Trekkin

Day 40 Thursday 30 June 2016

While in Waterford, what better way to start the day than visit the Waterford Crystal Glass Factory. We start in the visitor display area (at 8.30 am before it opened for the public) where we look at some very beautiful masterpieces. Some videos were played on the history & story of Waterford Crystal. Our tour guide starts by showing us the mould production area where the wooden moulds for special pieces are manufactured on a wood lathe to exacting measurements, for example, the Irish Open Golf Trophy. We then move on & watch the men blowing glass by pulling the molten glass out of the furnace on the end of a blowing stick & forming large crystal wine glasses free-form. It is amazing how quickly the 4 man team turn out a crystal wine glass. The next stage is where the rough edges are sanded smooth before heading into the marking area. This person has a very demanding job as he has to mark the cutting patterns on the glass objects with marker pen so that the crystal cutters have a guide to work with. The crystal marker & cutter must memorise at least a hundred different patterns – no small feat.

The next phase of the process is the most amazing, there are a team of men sitting in front of diamond plated cutting wheels & they are holding the glass objects by hand & using the spinning cutting wheels to cut the intricate patterns in the crystal glassware. Absolutely amazing watching them cut & how steady their hands & eyes are. We are then shown the area where special one-off pieces are hand-cut & see some objects being worked on, one is the NBA (American Basketball) trophy for next season. The last stage is where the glass is washed, cleaned & checked for any defects. All defective glassware is destroyed & put back into the furnace for re-use. No seconds for sale here. The glass furnaces used to be fired by wood, one of the trees the nearby forests were cut out, it is now all electric.

The tour finished, we are then led into the showroom, all the current range of Waterford Crystal is on display, absolutely beautiful. We spend ages wandering around the showroom admiring the work, most we like a lot, some not so much. The one-off piece that we liked the most was a crystal glass Irish harp made as a display piece – stunning.

After Waterford our next stop is the city of Kilkenny where our Tour Director leads us to an old Irish pub & we are met by an expert, Chunky O’Brien, in the true Irish national game of Hurling. He was very passionate about the game & showed us a video while explaining some of the few rules. It is a very rough contact sport played very fast by a bunch of madmen (or women) with big sticks hitting a little white hard ball (not golf). It was interesting to hear him talk so passionately. Chunky said that when a child (girl or boy) is born the husband takes a small hurling stick & places it in the crib, not give flowers for the Mrs. Afterwards we walked around the old town a bit before stopping for a bite to eat on the riverbank of the Nore River below the walls of Kilkenny Castle.

We walked around the every extensive grounds & gardens of Kilkenny Castle firstly before venturing inside & watching a video of the history of the castle. They have found some evidence of pre Norman dwelling, also there was a wooden castle there before the present stone castle was built by Strongbow who convinced (one way or another) the Irish King to give his daughter, Aoife in marriage to him. It is fortunate that it has been owned over the years by some very wealthy men who have maintained & expanded on the original structure before handing it to the Irish National Trust in the 1950s. The castle looks very impressive, the best so far in Ireland, not bad for a building that was built in 1195, over 800 years ago.

Dublin was our destination for today, a miserable, cold, grey & windy place greeted us. We checked in caught our breath, showered & readied ourselves for a dinner & cabaret show. This was at an old place called Taylors Three Rock, a thatch-roofed former farmhouse, 160 years old, continually used, but modified many times over the years. This could not have been more Irish than all of us hurrying from the coach to the Inn in a lovely Irish mist (I am really starting to think like an Irish.) The dinner was excellent with a glass of Guinness to wash it down, followed by a nice dessert topped off with an Irish coffee, this could become habit forming. The show was even better, a troupe of Irish dancers, 3 men & 3 women, A violinist/drummer, a whistle/flute/ Irish bagpipe player, a women with a wonderful voice who also played the harp superbly & a man that sang in the cast of Les Miserable in London. There was also a very good comedian, he had the audience laughing continually. There were 3 other dancers that stole the show, a cute little boy with glasses & buck teeth along with a little red-headed Irish girl, they both danced superbly. The cutest was the very young boy, no more than 5 years old who danced his heart out, all the audience loved him. Too soon it was all over & back to our hotel by 10.30pm, just as it is starting to get dark. Another great day.

Day 39 Wednesday 29 June 2016

A very lazy late start at 9.15am, we are certainly not used to this. Just as we leave Killarney the rain pours down, it is still a pleasant drive through the countryside & rain is what makes the place so green (we are starting to think like the Irish). Ballymakeery has a nicely preserved castle with some old cannons out the front on the High Street as we drive slowly through town. Our first stop is at Blarney Castle, just outside the city of Cork. As we pull up the rain clears & as we walk up to the castle the sun comes out & we walk in sunshine the whole time (it was really warm in Ireland). This iteration of Blarney Castle was completed in 1446 and is renowned for the kissing of the Blarney Stone. There are various versions of what the Blarney Stone is & where it came from, however, that doesn’t stop the thousands of people queuing up the flights of stairs & waiting patiently for hours to kiss the stone & gain the gift of eloquence. If you are already blessed with the gift of the gab & kiss the stone you will lose it (some of our fellow passengers went up, they said it is like a factory conveyor belt, you are held while you kissing the stone but it happens so quickly you haven’t really got time to look or even to get a proper photo). The queue for the Blarney Stone is the full 4 floors & out the front door & moving very slowly. Tereza & I decide to give the Blarney Stone a miss & instead walk around the gardens.

