Decided to go to Shannonvale for walk this morning, as it is very breezy on the coast. A lovely walk – then out to Roaringwater river for a long walk and sight of Jeremy Iron’s Castle, Kilcoe. Another super walk, then back just in time for Rasul Therapy, two types of Dead Sea mud, very nice. I sunbathe in the solarium after and Daisy swam.
Took dinner in the pub again. Daisy had Caesar salad and chips, I had a wonderful baked salmon and mussel sauce with smoke salmon potatoes – very pleasant evening.
Woke up to better looking weather. Wonderful breakfast of monkfish. Following yesterday’s rain – proper wet stuff – I choose a higher head walk for the morning. Moloney’s Strands and Dunwerley. We need a mixture of satnav and Ged nav to find the place.
Which way is the sea?
That combo works- it’s a lovely walk – then back to Inchydoney Island for tea and then a beach walk on the strands and dunes. It’s very windy and Daisy nearly gives up but perseveres.
Then back ready for dinner quite early – we eat in the main restaurant tonight. I have prawn bisque, Daisy has a starter of pork belly with quinoa, followed by three fishes main. I had a chicken main. Daisy had almond and Seville orange desert, I had a hazelnut desert which had walnut in the ice cream rather than the advertised hazelnut. A quick swap with many apologies. Very good meal despite Helga’s warnings.
Not too early a start, headed off circa 10:45 after hearty breakfast. An iffy weather day. Daisy insists on continuing to do the driving so I can navigate. Good roads down to Cork/West Cork. Get some petrol at the last chance saloon on the motorway.
Get to Enniskeane and call Helga (Auberjonois), who explains that Enniskeane is her postal town, not really where she lives – perhaps she should have explained that to us earlier – but between her attempts at navigation (the hamlet name, Kilcolman, was no help for the satnav) and some common sense, we found her place soon enough.
The four photos that follow are from Janie’s iPhone while we were at Helga’s lovely place.
We spent a few hours enjoying a lovely smoked salmon lunch and then onto Inchydoney Island only 20 minutes or so further on from Kilcolman. It looks like a super place with very friendly staff. Plugged for a lighter meal in the pub of the hotel/spa, although the portion sizes were large. Daisy had an open sandwich of tiger prawns. I had “Singapore noodles” with duck confit legs and we shared a profiterole desert.
Hearty breakfast at Fitzwilliam, then off to do our own walking tour of Dublin.
First stop, the camera shop, where we got Daisy a pair of binoculars and soft case for her camera. Then on to the recommended gent shop, Louis Copeland, where Ged got himself properly togged out with trews and belts. While they were being altered, we did the rest of Grafton Street, O’Connell Street and looked at The Abbey and The Gate theatres, the cathedral and then back taking a short detour to McDaid’s for a quick drink.
Trying to look a bit James Joyce?
We grabbed the swag and dumped it at the hotel and then out again to look at the pictures around St Stephen’s Green – Janie took to Liz Leavey’s work and indeed Liz herself. Walked to Merrion Square and then back round the other side of Trinity supping coffee outdoors in a nice place and then buying a cardy for Daisy and a scarf for Ged. We visited at the Sheridan’s cheesemongers before returning to get dressed up for the evening.
Then off to walk to Bernard & Siobhan’s house, which is in the shadow of Lansdowne Road Aviva Stadium, Vavasour Square, southeast of town out towards Sandybanks. It took about 30 minutes to walk and they seem surprised we’d walked it despite the lovely weather.
We met the little ones and then headed off in a cab for a quick pub stop almost by the Merrion, O’Donoghue’s, and then on to L’Ecrivain restaurant for a fine meal. Lobster starter (apart from Daisy who had foie gras) then main course of turbot for Ged, pork for Daisy, some other fish for Bernard, chicken for Siobhan – who also had a chocolate desert but the rest of us felt full and just finished our wine. Cabs from Baggot Street home a full but very enjoyable day.
I’d booked the 11:50 ferry so there was no real rush to leave The Quay. We aimed for a 10:15 departure, managed 10:30 after a hearty smoked fishy breakfast.
Easy run to Holyhead though and enjoy the benefits of “club class”, being waved through onto the ferry ahead of the rest. It all seemed very well organised.
All aboard!
Club class threw food and drink at you, not that we needed it – note for our early morning return leg. A very gentle ride – less sway than a Palladino train – even though it was heaving with rain.
