Wills Walkers: May 2023

The first thing I must comment on is the weather here in Ireland. Beautiful one day and perfect the next, we have never seen the sky so blue and the days so warm. The locals are loving it. Lots of sunburnt people around though. Upon leaving Veronica's we spent a couple of hours in Bantry, a beautiful little village on the bay.

We arrived on market day so the town was packed with people, including lots of visitors from a cruise ship. After wandering around the market we found a lovely craft shop with a small cafe for morning tea.

Allan did a bit of busking of a different sort to pay for morning tea! The craft shop was very tempting but we do have a weight allowance for our luggage, so we moved on to Glenngariff and took a short boat ride to Garinish Island.

Passed a colony of seals sunning themselves on our way out.

Garinish Island is a beautiful Italianate garden which was established many years ago and is now run by the National Trust. After lunch we sailed back and continued our journey to Killarney.

Ladies View is a popular stopover to catch a glimpse across to the lakes.

We arrived at Aghadoe View Bed and Breakfast, just outside of Killarney, late afternoon and were greeted by Mike, a lovely, softly spoken Irishman who drops clever little humourous comments every now and then.

Our accomodation is appropriately named. The view from our bedroom window overlooked the lakes of Killarney. It has been most enjoyable to watch the clouds rolling over the hills of McGillacuddy Reeks. After settling in we enjoyed a beautiful evening meal at the local Brassiere. Graham said this was our celebration together for our 50th wedding anniversary. The food was beautiful but our waiter's attitude changed towards us when he realised we didn't give him a tip.

Allan enjoyed a seafood platter and I loved my risotto. A wonderful end to a wonderful day.

Hello again, this time from Ireland. I was very tired after the walk and needed a few days to recover before taking to the blog again.

We left Mike and Diane from The Old Vicarage in Llangurig, the perfect hosts who couldn't do enough for us, even cooked us a meal on our final night. A taxi picked us up and drove us to Birmingham Airport where we had to fly on an international flight to Dublin because England is no longer in the EU. Then another taxi took us to our hotel in Dublin. We did Dublin in a few hours before bed. It's daylight here until about 10:30 so plenty of time to wander. Allan and Graham collected our hire car early on Wednesday morning, we packed all our gear into it and off we went on the next leg of our adventure.

Our first stop was Cashel to visit the Castle on the Rock of Cashel. This impressive site has been both military and ecclesestical and all have abandoned it because it's such a windy, dreary place, especially in winter. It really amazes me how these structures were built all those years ago and so much is still standing today.

Our first ever attempt at a selfie.. maybe we'll stick to handing the camera to someone else to take the photo!

Lunch and a wander around Cashel before driving to Cork. We got stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway so did our best to find another way to Veronica's self contained apartments 'Curragh Farm Cottages'.

Our bedroom!

Mum and her new foal. Just gorgeous.... We did enjoy meeting Veronica, our host. I've never met a farmer dressed in stilettos before. She explained things to us but we had great difficulty understanding her. She had a very broad accent and talked very fast. Veronica didn't provide any written instructions for anything so cooking breakfast the first morning was time consuming! But she provided a lovely home for us for two nights and her advice about the area was very helpful.

Kinsale was Veronica's recommendation for dinner. She said we wouldn't need to book but this lovely village sitting on the bay was very busy, but Dino's fish and chips hit the spot. Fishy Fishy was Veronica's choice but they were booked. All we could do was enjoy their quotes.

Allan got talking to a local man and couldn't get away.

Kinsale has some quaint streets and houses. Overall a very lovely little village. The next day we headed for Cork to visit the famous English Market that the Queen opened some years ago. Lonely Planet said it was unmissable but we were disappointed, South Melbourne Market beats it hands down. So we happily left Cork and drove to Cobh (pronounced Cove). What a delight. This small town with a most magnificent church which towers over the pretty houses and the bay.