The gardens are absolutely beautiful, laid out well with good paths & lots of interesting plants & trees. We are fascinated by a curiously shaped Western Red Cedar that is around 100 years old & has huge bent branches low to the ground. Behind Blarney Castle is Blarney House, a beautiful building that is also open to the public (we would have had to wait about 10 minutes to start a guided tour). We are time poor so have to miss out on looking through it. We visit the old stables & these are very well preserved, the hay loft is now a gift store & part of the stables is a café. We then walk across into the “Rock Close”, said to be the site of an ancient druidic settlement and a truly beautiful place. We have a close look & walk into what is called the “Witch’s Kitchen”, apparently once the home of the very first Irish cave dwellers. It reminded us of how the shelters at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands were constructed.

Nearby is an ancient Druid Circle & a Sacrificial Altar, all surrounded by lush ferns & covered in thick moss, it really is a special untamed looking garden here. Our walk continues & we pass a monstrous Sitka Spruce, 145 feet tall & surrounded by other tall pine species. We continue on down to the Blarney River & cross a couple of small bridges then follow the river along to the exit of the estate. It really is a glorious walk, we hardly see a soul, not that many people look at anything but Blarney Castle.

Our next stop is at the port city of Cobh for lunch. Cobh has the largest natural harbour in Ireland & is notable for the sheer numbers of Irish people that emigrated through this port. Another claim to fame is that Cobh was the last port that the ship Titanic called at before its fatal crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The ship Luisitania was also sunk offshore from Cobh Harbour in the 1^st World War & Cobh was the city where the survivors & the victims were brought to. Cobh Harbour is also the current base of the Irish Navy, with 4 warships at dock. We stopped for lunch on a park bench in the waterfront, John F Kennedy Park. A nice park with an elegant gazebo & a pair of ancient cannons, one captured from Russia during the Crimea War & made in 1794. We walk along the short High Street & admire the many planters of very colourful flowers, they are everywhere on the streets & hanging off houses & bridges etc. (the Irish & the Scottish are very clever with these planter boxes, most probably they don’t even have to water them, they get enough rain). The small fishing boat harbour has a small sorry collection of old boats, all needing lots of care & attention. The cathedral towers over the town & harbour. The old railway station has been restored & converted into a visitor information centre, café & museum on the Titanic.

After we leave Cobh there are more great views & scenery as we drive on towards the old city of Waterford, an old Viking port. After checking in to the old Dooley’s Hotel on The Quay we are met by our guide Tom & head off on a walking tour of the old part of Waterford. Our first stop is the ruins of the old Black Friar Abbey & an interesting explanation of when & how it was built & its changes over the years.  Our next stop is a large shopping centre where an archaeological excavation was conducted for 5 years before the shopping centre could be built on top of an ancient Viking settlement & burial ground. There were thousands of artefacts recovered, examined & catalogued plus hundreds of ancient skeletons found. More history as we pass many buildings constructed during the 1700s at the height of Waterford’s industry & wealth. Grey Friars Abbey is the next ruin we stop at, integrated into the more modern buildings, ending up as an old people’s home before its eventual ruin. The Abbey was the site of the marriage of the English King Strongbow & the Irish Princess Aolfe in August 1170. Our last stop is at the old Viking Tower called Reginald’s Tower in honour of the Viking who was the founder of Waterford in 914. (Strongbow & Aolfe’s wedding reception was held in there). This tower is one of six still standing in Waterford & has a replica Viking longboat on display below the tower. The planks are even held together by wooden pegs & the ship was modelled on a ship dated from around 1050 discovered during archaeological excavations in Waterford.

The tour ended, we walk slowly back along the waterfront to our hotel before getting ourselves organised & having our dinner in the hotel. Tereza is starting to get a taste for Guinness beer here. Another great day.

Before our walking tour started Tom explained the history of Waterford in the hotel’s meeting room, he picked different people out to represent certain Kings & Queens from the pages of history to explain who fought who & why all the marriages took place. Unbelievable but Ron got once again picked, this time as Strongbow & I was the beautiful Irish Princess Aolfe (who had to marry him). They all died, killing each other or unexplained drownings or horrible diseases except for Aolfe – lucky me!!!

Day 38 Tuesday 28 June 2016

A very late start of 9.15am this morning & we are off to see the Ring of Kerry, a road that starts from Killarney that runs around the very scenic peninsula west of Killarney, then back to Killarney. This road encircles the Macgillycuddy’s Reeks, the tallest mountain range in Ireland. Our first short stop was at the Kerry Bog Village, a re-creation of bog houses & an insight into how people lived & worked in Ireland in the 18^th Century. There were 13 buses parked outside so you can imagine how many people there were. Inside the visitor centre they were doing a roaring trade selling Irish coffee at 6 Euro a throw, it was fairly bleak outside, cold, light rain & wind.

The countryside is all different shades of green with rolling farmland split up into small paddocks with the occasional stone fencing. Along the road they have fuchsia hedges, also the heather is starting to flower at places, fox gloves & bog cotton – it is very pretty. Our next stop is Waterville, a coastal holiday town on Ballinskelligs Bay, apparently its recent claim to fame is that the actor Charlie Chaplin used to holiday there during summer, so the locals have erected a bronze statue of him on the beachfront (anything to attract the tourist dollar). The beach is all large rounded stones. As we drive on the scenery keeps getting better, we pass an ancient Ring Fort in a farmer’s paddock, built sometime during the Iron Age (300-400AD). The scenery keeps getting ever better as we climb to the top of the Coomakista Pass & we stop at the parking area on top for a photo. The wind nearly blows us away, it is absolutely roaring, however, the views are spectacular in all directions, looking down & back over Waterville, then the stunning rocky landscape looking down over Derrynane Bay & the sheltered boat harbour. There is a lonely statue of Mary in the carpark keeping watch over travellers.

