Bushmills Whiskey Distillery

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As promised- a small sleep in kept Jules happy!!! We headed off to Bushmills to see the oldest distillery in the world. It was pretty fascinating how it all worked seeing as the process itself hasn’t really changed much since 1608. Excluding the machinery of course. It would’ve been better to go during the week, as it was not in operation over the weekend. Therefore we missed out on the bottling of the whisky. This was a bit of a shame to be honest as it went too quickly with little to see and no photos were allowed of the big distilling vats. From there we headed to Ballymena, which was a lovely town. We picked up some food at Tesco’s and headed to Antrim. We eventually found a great spot here and had a coffee over looking Lough Neagh. It was then time to find a spot for the night. Another nightmare episode thanks to Kev’s indecisiveness! We drove towards the East coast, down nearly every road on Island Magee and then finally found a little gem at Whitehead. After a snack we took a walk to find a good old Irish pub as we realised we hadn’t really had the chance to be apart of the fun on a Saturday night since we arrived. We called into quite a dull place to start with but found a great place soon after. We stuck there for ages- just the 2 of us having a great old laugh. Then we met Sammy. A well-known local and an absolute dag (meant in the best possible way)!! As he would say in that brilliant accent “what a craic”!!! We had such a good laugh with him- exchanging travel stories and he shed some light on the Irish hostile times. Very interesting. He didn’t act or look a day over 35 yet he was 45, divorced with 2 kids. We headed onto another pub with him, “slaggen” each other along the way (translates into taking the piss out of each other!). Here we met some more characters. It was the best experience to be in the midst of the Irish locals- absolutely hilarious all together and in fine form! We honestly have not laughed that hard in a long time!! Sammy walked us home to ensure we arrived safely and ended up leaving at about 3.30am- his alarm was set at 4.30am to get up for work- what a trooper!!! A brilliant night. One we will never forget and one that everyone should experience if they’re to truly appreciate the Irish spirit and humor.