When we left Dingle we headed north west up the coast. Again we drove through some lovely little villages and towns. We spent the day mostly driving and stopping to look at some of the ruins and celtic crosses which pop up everywhere. Another thing we saw a lot of were all the shrines to the Virgin Mary – nearly every little town has one, places where you can stop and pray if you want to. Also, a lot of the houses we passed had religious statues in their front room windows. Obviously a lot of people feel very strongly about their religion. Being Sunday, all the shops were closed, including café’s, and bakeries. Again, this was obviously due to Sunday being the Sabbath, but coming from a place where shops are open nearly every day of the year, including Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day, this came as a bit of surprise to me. That afternoon we arrived in Clifden, another gorgeous seaside resort and decided to stay the night there. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day – even hot enough for me to take my jacket off! The pub across the road from the B&B was packed, so we joined the hordes of people sitting outside in the square having a pint. Clifden is, at this stage anyway, still unspoilt, but looking at all the building work going on, mainly apartment blocks, it looks like it’s heading for a boom in the holiday population very soon! After a pint we went for a walk around the town, then had dinner at the pub. A very pleasant afternoon. The next day we visited Kylemore Abbey – an absolutely stunning girl’s school run by Benedictine nuns. We had watched a program last year which highlighted Kylemore Abbey and decided we would go there when we got to Ireland. Kylemore Abbey started life in the late 1800’s as a private home of a very wealth English man, and the Benedictine nuns bought it in 1924 and turned it into a school, and have opened some of the rooms to the public. There is also a beautiful gothic church on the property which looks like a mini cathedral. The location of the abbey is so gorgeous it takes your breath away when you first see it. I can’t do justice to it – so I’ll let the photo’s do the talking!
We spent about 3 hours looking around the abbey, church and the walled gardens. This place is a must see for people visiting this part of Ireland! Later that day we arrived in Northern Ireland, and stayed the night at a really nice pub with accommodation. The next day, driving further north, we arrived at the Giant’s Causeway which has magnificent rock formations. Again, the pictures are much better at describing it than any words I can come up with!
About lunchtime we arrived at the little town of Bushmill. Now, as you all know, I don’t drink very much (you do know that, don’t you?) but my 2 favourite tipples are whisky/whiskey (depending on whether it’s Scottish or Irish, and I like both) and red wine, (which I’m sure we’ll have something to write about when we get to France and Italy), so of course there was no question that we had to do the Bushmills Distillery tour!
Now for some reason David thought that, it being a small distillery, this stop would only take about an hour so we could do the tour then have lunch and be on the way again (he must have been tired from all the driving!).
There was a tour just about to start when we got there and we joined a group of 10 or so other people. The tour was really good and the tour guide, Petra, had the very Irish gift of the gab. At the end of the tour, before Petra even had the words “I need 2 volunteers …” out of her mouth, my hand was in the air! I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to taste a couple of whiskeys. In the bar, my fellow taste tester Jim and I had to sit at a table where there were little cups of whiskey laid out (8 cups!) and we had to taste each of them, determining the differences in smoothness, quality etc. Jim was a bit slow, I’d finished testing way before him, must have been because he was an elderly gentleman and his reflexes had slowed down or something. There was a mixture of scotch and Irish whiskeys, and they were all good, so I had trouble working out my favourite. Then I had a (big) sample of the 12 year old Bushmill which was really good, until I tried the 16 year old which was great. Now I’d found my favourite! By the time we’d finished tasting, having lunch and talking to people it was time to go. I thought that was a pretty good way of spending an hour, until David told me we’d been there for over 3 hours. Amazing how time flies when you’re having fun.
For some reason I was a wee bit tired. Time for an afternoon nap, so I suggested we find somewhere nearby to stop for the night. Easy enough to do you would think, but I forgot all about the roadworks happening over nearly all of Ireland! It was 7pm before we managed to find somewhere to stop. We booked in to Seaview House in Larne, a really nice B&B run by a Scottish lady called Marion Muir. It was an early night for me – I think I was asleep by 9pm.
The following day we decided to have a nice lazy day, so we caught up with the washing, walked around the town, had a picnic lunch in a park by the harbour and just chilled out for the day. That night we met up with some of the other guests from the B&B at the pub and had dinner with them. A very pleasant day.
The next day we headed south towards Belfast, stopping at Lisburn to see the Irish Linen exhibition which was excellent.
We drove around Belfast for a while, but because we were due to catch the ferry on Saturday we decided to drive a bit further towards Dublin before stopping for the night.
The last 2 nights in Ireland were spent just outside Dublin where we could easily hop on a bus into the city. We had a great day in Dublin, using the hop on hop off city tour bus to move around so we could see all the sights we were interested in. Two of the sights that were excellent were the Guiness Storehouse, where they do a tour of the Guiness production facilities, and where you can buy merchandise, some of which isn’t available anywhere else in the world, and the Brazen Head pub, the oldest pub in Ireland, where we had a couple of pints and lunch.