We pass a couple more Ring Forts along the way & even more stunning scenery as we travel through large glacier sculpted valleys, before stopping at the quant little village of Sneem for lunch (won silver medal for tidy town in 2015). The teal painted Bank House (103 years old this year) is a little B&B that is set up with tables laden with sandwiches, scones, jam, cream, tea & coffee, all waiting for us. Our tour director let them know we were coming & it looked lovely. The food was all very good & all home-made, the scones were still warm. Another claim to fame of the Bank House is that the owner was friends with the film star Maureen O’Hara & she used to stay with them in this very house when she visited Ireland. Some of the ladies went up & had a look in the bedroom she used. We had a short walk around Sneem, admiring the waterfall under the bridge & wondering how Sneem got a memorial to Charles de Gaulle in the local park. Apparently he used to holiday near Sneem so the locals put up a memorial. The houses in town are brightly coloured, it looks great & there is a very good mural of some deer on a wall.

On we travel, more magnificent scenery, mountain lakes, rocky fields, gushing mountain streams, everything so green it hurts your eyes. Our next stop is at Ladies View, a scenic lookout overlooking a large lake & the sun breaks out momentarily for us. A little further on we pass a “Leprechaun Crossing” sign, the road is very narrow & windy, the trees are covered in moss & lichen, it is all so beautiful.

All too soon we are back in Killarney & get on a horse drawn cart, called a “Jaunty” here, for a carriage ride through the adjoining Killarney National Park. We share the carriage with another 6 of our fellow travellers, plus the driver, a funny Irishman who explains the scenery around us plus keeps on cracking all manner of jokes, keeping everyone laughing. We spot some deer grazing in the park, including a couple of large stags with very big antlers. We get another great view of the Macgillicuddy Reeks then come down to the edges of Lough Leane (one of 3 Killarney Lakes), with Ross Castle standing on Ross Island & the ruins of an ancient monastery standing on Innisfallen Island. More beautiful scenery, more deer & then we are back in Killarney again, around 7km later & a tired horse.

There is around an hour for us to get ready for our walk to our next venture, dinner in Killarney at Gabby’s Restaurant, a very nice seafood menu. Needless to say we both had Tempura prawns & Sautéed scallops, I washed them down with a couple of Guinness stout then topped off with an Irish coffee. Superb. We had to finish quickly & walk back to our hotel as the bus was waiting for our next venture again.

Irish music & dancing at a venue at the Killarney Racecourse. There were around 500 tourists packed into the venue for the 8.30pm start & the music, Irish dancing & singing was magnificent. We were all stamping our feet & clapping our hands during the performances. The lead male dancer had won 7 world Irish dancing championships & the lead female dancer had won 3 world Irish dancing championships. All the dancers were fantastic, very good indeed. It is amazing the speed that they move their feet at. The musicians were very versatile, the woman playing the violin had the most amazing voice. The man playing the piano accordion also played the flute & the Irish tin whistle superbly. The entertainment ended too soon for us. Back on the coach & home at 10.30pm

Another really great day – it’s hard to believe but every day seems to be better than the one before.

The other night at Knappogue castle we were made king & queen, so our loyal subjects have been giving us a hard time, every time they would bow or make an appropriate comment, but today we drove through Killorglin, a little village with a crowned goat statue, called King Puck – the locals apparently have a festival every year in honour of their goat king, so our egos are really deflated that we have been deposed by a goat, but at least not beheaded.

Day 37 Monday 27 June 2016

A very late start this morning leaving our hotel in Galway at 9am for a short drive to King John’s Castle built on King’s Island on the Shannon River around 1210 AD on the site of a former Viking settlement. We walked over the nearby bridge to see the Treaty Stone where the Treaty of Limerick was signed in 1691.

Our next stop south was at Adare, a pretty little village (no surprise that they won gold for being the tidy town) with a row of thatched roof cottages built in the 1820s on the main road. We walked through the town past the thatched cottages. We had a bit of retail therapy, they do sell some very nice local Aran knitted woollen garments. We walked the full length of the High Street & back before looking through the Trinitarian Abbey built in 1230 which is next to the Visitor Centre. At the side of the Abbey is a large stone dovecote used to provide fresh pigeon for the monk’s dinners. There is a small museum in the Visitor Centre that we walked through. The scenery from Adare heading south is of rolling green fields with sheep & cattle, with hedges along the fences.

Just before we reach the main city of Killarney we stop at the Old Killarney Inn for a beer, most men have a Guinness stout but I opted for a Murphy’s Stout, very similar in colour & taste, while a lot of the ladies opt for a cider. Across from the inn there is a collection of thatched roof holiday houses. We book into our hotel in Killarney, right in the middle of town, around 2pm, then go for a long walk along the High Street, lunch & jostling with all the tourists & browsing through a lot of interesting shops. We get back to our hotel around 6pm for a rest then head out around 8pm for dinner. This place is a real tourist city, so many pubs & restaurant. Tonight we have a free night (this means think for ourselves). A lot of the pubs have live music, we left going out a bit late & everywhere it was full, to get a table you had to wait. After a lot of walking around we did end up eating, Ron had a red wine not a Guinness.