Arrived in very wet Dublin – trusty satnav taking us to the Fitzwilliam quite quickly. Surprisingly pokey room for the superior price, following a long wait for the room to be made ready – spent 1430 to 1530 chatting with Patrick the concierge. Also freezing cold room and this was explained as eco-policy to keep the heating off until 20:00 – agreed to turn it on at 18:00 and provide us with an oil radiator rather than the poxy fan heater they originally offered.
Feeling quite miserable, we ventured off in the rain to catch the Book of Kells before closing time. We wandered back via shops, Brown Thomas for example.
The radiator still hadn’t arrived by the time we got back, so I got onto the guest relations manager, Jaarko, who ran around sorting some stuff out for us and apologising profusely.
We took dinner in Citroen, the mezzanine restaurant, where the food was very good. Daisy had beef (steak-like) with the marrowbone and I had gigantic prawn skewers – no starter or desert – but Daisy had Irish coffee in the bar, while I finished off the wine. The Fitz insisted on picking up wine bill for our trouble earlier which was nice but we prefer to buy our own wine and have no trouble.
Voted this morning running into Michael Liebreich on the way (canvassing for the Tories outside the tube station) then on to the gym. Loaded up Dumbo with my things and set off to the house. Pottered about while Daisy got ready.
We set off just before 11.00 which wasn’t too bad. Straightforward drive to North Wales with pitstop and driver change over at the M6 toll service station. Daisy got the easier leg as it was heaving down with rain on the first leg.
The Quay, in Deganwy, near Conwy, is a lovely hotel and spa – by the time we settled in the sun was well and truly out so we sat on our lovely terrace. I even played my ukulele a little out there.
The view from our terrace
Took a suite so we had bags of room. Superb dinner the Quay too with a crab starter (which we shared) and both had a trio of porks (which we didn’t share) and shared a death by chocolate desert – surplus to requirements but very nice.
With my mother’s condition worsening over the autumn of 2014, we made no plans for a holiday proper but did plan at least to go walking in Ireland. After mum’s passing in early 2015, we briefly considered more ambitious plans but then thought better of it; I/we had been through enough and had lots still to sort out. The plan to walk in Ireland come springtime was still a sensible one.
Glossary for less-informed readers: Ged and Daisy are long-standing nicknames for me and Janie. Dumbo is my little Suzuki Jimny. He joined the family in September 2014; this trip to Ireland was his first serious journey with us.
We needed 10 days of complete rest and relaxation, so opted for Zighy Bay at the North-West tip of Oman. So “tippy”, it is actually much closer to Dubai than to Muscat, hence flying in to the Emirates and driving across to Zighy Bay.
Mike Smith had persuaded me to try playing the baritone ukulele a few weeks before and lent me such an instrument. I said I would get no chance to start before my holiday and was reluctant to take his instrument with me, but Mike assured me that he would not be fazed if anything happened to it. So I basically took up the instrument out there. Baby steps.
I’m not too sure what else I can say about this blissfully restful break.
We loved the place.
We played tennis pretty much every day. We swam in that little pool of ours. We took strolls.
We read quite a lot. I especially remember reading Joe Boyd’s book White Bicycles, but I read several others too. Perhaps you can spot the book pile in one of the videos.
I played around with that musical instrument, very early steps down that road.
We ate wonderful food. We locked away our mobile phones and pretty much didn’t look at them for 10 days.
But if anyone is really so interested they want to try and decipher my scrawl and check that I have really typed up what I might have really be trying to say, here are scans of the hand-written logs; Part One covers the period of the first photo album, Part Two…:
If you prefer to read the typed up journals illustrated with pictures, these are going up during November & December 2020
Rose early. Read, packed, took tea/coffee, showered and took breakfast.
Finish packing – said our fond farewells to all at Kaya Mawa.
McDonald took us to the airport where Cameron awaited us with just one other couple & the small plane, a Cessna Six (just about) seater. Nice couple Tom and Nicole have been in Zambia Mozambique. We should be travelling with them all the way to London I suspect but fortunately they are not like the Taylors.
Nicole scrunches into the back after long-legged Tom takes the front seat and we take the pair. We fly low and smoothly – Daisy takes pictures as does Tom.
It’s a bit bumpy on final descent (we had been warned) .
We have no formalities at the other end, as we’ve already cleared into Malawi, while the other two need to go through customs and border control. Meanwhile we collect our bags and are ably assisted through to immigration by our eager Wilderness rep, for whom a $5 tip seem to be transformative.
Security formalities at Lilongwe was a sticky affair but this time our SAA flight seems to be an on-time thing.
