It’s sometimes possible to see glimmers of the Southern Lights from Tassie, but it’s usually only through long exposures on your iPhone. I want to be able to look up and see them all spread out before me. Even better if it’s on my birthday.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned on this blog before, but I’ve made a vow to myself that I won’t be at home on my birthdays anymore. I want to be somewhere in the world, seeing something new and celebrating being alive on such an interesting planet.
Last year for my 60th I was in London, having lunch on the Skydeck with Scott, then dinner in an Israeli restaurant with Corinna from our Antarctica trip. I’ll be at Uluru this year, having dinner on a sandbank while a huge solar light installation twinkles to life below me. Next year?
I’ll be flying into Copenhagen, then taking a flight to Reykjavik. I’ll be meeting up with Morgan, also from our Antarctica trip, and doing a quick 2 day tour of Iceland. Then we’ll jump on the same expeditionary ship that we were on in Dec 2022 and we’ll head off to see Greenland. Instead of penguins, we’ll (hopefully) be seeing polar bears!
After the cruise returns to Iceland, I’ll jump on a plane back to Copenhagen, where I meet up with my next tour group. We’ll gallop all over Scandinavia for a couple of weeks, visiting Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia (for half a day) and Finland. Then I’ll fly home. September will not be spent on Australian soil!
My birthday is, unfortunately, a cruising day on our way to Greenland. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Fortunate Frogdancer will see the Northern lights as a birthday celebration. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter if I don’t. I’ll more than likely see them see them at some stage on my trip – after all, I’ll be there for a month!
So yes. I was very lucky that all 3 tours dovetailed into each other so well. It would have been rude not to book them. But these are not cheap places to travel to. At all.
I kept saying to myself, “It’s ok. I’m only going there once!” when booking everything. It’s what I said about Antarctica and I don’t regret going there for an instant.
Georgia is studying in 2024, 2025 and 2026. These are the years when I can travel without paying for dog kennels/house sitters. Poverty is keeping her with me until she can get out and start earning a living, so I’m making the most of it. Poppy and Jeff will be 13 in 2026 and Scout will be 11. I should stay around a bit more when they’re getting elderly.
Oh! One lovely thing has happened. I have a blog reader in Vancouver who has offered to show Megs and me around on our free day there. I’m so pleased. Blogmeets are NEVER a disappointment. I’m not sure if Martha reads this blog or the FIRE one, but just in case – thanks Martha!!!
On Easter Monday I had the family over for lunch and to watch my skydive video. David30 and Izzy collected Mum and Dad. Mum was so happy that the cavaliers wanted to snuggle up close to them. It’s much safer for her to be around them when she’s sitting down, as she’s having balance issues lately.
Evan27 – always a shy little flower.
Georgia gave both Jenna and Izzy a shoulder massage. Here she is giving Izzy the treatment. One benefit of doing a course like remedial massage, even if you don’t end up using it professionally, is that the family will have instant access to treatments forever!
Georgia and Izzy both saw me aiming the phone at them.
It’s all too easy to book travel these days, isn’t it? Now that I’ve decided that the next two years or so are going to be all about TRAVEL, I’ve been lining up the holidays.
This was Kangaroo Island in January. Added onto Adelaide, it was a very pleasant week.
Canada/Alaska in May/June. This one will be a little over 4 weeks.
The Ghan, The Red Centre and The Top End in September for my birthday. 15 days for this one. Do I like the heat? Do I love having flies all over me? NO. But I feel that, as an Australian, I should go and have a look at these places ONCE.
Japan in March. I fly out a week after I get back from Vietnam.
I was going to book Japan for April, but soon realised that if I did that, I was going to pay $1,000 more because April is high season. Yikes! That’s money I could put towards another trip!
Georgia is going to be living at home for another 2 – 3 years while she does her coding course, so the dogs will be able to be left with her and I won’t have to pay for boarding them out. This is a big financial consideration.
The parents are getting more frail, but are still happily living at home. I want to gallop all over the world while they’re still ok and they don’t need me to run around after them.
I don’t have any grandchildren. This means that my time’s my own. I have a small window of time where I can be totally selfish and do anything I want. At the moment – that means travel.