The weather has been kinder to us today, cold but no rain, with the clouds clearing & sun coming out this afternoon. The locals were walking around in short sleeves, it was around 16C.

I had a chat with a local lady, who asked where we were from & where we are going to etc. I told her how much we are enjoying the beautiful country side, but it is cold & wet. She said isn’t it grand that the weather is so lovely here in Killarney – so it just depends on your perspective.

Day 36 Sunday 26 June 2016

We are greeted by rain as we wake then enjoy a superb breakfast, the best so far in Ireland. We depart Sligo in rain, so our drive this morning has the views of the countryside obscured. One thing that we do notice is that the gardens are very well cared for, with most houses having a flourishing colourful front garden & lawns neatly mowed. Our first stop this morning is at Cong, a very small town with a ruined Abbey & a nice salmon stream running through it. We notice that the first house we see is built on a very small island & one end of the house is built over the stream on a small stone bridge. A little further on there are men fishing for Atlantic salmon in the stream & as we watch one fisherman catches a very nice large Atlantic salmon. We walk around the Abbey looking through the ruins then during a walk through the gardens on the stream we find a small cottage that the monks in the Abbey built to make catching salmon that much easier, built over the water, with a small fireplace to keep warm. The rest of the small town is full of quaint little stone cottages built on narrow streets. Cong’s other claim to fame is being the location of a film called “The Quite Man” starring John Wayne & Maureen O’Hara with a bronze statue commemorating the occasion.

The rain is still with us on our drive further south to Galway. We stop next to the St Nicholas Cathedral, relatively new being completed in 1965, then walk inside to find that Sunday Mass is about to start. We have a short quite walk around for a look then leave just as quietly. It does have an impressive set of organ pipes & accompanying stained glass windows.

We then walk past the River Corrib, more fishermen trying their luck for Atlantic salmon just below the weir in the fast-flowing water, then into the main part of Galway. The shopping precinct is closed off to traffic, there are lots of people out walking, braving the light rain. There are some young people in summer clothes, the temperature is supposed to have been 16C, I don’t think it reached that with the rain & wind. We stop & admire Lynch Castle, a 3 story stone building that is now a bank, before walking through a small local market then down to the river again. We spot a very large seagull (much larger than ours in Australia) dragging a fish larger than it out of the water, it will be set for a week with that much fish. The roads are blocked a bit further on with runners in a triathlon event running across the Wolfe Tone Bridge over the Corrib River & also through the Spanish Arches, ruins of dock buildings from 1584. We sit & have our lunch looking over the river, the rain has stopped, before having a look through the local town museum, highlighting some of the history of the area from 8,000 years of settlement. We walk slowly uphill along a busy Shop Street (appropriately named) & reach Eyre Square before returning to the Cathedral & our waiting coach.

On our drive to our next destination of Limerick we pass a number of ruined castles & towers then spot Bunratty Castle in good condition, just outside of Limerick. After we check into our hotel we get ready for our dinner destination, Knappogue Castle. This castle is about 45 minutes drive from Limerick, past Bunratty Castle & Six Mile Bridge. We drive through narrow country lanes, sometimes the hedges close right in on the road & taller than the bus, like driving through a green tunnel. Knappogue Castle is an imposing tower house built in 1467 & expanded in the mid 19^th century. We are greeted at the castle door by people in medieval clothes & led into the ancient Dalcassian Room where we are served mead. There are two women playing a harp & violin, later they are joined by some women singing some medieval songs. As guests are led into the Banquet Hall Tereza & I are kept aside with another 3 couples (4 bus loads of tourists dined there tonight) & then dressed in robes, we are to be King & Queen at the banquet. After everyone is seated we are presented as the King & Queen of Ulster & led to the front of the hall where we are seated at a table on an elevated platform, we even have padded chairs with backs, the little perks the royals get (not like the plebs who sat on hard wooden benches) overlooking all the royal subjects (guests). We are treated like royalty. We have a very nice 4 course meal, starting with some of the freshest salmon I have tasted in a long time. We also have chicken, the 4^th night in a row for me (it is his own fault), this one is very tender & tasty. After the meal we are treated to a musical dancing & singing performance by the men & women that served our meals. They were dressed in period costume & were superb, the young man dancing the Irish jig was exceptional, the young lady playing the harp was also exceptional & the voices of the ladies singing was superb. Another very good day & enjoyable night, it finished all too soon.

Day 35 Saturday 25 June 2016

Raining again. This morning we were given an insight into the political & social makeup of Northern Ireland & how history has shaped what the locals call “the troubles”. We have a very interesting local guide called Ronan, neither protestant nor catholic, his mother Chinese & father Irish, he is Buddhist, with a very Irish accent, he looks Chinese & a passion for what he talks about. He is brilliant the way he describes & explains the history & the significance of different places we see.

