Ireland With Dumbo Day Nine – 15 May 2015

This place also has a fish of the day breakfast – hurrah!  Cod today and we both try it – served with tomato shallots and herb dressing.

Gloomy looking day with a poor weather forecast, so we decided to drive out to Dingle today.  Indeed it starts raining or more or less as soon as we set off and is a very wet on the road to Dingle –still we see nice scenery on that peninsula.

We take some pictures in the Harbour and then drive back to the town proper, parking in Dykesgate just below a quirky music/toy/cake shop, where we hear the dulcet tones of a Tipperary man who has migrated to Dingle via an English prep school, following a conspiracy between his parents and grandmother.  We buy a toy for Penny but failed to procure ukulele strings.

Dingle Town
Dingle Town

We walked the town looking at art and craft shops and try with difficulty to find good walking socks to help relieve Ged’s blisters.  We stop at a rather sad pub with an old arthritic and unfortunate looking landlady.  We also failed to buy Daisy a hat.

People all incredibly helpful and full of kindly advice – all avenues points to the Mountain Man’s shop for those socks.  When we get there he’s closed until 15:00 so we take refuge in the tourist office where we pick up some useful information for Angela.  Then back to Mountain Man just as he is opening up, but with a multitude of “fecks” he tells us that his the supplier/delivery people have let him down re his impending order of men’s socks.

So now all avenues point towards Tralee.  We travel home via Tralee stopping at the recommended Landers’ (nice lady in McKenna’s referred us) where we both bought Bridgedale socks at okay prices.

Then back to Aghadoe Heights, and satnav coming into its own by helping us avoid some nasty traffic and a blocked road resulting from an accident.  Although we again ended up going via “Aghadoe Heights” side street in town.  Ged soon learnt how to scrub a daft reference from a my places on the satnav.

On return, we went for a swim, a Jacuzzi and then to the spa trying a variety of hammam, laconium and eucalyptus steam thingies.  Met an English/German combo from London who are due to party in the penthouse tomorrow night – seems we were not invited.

Dinner in the formal restaurant.  Shared a tiny crab starter, then Daisy had coquilet dish, I had a duck dish –all a bit “hotel standard fare”, but worth a try – Daisy found the mash bland.  Then a cheesecake to share afterwards, very nice.

Photographs from the whole of our trip to Ireland are gathered in an album on Flickr, click here.