It’s so easy to see a great deal and click on it. Hello Japan!
But what I need to do now is slow down and really give some thought as to what are the things I want to see. You know… the things I REALLY want to see.
I also have to rank them in terms of physical ability. I’m working on getting fitter, but I’m never going to be able to climb Mt Everest, for example. I need to be conscious that as I age, my fitness will go down. So which things on my ‘REALLY want to see’ list need to be done sooner, rather than later?
Mum and Dad took a trip to South Africa in their late seventies and it took months for Mum to get over the exhaustion. I don’t want to experience that.
My reasons for choosing Vietnam and Japan is that lots of people have said that I’d love Vietnam, and as for Japan – I haven’t met a single person who hasn’t loved it. And lots of Aussies go to Japan. So there you go.
Our Antarctica group on Whatsapp was sent a video of Corinna on a tour in Iraq that Morgan was leading. She was blowing out a candle on a birthday “cake”.
There are so many weird and wonderful places to see!
Yesterday I jumped in the car, drove a whole 20 minutes and had lunch with Izzy in her break.
As you know, we saw David30 on Sunday. There’s no rule that says that we have to only socialise with both of the couple at ay one time, and I really want to have a strong relationship with my son’s wife. It’s a bit difficult to have one if David30 is hovering around all the time!
So we grabbed a couple of pies from a café, sat down and had a good old chinwag.
We talked so hard that she went over her allotted time and had to race back to work. I feel really fortunate that she’s willing to spend time one-on-one with me and I hope that, over time, we have a relationship that is strong on its own, not one that is purely dependent on our shared love for David30.
When she stood up to go, I said, “I hope we can do this again.”
She laughed and said, “Of course we can! I’m always here!”
Here’s the Man Cave before the weather made it obvious that Christmas had to be inside this year…
… and here is the only shot I took on Christmas Day, just as people were walking through the front door.
THANK GOODNESS we decided to redecorate the Man Cave earlier this year! Even though we were onside, the area looked lovely and the Man Cave is large enough to easily fit 2 tables. We were seating 15 this year, so it was all perfect.
Not going to lie. It was loud. Even with the 2 rugs on the floor, the sound was bouncing everywhere. But it was no louder than going to a restaurant.
The annoying thing was that I’d spent hundreds of dollars and many days working to make the gardens look AMAZING… and no one saw them. Ah well, at least the work got done.
The present I was most excited to give was the birthday present for my tans daughter. Their birthday is 4 days after Christmas so I thought we’d give it on Christmas Day, seeing as everyone who kicked in for it was there. It was a $650 voucher for laser hair removal.
Well, you’ve never seen anyone so overcome. This is the thing that, apart from HRT, is the one thing they’re desperate to get done. After Christmas was over, we were chatting and I asked if they’d registered who was on the card. They looked at me, smiled and said, “I know I’m supported and loved.”
How special that a trans person absolutely knows that their whole family is behind them. Even the one brother who is currently having a hard time getting his head around it put in for the gift.
It was a lovely Christmas.
Tom31 brought a new GF and she is lovely. Jenna was here for the first time – sh and Evan27 have decided to alternate between the two families. Hers come from Adelaide, so fair enough!
Yesterday I went to Waverley Gardens shopping centre (wherever that is) to get some new reading glasses. Izzy works at Specsavers so we chose the frames together, then we were lucky that the shop had a slow point for about half an hour so we were able to sit and have a chat before things picked up again. When I go and pick them up, I’ll find out when her lunch break is so we can be ladies who do lunch.
This is the shot I sent to Tom31 yesterday. He gave me a Sodastream, which I was rapt about because I’ve started to drink sparkling water in the evenings to cut down on my wine consumption. Buying all of those plastic bottles was starting to do my head in, so this will be perfect.
I have nothing much planned for the rest of the year. Though in a bit of excitement, my first payment from my superannuation fund will be hitting my bank account tomorrow. I’ve elected to have fortnightly payments, as that’s how I’ve always been paid. It’s going to be like getting a wage without having to do any yard duty or marking!
Three Christmases ago David30, Izzy and Evan27 gave me a voucher to go on a walking tour with a friend. Of course, life being how it is, I left it until a month before the voucher was due to expire. Yesterday I sat down, pulled up their website and made my selections.