We enter the old walled city of Derry via Bishop’s Gate, rebuilt in 1789 after the earlier 1618 gate was demolished. We disembark & walk the short distance to the city wall battlements looking out over the city, there are lots of old original guns from the 19^th century on display along the wall looking out over the new city. Up until fairly recently this area was a military barracks. There are still signs of discontent with murals & IRA slogans on some buildings. We walk past Royal Bastion where a 99 feet tall memorial pillar with statue was blown up by an IRA bomb in 1973. Our next stop is Butcher Gate, the former access to the old city by the butchers, where they slaughtered cattle & sold meat. This gate was also the site of an IRA bomb attack in 1973. We walk off the wall near Castle Gate into the old city itself & the old buildings seem to be revitalised & re-used, all appears very nice. We exit the old city through Shipquay Gate, more old cannons on the ramparts above & looking straight onto a very beautiful City Hall, more looking like a large church with stained glass windows than a City Hall. We finish our guided tour with Ronan outside the City Hall, very interesting.

Our next challenge is to walk across the Peace Bridge, built across the River Foyle to symbolically join the two halves of the city of Derry with Protestants on one side & Catholics on the other. The Peace Bridge is a great design with seeping bends & our walk across it is rather cold, there is a cold wind blowing down the river. A large group of runners is using the bridge as part of their Saturday morning fun run, in singlets & shorts mostly, I don’t know what we are sooking about. The City Hall Museum opens by the time we finish our Peace Bridge walk & inside it is decidedly warmer, with an interesting history of Derry & the relocation of Scottish & English settlers into Ireland & the displacement of the local Irish. There is also an absolutely beautifully carved marble statue of Queen Victoria in the foyer, damaged by another IRA bomb. Ironically, the man that planted the bomb later on in life stood for election to serve in the very place that he attacked.  Across the road from the City Hall is the Peace Park with an eternal flame burning inside a glass case, the garden paths have concrete tiles inscribed with school children’s thoughts on peace.

We leave Derry & Northern Ireland around 10.30 am & drive south to Donegal, on Donegal Bay for our lunch stop. Our first visit is to the ruins of the Donegal Friary, founded in 1474, destroyed & rebuilt & destroyed again over the years, cemetery headstones surround the ruins on the shores of the Donegal River. Our next stop was Donegal Castle, built in the late 15^th century & distinguished by square turrets on each of the corners, something I have not seen before. Our next stop was a more recent church with an unusual rounded bell tower, supposedly modelled on the many Viking round towers that were scattered around Ireland.

On the road again we stop at Belleek, the pottery factory after which the town was named. The Belleek factory was founded in 1857 & continues production on the same site to this day, employing more than 600 people. We were given a tour of the factory by a young Irish girl called Laureen, with a great Irish accent, showing us all the stages of production, including craftsmen/women working on different facets of the production. It was all very interesting & after the tour we took the opportunity to look through the museum & the gift shop. To our surprise the products were very reasonably priced given the amount of hand work that goes into the production of each item & the amount of time it takes from start to finish. There are some very nice pieces of porcelain that they make.

Our next stop was just outside Sligo at the church were the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats is buried. The church is old & simple, yet does have a very beautiful set of organ pipes above the door. Nearby is the ruins of an old round Viking watchtower. Our hotel tonight is in Sligo & the red carpet is rolled out – no, they are holding a wedding, we like to think the red carpet is for us. Dinner at the hotel is a 3 course buffet & is very tasty. More fellow travellers to have dinner with & another great day finished off nicely.

Ronan believes & hopes that it may not be the next generation but the one after or the one after that that there will not be animosity more between Catholics & Protestants & they will meet & even marry & love & live in peace – after all peace is what everyone wants. With tears in our eyes we wish them well.

Day 34 Friday 24 June 2016

We woke to the news that England voted to leave the European Union. Later we heard that the Prime Minister resigned. There is a big muddle, disunity & shock. We will have to see what sort of domino effect this will cause.

Breakfast in Glasgow was average, typical of most of Scotland. As we left at 8am the traffic leaving Glasgow was reasonable & then we were on the motorway heading south. The countryside is typical small farms with the design & construction of the houses changing a little, they are now more rendered brick than stone. The fencing is now more post & wire with spiky bushes along the fence lines separating the fields. Still most of the trees we see are plantation pine, the land is mostly cleared & more rolling hills. At one stage we pass a wind generator power farm with more than 100 wind turbines clustered & the blades all still as there is no wind. We get to the coast again at Turnberry & spot the island of Ailsa Craig in the distance through the mist. This island is notable as the place where all the pucks used in the game of curling are sourced from. When we reach Girvan, the next small town south on the coast we are amazed at the sheer quantity of row upon row of semi-detached houses that all look the same. Further south again self-contained cabin accommodation is in abundance in coastal camping (these cabins are just plonked in rows without a bit of garden or shrubbery, it looks so stark) there must easily be thousands of cabins. We reach the port of Cairnryan near the head of Loch Ryan for the vehicle ferry to Ireland on the Stena Line at around 10.30am.

We wait around an hour on the coach before driving on to the ferry & disembarking. They were still unloading when we got there & had to wait for that to finish before they started to load, first the cars & motorbikes, then all the coaches, then the trucks. The space on the ferry is very tight, especially for trucks & buses. We had a good 1 ½ hours of waiting in total before the ferry pulled away from the wharf & started sailing. We did see some exotic cars load onto the ferry, there are a few wealthy people in Ireland obviously, a yellow Lamborghini, a yellow Ferrari convertible, a silver Aston Martin & a blue Rolls Royce convertible. The sea was very flat & the 2 ½ hour journey uneventful, apart from the downpour of rain as we neared the Irish coast. We had lunch on board & both of us dozed off in our chairs (lot of others were sleeping too) which was grand (as the Irish say it) it made the journey shorter.

