Ireland
photos and postcard gallery
Once again we caught the train from Gobowen and met up with David the man who had helped us with the train tickets, he was very informative and turns out he taught at Trinity College in Dublin, so we made a pledge to visit there and see the Book of Kells. We arrived back at Manchester Airport and caught our flight to Belfast which took one hour and was a smooth flight.
We picked up our little car without any trouble and Pat was the designated driver, seeing as I skippered the boat. It couldn't have been easy for her driving on the opposite side to what she was used to, but she did a magnificent job of getting us safely around. We headed up the beautiful coast and saw our mandatory castle, travelled a little further up to stay in a bed and breakfast. The folk in Ireland are unbelievably helpful and the landlord drove us up the road to a lovely pub for dinner.
The weather for the first time was wet the next day, so we decided to head down to Lurgan, the place where our mothers were born, and lived in Hill St, the main reason for going to Northern Ireland. Their grandparents were John and Mary Lunn. We had a took around and had lunch there, then headed off to Lisburn, the heart of Irish Linen. It has a beautiful exhibition which we were interested to see. From there we headed to Newry near the border to see some friends on our way through to Dublin. I was very impressed with Newry, it has such charm. We stayed at another B & B whose landlady couldn't have been kinder. She opened a bottle of wine for us on arrival, how great was that! and allowed us to use her washing machine, iron etc. She even found out how to get to my friends place and drove ahead of us to show us the next day. We headed out of Newry and went around the beautiful Mountains of Mourne, the most magnificent scenery, and along the coast in a loop back then headed south to Dublin.
We stayed at a very charming
place named Malahide right
near the marina so we could catch the bus in rather than drive. We stayed
there two nights at another B & B. In Dublin we took the hop on hop
off bus to see the many sights including Trinity College and the Book
of Kells and on a less academic note, the Guinness
Brewery where we enjoyed a pint of Guinness. We left late to go
back to Malahide in time for dinner. We explored the village the next
morning and the headed back to Newry after lunch. The meals served in
Ireland were humungus but we seemed to demolish them without to much
trouble! We booked into a B & B and the young landlord was an avid irish music
lover who played in one of the local pubs, he suggested we go there after
dinner. We went to the Canal
Court Hotel for dinner with my friends, a beautiful old ornate hotel.
After which we trooped over to McSwiggins pub to enjoy the music, it was
a great night with lots of memories being re-hashed.
We left Newry slightly hung over to head back to Belfast, once again we decided to stay just out of the city and catch the train in. We stayed in a village named Holywood, after going to the cop shop to see if they knew of any places to stay. They couldn't have been more helpful, ringing around and getting rates for us, giving us directions and even offering free accomodation..but as it didn't come highly recommended we declined the offer!! We stayed at a beautiful 200 year old house, make that mansion! After settling in we caught the train to Belfast and once again did the (newly acquired) hop on hop off bus. It was a great source of amusement to the locals. We booked our tickets to see the theatre play of the "Full Monty" and it was hilarious.
The next day was the end of our trip and we took the car back to the airport on the smell of an oily rag, it was so economical, and caught our flight back to London where we had two more days. We saw Le Miserable's that night at the theatre and caught the train to Westbury the next day where friends picked us up and took us to beautiful Salisbury Cathedral where the Magna Carta is and Stonehenge after which we had a couple of pints and great conversation in a lovely old thatched pub in Pewsy. We caught the expensive (34 pounds each) train back to Paddington and then the tube to Kensington. The next day we sadly parted to go our different ways. Me to Dubai and Pat home to the US.