I booked a city ghost walking tour in December for my sister-in-law and I. There was money left over, so I booked a day at Werribee Zoo for tomorrow. Funny – I’ve been to Africa but not to Werribee Zoo! This can be this month’s Little Adventure on the FIRE blog.
I had $14 left. I was going to let it go but then I thought, “No! My kids earned that money!”
So I found a mini-bus tour of the Botanic Gardens for $15. Good enough. So I’m doing that on Wednesday.
I’m planning on redeeming my skydiving voucher far more quickly than this one.
Yesterday was a beautiful spring day so I invited Mum and Dad over for lunch. Nearly every Saturday Ryan28 and I have a chicken and veggie soup for lunch, using a chicken frame from the freezer for the stock. I made some bread rolls to go with it and we all sat on the back verandah, looking at the veggie garden and enduring the neighbour’s kids poking their heads up over the fence every 5 minutes until they were called inside for their own lunch.
Mum absolutely loves steamed silver beet, so she was rapt to be given 3 huge leaves straight from the garden to take home with her. Dad, on the other hand, isn’t such a fan.
I’ve borrowed a few books from the library, as you can see. This year I aimed to read 110 books for my Goodreads Challenge, which is what I achieved last year. This year, however, taking 5 weeks off reading while I travelled and blogged has wreaked havoc with my total. I have 17 books to read between now and Dec 31.
Luckily, Goodreads sent out an email with a long list of shorter books to help people who might be struggling. I looked at it, chose those that sounded interesting and reserved them. Naturally, all of them were available, so the next 3 weeks are going to be READING WEEKS.
So much has been happening since I got home! You all know that I was out of the country when it was my birthday, so if course, I hosted 4 birthdays in one party last week. My 60th, David30, Evan27 and Mum turned 83.
IT WAS HUGE. Ryan28 and I worked like crazy in the week before, scrubbing down the outside verandah and furniture (the fans were FILTHY); cleaning up the gardens; I bought nearly 1K’s worth of plants, pots and potting mix to make everything beautiful outside: the two middle kids finished up the Man Cave furniture and hung many pictures; plus all the regular sprucing up when visitors are expected.
It was exhausting. But very satisfying.
We’re now getting closer to living in the house I have in my mind. Of course, this place has always been The Best House in Melbourne, but now it’s even better.
We ended up hosting 19 adults and 4 kids under 6, so it was mega. On Saturday morning Ryan28 and I were at Bunnings buying another trestle table and 6 chairs to accommodate everyone. It wasn’t what I expected to be doing, but hey. Having the extra table won’t be necessary for most gatherings, but I know that every now and then it’ll be fantastic to have.
We had 4 generations here. Pretty special. What was also special was that the kids gave me a skydive for my birthday! I asked them to do this, but I’m never sure if one of them will convince the others that they have a “better idea”. Happy that one day soon, I’ll be clinging like a limpet to someone casually stepping out of a plane.
Here is the view of the Man Cave as you walk into the room.
You can see Wallace and Grommit (my souvenir from Windsor Castle) at the left, with my art from the last trip (and Venice) hung on the other side. These last pics were hung just an hour before people arrived. It was going down to the last gasp, I tell you!
As you turn around, you see this:
Molly Malone and Sean are on the left, with a cobra sculpture from when I took the boys to Bali in 2006 on the right. The cupboard doors on all the units are all in high gloss white because the room gets quite dark in the afternoon and evening as the sun moves over the top of the house. You can just see a corner of my North Korea prints on the side wall. After 5 years, they finally have a place on the walls!
We’ve been here for 7 years and the space finally looks like adults live here instead of students and/or squatters. It’s like a breath of fresh air to walk in here now.
I love it.
It’s also a great space for adult kids moving back here to save money for a house deposit or something. Who knows if that will ever happen, but it feels good to have that option.
We ordered a hard rubbish pickup and threw out the two green couches that were given to us by Scott when he left the country for England, about 11 years ago. They used to be our inside couches but then we moved them outside when I bought the new leather lounges. Their time had come.
The spaces that were left, I filled up with plants.
Lots and lots of plants.