The port of Belfast in Northern Island is away from the main part of town, so we didn’t see much of Belfast as we drove in the rain north towards the town of Ballycastle & the nearby Giant’s Causeway. The landscape is a little different in Ireland than nearby Scotland, the land appears to be greener & a little more fertile & less rocky, the farms appear to be more dairy farms. The housing has changed, there are a lot more houses & most appear to be newer & maintained well. The style of housing has changed as well, with most properties being two story brick.

The rain stopped & the sunshine is welcoming as we pull up at the Giant’s Causeway.

The Giant’s Causeway sits on the north coast of Northern Ireland & is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the result of intense volcanic activity & consists of interlocking basalt columns that have been exposed to the elements, with the sea waves creating the most impact. It does look spectacular & very scenic, there were hundreds of tourists walking all over the rocks & taking photos. We did the same after the easy 1.2km walk downhill, taking lots of photos, it really is a pretty spot, then the hard part, the long hard 1.2km uphill. Surprisingly we both warmed up & took our coats off on the uphill part. The nearly new visitor centre at the top of the hill is large, clean & well set out, we spent a bit of time wandering around it before it was time & at 5pm we set off for Derry (Londonderry).

Not far from the Giant’s Causeway we pass Dunluce Castle, teetering on the edge of the cliff, abandoned because parts of the castle have collapsed into the sea. Next we see something we have not seen in a very long time, white sand on a beach at Portrush & actually people swimming in the sea, all the beaches we have seen up to now have been covered in rocks & pebbles. We pass more green farms in rolling countryside & more windfarms before reaching the waters of Lough Foyle & reaching the city of Derry (or Londonderry depends which Ireland you are in), they have the most mixed up political situation here. Ireland is separated, the Republic of Ireland is separate from England. At present in Northern Ireland we are using the English pound but the Republic of Ireland is using the Euro. The Republic of Irelanders will even go as far as painting out the road sign London part so that it is only Derry, but peace seems to be prevailing & that is what’s important. Our hotel is out of town a little & we have dinner in a very nice restaurant, Da Vinci’s. We sit with another set of fellow travellers & enjoy a very tasty meal, again too much. Another good day.

Day 33 Thursday 23 June 2016

What a blur today has been. The Sound of Raasay was just as beautiful this morning while having breakfast as it was last night at dinner. Something had to make up for breakfast. We were away at 8am, passing through Kyle of Lochalsh just over the Isle of Skye Bridge & stopping not long after at the Eilean Donan Castle, one of the most beautiful scenes in Scotland, we recognise it from photos & movies it has been featured in. We pull up next to one of the polling booths where the British are voting whether to stay or leave the European Union. The television here has been full of debate on the issue ever since we have been here. TV must be full on with our Federal election in Australia.

We travel along the valley of Glen Shiel, twisting & winding along the narrow roads next to the river & then loch before climbing through the narrow pass then down into Glen Garry as it widened out. The loch here is used for hydroelectric power generation & the water levels were fairly low. We turned south at Invergarry & followed Loch Lochy along for a long while, all the time the scenery just got more stunning, with treeless steep tall mountains & rugged rocky outcrops towering above. Some of the mountains had smatterings of snow near the summit & then we got to the big mountains. Ben Nevis is the tallest in the British Isles & had a fair bit of snow near the top, so were his tall brothers close by. We stop for a break & cuppa at Fort Williams at the foot of Ben Nevis, this town also has an interesting early history of settlement & conflict with all manner of peoples settling & fighting there over the centuries. This place is very quiet now, it used to be a real tourist destination but now they have cheap flight & accommodation over in the continent so the Brits seek the cheaper & more exotic places for their holidays.

Part way along Loch Linnhe we turn East at Ballachulish & drive along Glen Coe, stopping at the site of the treachery of the Campbell Clan. The valley & mountains are so beautiful & rugged, it is difficult to imagine that so much bloodshed occurred here.

Each corner we turn in the road reveals spectacular scenery, it is so hard to describe how good it looks, the photos we take don’t even come close to doing it justice. Our lunch stop is at Tyndrum at the infamous Green Welly, a complex of shops, cafes & restaurants that sell, as part of the business, very flash & expensive (150 pound per pair) green Wellington boots (gum boots). On the road again we turn south at Crianlarich along the edge of Trossachs National Park & the famous Loch Lomond, another very narrow, very twisty stretch of road barely wide enough for our coach, let alone vehicles in the other direction. Passing trucks or cars is done very slowly, with any or many of the vehicles stopping or even reversing to let the other pass. Stunning scenery though once again. Needless to say there is not much in the way of habitation.

We arrive in Glasgow early afternoon & get dropped off at George Square, full of bronze statues & people lolling around on the grass in the warm afternoon, it is around 22C. We are soaking up the sunshine, unbelievable it is warm in Scotland. The locals are in flimsy summer clothes – we don’t think it is that warm, just nice. We commence a walk around the central part of Glasgow for a few hours by ourselves. We have a slow walk along the main shopping mall of Buchanan Street before turning at Cathedral Street & walking just past the University up to Glasgow Cathedral (there are a lot of uni students running around in their gowns because they had graduation today). This is the oldest building in Glasgow & started being built in the late 12^th Century. We have a look inside the cathedral, there are some nice stained glass windows & old original oak doors dating from the mid 1400s near the altar, they are characterised by numbers of bullet holes in both doors indicating a troubled past. A church bell at the back of the cathedral is nearly as tall as Tereza. Along both sides are memorials of notable people, some tell tragic stories. Outside at the back of the cathedral is a small hill that is covered with gravestones & tombs & memorials.

