Welcome to Ireland!!

You know, you would think someone on holidays who has access to internet would at least be able to update their much flaunted blog fairly regularly huh? Oh well, shows how wrong you can be!! I can't get over how quickly time goes and how busy it can get. Maybe I should stay off MSN and email? Yep, that might help, but that's not going to happen is it?? Its good keeping up with everyone, and besides, even those that can't get the blog have at least emailed and kept in touch! Good outcome anyway I look at it really.

So back to my arrival...

Thursday 6 May ... on Irish soil!!

Well, tired I may have been, but didn't feel jet lagged at all. Ballycastle is about 3 hours from Dublin airport, and despite the fatigue, I didn't think for a moment I'd want to sleep!! I sure got that right.

Travelling through the countryside, past fields and villages, my senses and thoughts tumbled with the traditional and modern all mixing together. My brain couldn't quite take in that the glimpses of everyday life here were not just the postcard snapshots of coffee table books or tourist advertisements. This was the real thing. We see pockets of Ireland in parts of Australia, as we see parts of Scotland in places like the Southern Highlands (damn, missed the Highland Gathering again this year).... but this was constant, and a classic or cliche everywhere you turn.

Ok... now you will know I really write my own material....

As we drove past small vivid green fields bordered by well kept hedges, I was taken with the farming practices and herds here.... Suffolk, Irish and Blackface sheep; Charolais, Belted Galloway and Fresian cattle... some in small, discrete herds others in totally mixed herds of breeds and species. Don't forget the occasional modern tractor with the sheep dogs running around the farm house!! And yet, this is real life.. not a TV show directed on queue.

Major issue hitting Northern Ireland - er... how fast is 40 miles and hour?.... umm... how far is that in kilometres, not miles? Yup, I think I do have a few euro coins for the toll. What do you mean is it a church or a chapel.. is there a difference??? Welcome Suzie, to the brave new world of Northern Ireland - or should that be the Brave Traditional World...????

The place made up for it though... country lanes bordered by tall hedges.. no shoulder to the road at all.... large tractors pottering up the road to 'the far field' with little cars zipping around them on a road barely two lanes wide.... Then we hit Ballycastle!!


As you enter Ballycastle, the Antrim Coast opens up to greet you with spectacular views right through to Scotland!! Some well deserved gloating from my hosts, and we are home... with the constantly changing framed watercolour of Fair Head ever at the back doorstep!! A quick dinner of Irish version of fish and chips.. that would be battered Cod (yuumm.. cod!) and chunky chips just like we had back in the good old days in Australia.

At that point, exhaustion got the better of me.. and so to bed under a soft warm doona for a well deserved sleep!!