Here are the plants that I bought to live under the verandah in the backyard. They’re inside plants but I’m hoping that being shaded and free from frost will give them a fighting chance to survive. I popped a couple of pots filled with jonquil bulbs in front of them. The jonquils have been waiting to be planted in the front yard for 2 years.
I’ll do it. I promise…
I wanted the plants to embrace the area, so I ordered them in a curve. Over time, they’ll be joined by others to give a lush feel here. Baby steps…
Zoom out.
Imagine 3 tables all in a row, covered with white tablecloths and set with white crockery. It looked really good.
I’ve given up trying to grow a floral hedge here to attract the bees. I bought 3 pittosporums, which will grow and fill out this entire fence with green.
And here’s how the veggie garden is looking at the moment. I’m letting a couple of silver beets and cos lettuces go to seed, but everything else is young and ready to grow.
Here’s the other half of the front verandah. It’s a seating area with my lovely comfy couch and the beautiful teak coffee table I bought for the backyard. I’ll be oiling the table before Christmas.
Promise.
It’s so much more practical and inviting now, and it was all done with items that we already had around the place.
Here’s how it looks from inside. Again, I’ll be buying more plants as time goes on.
On Wednesday I’ll be picking up a carpet off-cut that I had made into a rug. My sister Kate suggested this, as it’s much cheaper than buying a huge rug to cover the space.
Funny story: I measured the space that I wanted the rug to define (my lounge room) and it came to 3m X 3m. I saw a suitable piece and ordered that size. For some reason, the next morning I decided to measure it again and I realised that it was too small. ARGH! I needed a piece 3m X 3.2m.
I rang the carpet place in a mad panic. Nope, they’d already cut it. Oh well. It meant that instead of the 3 seater couch having all its legs on the rug, only the front two would.
I went to bed and had a nap. Twenty minutes in, I sat bolt upright. Why don’t I get another piece sewn back on the end? Most of the seam is going to be under the couch anyway!
I rang the carpet place. Yes it could be done. So on Wednesday, I’ll see how noticeable the seam is.
And the price? Just over $500. A rug of comparable size is at least 3 times that.
So I’m happy.
Here’s how my living space looks now. I’m so glad I got rid of the beige walls and ceiling and added some colour instead.
I still haven’t finished. I’m having plantation shutters installed on the rest of the windows, I’m probably buying a new tv for my living room because my tv looks so good in the Man Cave that I don’t want to move it, plus the garden still has things I’m planning to do out there.
I also knocked back a teaching contract for term 1 with the school. I did it without a moment’s hesitation. I’ve drawn a line in the sand and I won’t be going back.
And I haven’t even mentioned that I’ve booked my next trip overseas, plus my plans for quilting.
Hands down, this is a wonderful outfit to travel in. The dress is Sierra, a swing dress that can easily be used as a pinafore, meaning that it would never actually touch my skin, thus cutting down on washing.
The real beauty of this dress is that it’s made from merino wool, which means that it’s odour-resistant, easy to wash, crumple-free and absolutely comfortable to wear.
This makes it stellar for travel, especially if, like me, you choose to only take carry-on and so space is at a premium. Having just one outfit makes carry-on travelling a breeze.
Obviously I was very protective of Sierra, being extra-careful where messy foods were concerned. Before my travel I had to spot-clean a few times, but while I was travelling it was never an issue.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. How and why did I choose to wear just the one dress – not just for my 5-week holiday – but for a full 100 days?
For those who don’t know, I began a 100-Day Challenge run by Wool&, an American company that makes merino clothing. What interested me in buying one of their dresses – after I thought about it for 2 years – was that merino is an excellent fabric for travel.
I went to Antarctica last year and bought merino long-sleeved tees to travel in, wear on the ice and on the ship, and those tees were absolutely brilliant. Due to this, I decided that I was going to take the plunge and invest in a Wool& dress and do their 100-days challenge.
Because after all, why not? I love a challenge and a US$100 voucher is nothing to be sneezed at. Having two dresses would make a perfect travel capsule.
I also decided that the easiest way to succeed at this would be to schedule my end date to be the day I got home from my 5-week trip to England and Ireland. If I gave myself no alternative outfits to wear, I’d have no option but to succeed! I counted back the days and the 100 days began on July 1.