Our walk back to George Square from the cathedral passes firstly the oldest house in Glasgow, the Provand’s Lordship, built in 1471. We then pass Dr Who’s Tardis before walking down the High Street past an old row of stone buildings with a magnificent mural on one end. Back at George Square we both comment that Glasgow has a good feel about it, we both feel that it is a far nicer city than Edinburgh & the buildings are that much better looking & not very many buildings are dark & depressing like we felt Edinburgh buildings were. The medieval old buildings in Glasgow have been demolished & the city rebuilt, they didn’t use a lot of the rocks that unfortunately turn sooty/black with age (when the buildings are cleaned the rocks end up turning mouldy so it’s best to leave them as they are).

We have an hour at the hotel before we are off to dinner in a nice restaurant in the old Merchants House, a refurbished marketplace building. We have a delicious meal & another good chat with some more people from our tour group. Another great day, each one seems to be better than the last, if that is possible.

Scotland has barely any trees, other than the pine plantations, it is so bare, cold, windy & inhospitable, but then you come to such beauty as we have seen the last couple of days – it is amazing.  We really liked Scotland & it’s harsh beauty.

Day 32 Wednesday 22 June 2016

Haggis for breakfast this morning with some fresh fruit & berries to start the day nicely. We depart at 8am from Wick, with all the hotel staff waving us goodbye, then passing by the shortest street in the world, Ebenezer Place, about 50 metres from our hotel. We have a pleasant drive back down the coast, backtracking the way we came up to Wick, although this time the sun is shining & the scenery is sparkling. The North Sea looks beautiful with hardly a breeze rippling the water, we can see all the way across the bight to the Scottish coast in the distance. We turn off the main road & drive towards the west coast of Scotland down a narrow single lane road. The road has small passing bays at regular intervals to allow vehicles to pass, fortunately everyone is considerate & we make good progress, although we are travelling fairly slowly. The scenery consists mainly of plantation pine forests with patches of cleared land where the pines have been harvested. Now & again we drive through some old growth areas where the trees close right in on the road & the trunks are covered in moss. In some places where there are houses there are masses of purple coloured rhododendrons lining the road on both sides & spreading along the roadside, they are very large & healthy plants, this climate must agree with them.

We stop for morning tea at a small town along the way for tea, coffee, scones with jam & shortbread biscuits. The hotel is very nicely set up inside with some very attentive young staff & the food is very nice. Half an hour & we are on the road again, relaxed & refreshed. We follow a nice river along for a while, crossing it now & again as we follow the valley. We slowly start climbing & in the distance some large mountains appear. As we get closer the trees are replaced by alpine meadows and we pass along old glaciated valleys with steep rock strewn hillsides & mountain lakes. We start seeing again the same white flower we saw a lot near Wick & on the Orkneys, it is called “Bog Cotton” as it grows in marshy soils. The white cotton like flower was used as a stuffing for jackets & pillows in the past.

Ullapool is our stop for lunch, a small fishing village, with a ferry service & tourism industry. We have fish & chips at a restaurant looking out over the harbour before going for a walk along the shops on the seafront. The sun appears again & the walk is very pleasant. The tide is out & the fishing boats are high & dry on the shore.

Continuing we pass more of similar beautiful country, climbing up to travel through passes before descending to the valley floors again. We stop at Loch Carron viewpoint for some special views over the loch in both directions before continuing to the bridge over to the Isle of Skye. We stop at our hotel in Broadford & drop off our baggage, where we also pick up our local guide for the afternoon, before heading west again on the Isle of Skye. We climb into the mountains again, Skye is an island that consists of many large mountains with small farms & settlements along the coastal fringes. The mountain ranges are the Red Cuillin & the Black Cuillin, the red being predominately red granite & the black predominately black magma. We can’t tell the difference, they all look like big mountain ranges to us with some interesting formations. The Black Cuillin have an interesting rockfall on the northern end where a very large fragment of cliff has split off & landed upright creating an interesting feature. There were a swarm of cars overflowing the carpark out onto the road edges & a swarm of people walking the paths up to the feature called the “Old Man of Storr”. It looked as though it may fall over at any moment.

We continued our travels westwards & stopped at a huge sea cliff. The interest here was a rock feature called the “Kilt Rock”, a huge cliff face with interesting large exposed columnar basalt formations. The view along the coastline from here is spectacular. On the clifftop some of the heather is flowering. Heather is an innocuous looking low brown plant that covers most exposed hillsides in mountainous Scotland, it has a small purplish bell-shaped flower. Apparently when the heather is in full flower the coloured hillsides is a magnificent sight. I think we are a few weeks early for it, there are lots of flower buds, but only a few purpled flowers starting to appear here & there.

On the way back to Broadport we stop at a small & very pretty port town that we drove through previously called Portreee. It has a row of brightly coloured buildings along the dockside & looks very pretty, rivalling some Italian towns. We had a nice walk around for half an hour, doing a bit of window shopping as well as admiring the scenery before we were on the bus again. We stopped again at a pub on the side of the road next to a fast running stream with great views of the Cuillin Mountains. A large cone shaped mountain across from the pub is the scene each year of a footrace up to the top of the mountain & down again to the pub. Amazingly the record is around 45 minutes, unbelievable.

