Castlebar

Country House
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Thursday 10 April

The B&B was an experience, we were greeted by Maura. Her appearance and actions were very like those of Mrs Bouquet (Mrs Bucket) the TV character. She was very nice but fussed around. Her breakfast was great. The rooms were restrictive and worked out that it was better and more cost effective to have real rooms at a Days Inn or similar.

We ran out of steam last night and could not wait till 10.00pm for the Irish music. The stress from putting so much effort into having fun and enjoying ourselves was catching up.

Lake in the Hills
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We are at Castlebar tonight. The drive today was interesting as we progressed from the usual countryside with a sprinkling of houses all over the hills and valleys to no houses. We passed lots of areas where they had been digging peat and it left quite a mess.

The significant stop today was Kylemore Abbey which was completed in 1871. The property has a church, walled garden and family mausoleum all in an idyllic setting on the shores of a salmon lake. It was originally a family home but was taken over and restored by Benedictine Nuns. A beautiful place and the pictures tell the storey.

Island Ruin
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The Abbey has moved with the times and has ‘electronic’ prayer candles. Drop a coin in the slot and a blus plastic cylinder randomly flashes for a period to simulate a candle. How modern, no mess, no fumes, no fire danger, no need to replace candles. You cannot escape progress but are these ‘modern’ candles as effective as the real ones?

It rained a bit today and the temperature varied from 9.5 deg to 2.5 deg during the day. As with most days it was rainy and sunny and usually cold.

Countryside
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Now you are not going to believe this but for some reason that even we cannot fathom, we did not eat or drink in a pub today! That is not to say that we did not try but as things worked out we had conventional lunch in a coffee shop and a pâté and cheese picnic in our room for tea. Not even a red wine. We did not drop the ball completely though and got some Smithwick’s and Guiness in cans from a Tesco supermarket and had our now favourite beer with tea. Just so you have now doubts about our good behaviour becoming too much, Rob and I followed tea with several nips of whisky from a bottle the girls purchased us about a week ago. I have not mentioned this before as I felt it would give you a completely wrong idea about Rob and I and the many pub visits that we were forced to make. Our only defence is that the whiskey bottle is not empty, a week after we received it.

Thatched House
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We only have a couple of days left in Ireland and tomorrow we are going to where a forebear of Anne’s was deported to Australia for stealing a chicken and a cow (the cow followed her home) and then to Dublin for a night. I overheard the booking arrangements and at least one of these stays has a torture pool and gym.

Blog entries are really only possible when an internet connection is included with the room. This is the main reason updates are not regular and an updates can take over 20 Mbyte. It takes a bit of time as well so please be patient. The connections have been using wireless, tonight is cable ethernet.