Before my trip, I treated the dress as I would anything else. I was protective of her – I wore an apron when cooking to eliminate any oil spots and I was careful with sauces and such. Spot cleaning is easy – I just used a bar of Velvet soap and handwashed the area.
Just before my trip I washed the dress by using the velvet soap, immersing in water and then rolling her into a towel and standing on it. I hung her up in a well-ventilated spot and the dress was dry by morning!
Incredible.
What was also incredible was that before I went on the trip I was teaching secondary students. Not one of them noticed that I was wearing the same dress every day.
While travelling, I was very protective of the dress.
“Not near THE DRESS!” I’d say if any ketchup or creamy sauces were handed around near me, and it became a running joke. I didn’t have to spot clean once and I only gave her one full wash towards the end of the trip, not because I thought she needed it but because I thought that it was a good thing to do.
(The merino tops were hung up every night and spot-washed in the armpits every 3 or 4 wears, usually when I had 2 nights in a room, just to make sure that they’d be dry when I needed to pack my case again.)
Merino is definitely the best fabric for travel.
Right at the end of my 100 days I noticed a couple of pills on the fabric where the strap on my travel bag was running against it. You can see the size of my travel bag in the photo above – it’s large and was quite heavy some days.
I don’t think this is a problem – I worked the dress hard and if there a tiny bit of pilling at the end of the challenge, then so be it.
The clothes I took on the trip were as follows :
1 x Wool& dress.
4 x merino tees.
3 x undies.
2 x bra.
2 x black tights.
1 x walking boots.
1 x runners.
1 x woolen cowl.
1 x woolen beanie.
1 x light raincoat.
1 x warm fleece jacket.
That’s all I wore for 5 weeks and, to be honest, I only needed the fleece jacket once when we went to the Cliffs of Moher. I’d think about leaving it home next time, depending on where I go next.
I really enjoyed just having carry-on luggage. It was so good to simply get off the plane and walk straight to the exits. Wheeling it around on the streets was also very easy.
At the end of my trip, when my carty-on case was stuffed to the gills, I had to walk up 3 sets of stairs to get to my room in an old hotel in England. I don’t think I would have been able to get up there if I’d had a traditional 30KG suitcase!
So all in all, I’m loving the Sierra as a travel dress. Having the one outfit that I could dress up or down as I pleased made the whole trip so easy.
Will I wear her in my ordinary life? Maybe. I’m actually liking the thought of folding her up and putting her in my carry-on case, ready for the next trip next year.
We were supposed to see The Rock of Cashel this morning.
Unfortunately, Ireland was dealing with the aftermath of a little storm called Cyclone Agnes, so the winds and rain were dreadful.
While we were sitting on the bus, which was being buffeted by the wind and rain, Ben told us the story being depicted here. St Patrick was visiting the monks at the small wooden chapel there, and the devil was on the next mountain. He was furious that St Patrick was preaching Christianity, so he bit off a piece of the mountain and threw it at St Patrick.
This is the Rock of Cashel where the church is built.
Unfortunately, one part of this legend is limestone, while the other is sandstone, so there goes that story!
When James heard that we’d been washed out, he sent some photos so I could see what the Rock of Cashel is like.
Now I wish we had’ve been able to see it. It looks amazing. The town itself looked pretty, glazed with rain.
We had lunch in a nice little pub.
This was the picture waiting at the foot of the stairs.
There was also a newspaper clipping of a newspaper advertisement offering a reward for Daniel Breene. £1,000 reward . He was a member of the 1916 rebellion and the Civil War.
He was interviewed when he was much older and he said,, “Of course I regret the violence, but I’d do it all again. The British went down in the gutter and we went down there with them.”
Then it was off to the Irish National Stud.
As you would expect, it has horses in it. The guide showing us around was mainly talking about how much each stallion earns every time he covers a mare.
These are the yearlings. The ducks ended up taking more than their fair share of the food.
Unlike the stallions, who have double fences around them to keep everyone safe, these retired race horses are geldings and so are friendly. It was clear how much the guide cared for this on, in particular.
I went a little nuts in the gift shop and bought a silver Ugly Christmas Sweater ornament for the tree.
