started to get up and rain was threatening.

Next morning the rain was horizontal so we enjoyed a forced rest-day indoors with good company, good food and a bit of forward planning for our trip to Normandy later.

 

 

We drove into Cork the following morning and had a walk around the English Market and St Fin Barre’s Cathedral before getting on the road to Tralee via the Dingle Peninsula; the ruins of a Celtic stone settlement from 500 BC; and, Slea Head.

 

 

It was so bitterly cold and wet in Tralee that night, I nearly didn’t stop to photograph this mural, but now I’m glad I did.

 

We visited Ardfert Cathedral on the way to Talbert to get the ferry, then on to Kilrush, Kilkee, Doonbeg, Quilty, Spanish Point and Lahinch.

It was a short drive from Lahinch to Doolin. Lucky we didn’t want to see the Cliffs of Moher on the way as they were shrouded in rain clouds. Visibility didn’t improve throughout our stay but we’ve been there before so no great loss.

After checking into our accommodation at McGann’s Pub, we caught up with the family at the Doolin Hotel for our grand-nephew’s post-Confirmation function –  something like a wedding reception with the bride and groom replaced by 100-plus children and their families, all in fine attire.

We had dinner at McGann’s that night with some of the family, then enjoyed the session afterwards.

 

 

We drove through the Burren on the way back to Dublin.

Next stop: parts of England and Scotland.

 

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Back to Ireland – 5 April 18 June 2018

Tuesday 24 April 2018

Two and a half weeks into the trip and it’s still wet and miserable. Summer happened last Saturday. The sun came out. So did the shorts and short-sleeved tops, revealing an unsightly amount of bare lily-white skin. I’m still cringing.

We did manage to get out a couple of times, first to Dubllin Castle to see the art exhibition ‘Coming Home: Art & the Great Hunger’ a visual interpretation of the Famine with artworks from the 1830s to the present. 

The Great Hunger (1845-52) was the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The conflicting need to remember and the desperate need to forget, result in an extraordinarily moving exhibition… Curated by Niamh O’Sullivan.

The second exhibition, ‘Caution! Fragile – Irish Glass – Tradition in Transition’ was at the National Museum of Ireland in Collins Barracks. This place was an absolutely fascinating treasure trove. We went for the glass exhibition but there was so much more. We spent hours there but still didn’t see all of the exhibits, about thirty, so I hope we get the chance to go back.

We also got to catch up with some family and friends.

Link

Thursday 12 April. 2018

It’s a week since we left Darwin, flying to Dublin via Singapore and Abu Dhabi, it was an uneventful trip.

During our 10-hour stopover in Singapore we visited the Kampong Glam area and Haji Lane, places we hadn’t heard of on previous trips and well worth the trip.

Singapore airport, Changi, is interesting enough in itself with an indoor orchid garden and rooftop sunflower garden at Terminal 2.

Our Ethiad flight landed in Dublin 30 minutes early and we had no delays with collecting our luggage or getting through Imigration, which would have been great except that without an Irish SIM card I couldn’t phone my brother who was picking us up. I had to use the free Dublin Airport wifi to message our daughter Aisling in Sydney, who messaged Barry in Dublin, who eventually came to get us after being parked behind the airport plane-watching, waiting for the Ethiad plane to land! The weather was bleak – cold, grey and raining.

A week later it hasn’t improved. The only place we’ve been other than grocery shopping is the Phoenix Park which we drove through yesterday. We saw a couple of herds of deer quite close to the road but didn’t get out of the car, it was too cold.