Dinner at our hotel & the dining room has great waterfront views looking out over the loch to the mountains. We have a nice meal, Tereza taking on the haggis tonight & enjoying it, along with a nice chat with others on our tour. Another great day.

Today, once again a long drive but I think the scenery is beautiful, the best we have had since our English trip started. So far our journey takes us to so many interesting & historical places, we are really enjoying it all, but finding it that we would like more time in each place, but we are time poor & that is why we are on a tour.

Day 31 – Tuesday 21 June 2016

This morning we started with a short drive from Wick to John O’Groats, the northern most town in mainland Britain, then on to the rudimentary ferry wharf. We boarded the ferry Pentland Venture for the 8 miles voyage to the Orkney Islands, the forecast was for 13C maximum with a 90% chance of rain. We could see the rough white water from the convergence of the North Sea & the Atlantic Ocean just offshore in the Pentland Firth (channel separating Scotland from the Orkney Islands). Tereza finds a seat inside below & I stand out on the top deck (his own choice), a tad cold, but I get to see the seabirds & the various islands as we motor out to South Ronaldsay (old Norse for Ronald’s Island). Passing the island of Stroma the old abandoned stone houses stand out starkly on the treeless fields covered in sheep. The white lighthouse on the northern end of Stroma also stands out, with its two previous lighthouse towers in ruins. The South Ronaldsay wharf is also fairly rudimentary, however, we cross without incident & join our island bus with driver/guide for our tour of five of the Orkney Islands.

We stop at the Italian Chapel, built during the Second World War by Italian Prisoners of War interned on the Orkneys. The workmanship is very good, considering that what started as Nissen Huts have been converted with concrete, wood & paint into a very nice chapel. The front looks good but inside the work is amazing, the Italian that painted this was very talented. The Italian prisoners of war were working on making concrete blocks to seal 4 of the entrances to Scapa Flow, a huge anchorage in the middle of the Orkney Islands, by laying the concrete blocks across channels between some of the islands to seal them completely off. We drove across the 4 embankments created by the Italians, observing some sunken ships that were used to create a similar, though less effective, result by sinking some surplus ships across the channels. Big seas & strong winds shifted & broke up the sunken ships making them less effective, hence the need for concrete blocks.

The Ring of Brodgar was our next stop, it is a Neolithic Henge & Stone Circle, with only 27 of the original 60 stones standing. Some of the stones are huge, standing well over my height. The ring of stones is surrounded by a 3 metre deep ditch, 9 metres wide & 380 metres circumference that was carved out of the natural solid sandstone bedrock. Close nearby there are some burial mounds and some isolated standing stones. One of the standing up stones had broken from a lightening strike in the 1980s, a big piece was lying on the ground with a crack in it length wise.

While we were at the Ring of Brodgar a couple were getting married in what looked like some form of Celtic Ceremony inside the ring of stones. They were standing on one side of a fallen stone that had a crack lengthwise – this stone is called “Two Shall Be One” with the celebrants on the other side with some bits that were part of the ceremony laying on the fallen stone between them. When they were wed the bride & groom held hands & jumped across the stone & the two became one. A lot of tourists stopped & watched the ceremony on the day of the summer solstice.

Not that far away are the Standing Stones of Stenness, another smaller stone circle, as well as the Ness of Brodgar excavations, an archaeological dig that is investigating a small settlement in very close proximity. Within a 2 mile radius there is a cluster of significant ancient sites.

We stopped for lunch at the pub at Stenness on the Main Island of Orkney before travelling across to Skara Brae, a stone built Neolithic settlement occupied around 4,500 years ago. It was discovered when a severe storm uncovered part of it in the dunes on the edge of the Bay of Skaill. The excavated site is very interesting, with concreted pathways ensuring the site is preserved as well as possible. The stonework of the buildings has been very well fitted together. We then walk to nearby Skaill House, the home of the Laird whose land that Skara Brae was discovered on & the base for archaeological diggings at the site. Skaill House is furnished & laid out as the Laird had it, with original pieces. The south wing of the house is built over what is thought to be an old pre-Viking burial ground, thought to be Pictish.

Kirkwall, the main town of the Orkneys, was next on the agenda. We stopped next to the old red sandstone church, St Magnus Cathedral. Construction commenced in 1137 on the most northern cathedral in the British Isles. At the front entrance as you are walking in the pillars are so worn away from hundreds of years of erosion of the sandstone. In places you can see where the people were touching it (surprising that they haven’t put something around these pillars to protect them). Inside we noticed that there were a lot of inscribed sandstone pillars against the wall, these are headstones & some date back a long way. The stained glass is nice & there is a lot of carved woodwork, including a beautifully carved choir seating. While we were there rehearsals commenced for an international musical festival so we sat & listened to some beautiful classical music & some marvellous singing (fantastic acoustics in the church), a very pleasant way to spend time in a church. Across the road are the ruins of the Bishops & Earls Palaces, reminders of the extravagant lifestyles led by the people in power.

On the way back to the ferry the tide was out so it was easier to see the sunken block ships at the barricades between the islands. The weather was still kind so the water was still flat on the way back & on the top deck I managed to spot around a dozen Puffins, a small seabird with a funny flat yellow beak. There was also a small pod of killer whales on the surface as we left the Orkneys. Back to the Norseman Hotel & a nice dinner at 7.15pm. Another great day, but tiring.