And look at these! They’re in the middle of the roundabout where the horse stud is. There are 5 of them in total and they’re made of Bog Ash
When we got to the hotel, all we wanted was to get to our rooms. We were all taken to the side in one group and the hotel door guy said that we should call out our names and he’d find our room keys. ‘Strangely inefficient’, I thought, but after one couple called out and got their keys, I called out “Frogdancer Jones” at exactly the same time as Cornelia called out her name.
You remember her,? The English woman in her 70’s who started out professing sympathy for the Irish but was unprepared for the level of hatred towards the English and to cope, is now saying that the Irish should just get on with it and move on. The one trying to get people to give little or no tip to Ben.
The doorman began looking for my key as Cornelia started repeating to me, “Wait your turn.” After the third time, I turned to her and said, “Calm down Cornelia, you can get yours next.”
Now, I know I shouldn’t have chosen the words ‘calm down.’ They always have the opposite effect. But I hadn’t done anything wrong and perhaps SHE could learn to wait her turn?
If looks could kill, I would have been in need of an ambulance. She’s an entitled little woman who’s very used to getting her own way and I didn’t back down to her when she demanded it.
Anyway, I got my key and escaped to the lift. I knew in my bones that I was going to hear more of this.She was going to try to teach me a lesson, I was sure of it.
Not altogether to my surprise, just before dinner I arrived in the hotel foyer to find her waiting for me.
She hissed something at me and I said, “Let’s not do this, Cornelia,” and she looked at me, narrowed her eyes and said, “, Oh we ARE going to do this.”
I smiled at her, and said, “Ok then.”
And that’s when she fucked around and found out.
I hate confrontation and I’ll do my level best to avoid it. But when you bring it to my door? You’ll get the Frogdancer Jones who will not roll over and let you turn me into a doormat.
You all know that I wasn’t unprepared about the type of person she is. Plus I’m a secondary teacher… I know how to deal with bullies.
So when she came up close, leaned in and said in a voice so furious it almost trembled, “Don’t you EVER try to push in front of me again!”, all I did was smile and shake my head.
“I was just doing what the man said to do,” I said. “You know that.”
She blew up like a puffer fish and said, “You’re a VERY IGNORANT WOMAN!” and she turned on her heel to walk away, as if she clinched the whole conversation.
So ok, I could have let it go, but I thought I might see how she handled it if I reflected what she’d just said back to her.So I leaned forward and said earnestly, “Oh my god, I was just thinking the same thing about YOU!”
Well, that opened the floodgates. She gasped as if I’d just stabbed her and she said a few things that I can’t remember, while I just put on a patient look, raised my eyebrows slightly and nodded every now and then. (Ok, I knew how annoying that would be.)
Finally, she stopped, took a deep breath and said, “And you can FUCK OFF!”
I grinned because with that outburst, I’d won and we both knew it. As I grinned I said, “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me all night, Cornelia.”
She started to walk off, turned around and ferociously gave me the finger and stormed off.
I know I could have defused the situation but for once in my life I simply didn’t want to. Once she made it obvious that she was in for a fight, she was always going to lose, because I didn’t care and I had zero interest in pandering to her. Besides, if she spent her time stewing over me instead of Ben for a change, then it would be time well spent.
“On the coast, you will travel to the Cliffs of Moher. Braced against the ocean, on the coast of County Clare. Here you will stand on the dramatic 702ft (214m) high and 9 miles (14km) long cliffs, a Wild Atlantic Way signature discovery point, to gaze out on the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.”
This was the spiel for today I the itinerary.
What an incredible place. Patrick, a young man on the tour here with his wife on their honeymoon, said, “I’m relieved. I was scared the fog would roll in and it’d all be hidden.”
Here it is in all its glory.
Just to prove I was here.
Here’s what greeted me at the entrance to the Cliffs of Moher. A raven, cawing loudly. It seemed somehow appropriate.
The weather wasn’t kind to us. It was rainy and very windy. On the way, Ben reminded us a few times not to get too close to the edge of the cliffs. I wonder if many tourists have started to fly, or if it’s just a myth that the tour guides tell amongst themselves to feel a frisson of fear running down their backs.
Beautiful, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Remember when I had a Little Adventure there a year or so ago?
This little fort was interesting. Apparently when Napoleon was rampaging around Europe, they were scared he’d try and invade Ireland. They built a series of these forts all around the southern coast, enough forts so they collectively had eyes on every part of the coast. However, it was a wasted effort because Napoleon didn’t try to invade.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget how it felt to be there on the cliffs, my face being stung by the rain but seeing that incredible view stretching out before me.
My Antarctica jackets… both my warm and my cold… certainly proved their worth today, as I felt perfectly warm. Most people around me were miserable, with one woman on our tour saying, “Fastest trip ever. Walk up to the top, take a look, then straight down again!”
What a waste. When are we ever going to be here again?
So I stood there, leaning against the wall, soaking it all in. It was hard to ignore the excited Argentinians singing Happy Birthday to someone right beside me, but I did my best.
Even though the weather was wild, it seemed to somehow suit this place. It was stern and unmoving and beautiful.
The roads here are so narrow. There is a lot of tourism going on and the coaches are everywhere.
The Burren is a limestone area around 80 square miles wide. It used to be under the ocean near the equator in millenia gone by, as they’ve found fossils of warm water fish among the rocks.
In the 1640s, Cromwell’s surveyor Ludlow described it as “a savage land, yielding neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury him.”
That didn’t stop him burning villages and then leaving the people nowhere to go but the Burren.
This is Kinvarra’s 11th century intact castle. That means that Cromwell was welcome. Any place that had Catholics living there had a very different response…
We drove past a memorial to the famine victims. This part of it is a little boy outside the workhouse doors. You can see the big hinges to the side.
This is a sacked Cistercian abbey. It was established in the 11th century, before Cromwell came over in 1649 to fuck things over for the Catholics. He only stayed a year, but he certainly made his mark on this country.
We passed by a golf course on both sides of the road. Ben mentioned “the love grass.” When someone asked what that was, he said, “They call it the Love Grass, because if you go in there you’re fucked!
I bought some stainless steel earrings with some Connemara marble in them.
We stopped at Adare village for half an hour.
(Incidentally, if you’re a member of my family reading this, please send me a message on Messenger.Just curious to see if anyone is following me on this trip. )
🙂
It’s such a pretty place. I think we all wished we could have stayed longer.
We headed off for 2 nights in Kilarney. This is Ben’s home town. You could almost see him swell with pride as we entered the town.
Not a bad welcome. This was right outside our hotel.
This was when sickness started to rip through our coach. Over the next few days, as many as 10 people were staying back at the hotel to spend a day in bed. Of course, when people started feeling bad, they didn’t wear masks to protect the rest of us. I woke up this morning not feeling 100%, so I popped a mask on. I was hopeful that the Cliffs of Moher had blown the germs right out of me, but no such luck. I didn’t have to miss any days on the bus, but I was certainly putting in marathon nights’ sleep for the next few nights. No going out and partying for Frogdancer Jones!
Connemara was beautiful and wild. It’s harder country here than where we’ve been so far. Ben was telling us about the Connemara ponies, small white hoses, legend has it, were brought over by the Spanish Armada. They are highly prized for their jumping and racing abilities. Their foals are born brown and then turn white as they mature.
Along the way, we passed by two big hotels. “ Normally we’d stop at one or t’other for a toilet break,” said Ben, “ but we can’t now. They’re full of Ukrainians fleeing from the war.”
It brings it home a bit, how close everything is here to one another.
Lough Inagh
As the sun came out, it lit up the colours on the shore on the other side. The heather was glowing a reddish/brown colour, the grass was – of course- green and the bleating of the sheep wanting to be fed by the tourists and the sound of the wind was the only things I could hear. ( I blocked the tourist chatter out.)
There were a couple of houses on the road with big picture windows looking out over the lake. What a view to see every day!
Ben said that the EU are paying farmers to run sheep on the Connemara hills. They have to state how many head of sheep they have and are paid accordingly. The EU keep a watch on them by using satellite technology. “ But the farmers, if they’ve over-estimated their sheep, they do things like paint the rocks white, or borrow some sheep from a neighbour.”
After our lit stop by the lake, we were off to Kylemore Abbey. This place has an interesting history.
A rich politician called Mitchell Henry, who was a really good landlord and fought for the rights of his tenants, fell in love with this place and decided to build a grand estate for his wife Margaret.
He certainly did.
The house looks like a fairytale castle as we crossed the bridge towards it. I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say that we all gasped when we saw it. It’s worth enlarging it to have a good look at it. Stunning.
He built the grand house – which, disappointingly, was a little boring when I went into it – but the gardens would have been superb. They were still amazing, even though the passing of time has not been kind to the scope they used to have.
Sorry about the weird photo. I’m learning how to transfer photo’s from my phone to my iPad because they haven’t all synched. Once I put them here I can’t delete them, so here is one I had second thoughts about but can’t get rid of. You’re welcome.
This is a portrait of his wife.
They lived there happily until, on a family holiday in Egypt, his wife died of dysentery. She was only 45. My grandmother, who was a superstitious woman, would have said that the family was asking for misfortune, by having peacock feathers inside the house.
He ended up losing his fortune and, after changing hands a few times, the property came to the attention of a group of Irish Benedictine nuns who used to have an abbey in Ypres. They were evacuated to England by some Irish fusiliers when their abbey was bombed into oblivion, and in 1920 they came to what is now called the Abbey.
The Benedictines are an enclosed order. It was suggested to them by the Irish Archbishop in 1921 that the mountains be their walls. I like that. They still live here today, though their numbers are fewer.
They make heather honey, which has same healing properties as Manuka honey; handmade chocolates and they bake for the cafe. I had the best blueberry muffin I’ve ever eaten in my life here!
After looking at the house, I took the shuttle bus up the hill to the gardens. There, I saw a pig and them made my way towards an unassuming doorway towards the walled gardens.
This was what greeted me when I went through the gate.
Herbaceous border, anyone?
The gardens seemed to go on forever.
They have pops of turquoise which looks really good. I’m filing this away for use in my own garden…
A Monkey Puzzle tree. Originally from South America, for some reason they became a real “must have” in fashionable Victorian gardens. I’m not really a fan, myself, but I grew up reading about Monkey Puzzle trees and at least now I know what they look like.
The roof in the back is the groundskeeper’s house. Not a bad job to have.
Naturally, I spent a lot of time wandering through the vegetable gardens, feeling a bit guilty that mine isn’t anywhere as beautifully tended as this one.
Nuns evidently eat a lot of rhubarb, just saying.
Even the walls were used, with espaliered fruit trees to catch every bit of the warmth from the sun on the bricks.
Could you grow enough to feed a family in a garden this size? I think so.
A fine lot of cabbages with marigolds interplanted within them. I started doing interplanting with flowers last year. Looks like I’m onto a good thing.
Another nicely ordered bed. Butwhat is that furry looki Branch poking in at the top left side?
It’s an apple tree. I’ve seen one that’s covered with fur like this.
Can you imagine the nuns working in their garden, seeing the mountains surrounding them and feeling safe and enclosed?
The sound of swiftly running water made me peer through the fuchsia hedge. There was a stream.
There’s something about the sound of running water, isn’t there?
I saw my second robin red breast in the kitchen garden. It was happily flying in and out of the fuchsia hedge. I talked with an Irish couple who laughed when I said that I was excited to see the robin. “They’re all over the place in Ireland,” he said. It seems that I should keep a sharper look out.
I’m going to buy a red and purple fuchsia when I’m home. It’ll remind me of the fuch Hedge where I saw my robin.
This garden has everything – even Connemara ponies.
You can see the difference in the colour between the mother and her baby.
As I sat in the sun, waiting for the shuttle bus, I began to think of what life must have been like for the people who built this place.
The 27 hot houses where the ladies could take their walks when it was cold and wet. They’d likely take a pony trap or something to get them up here. It’s quite a hike for ladies with long skirts to do.
When they were in the hot houses they could eat a home-grown banana, which would be my idea of hell, but for them would be an unbelievable luxury.
There are only 2 hothouses here now and they’re tiny. But in his day, they were huge and were heated by pipes of hot water, which was also used to heat the house.
There were no trees here before he started the garden.
The hills around us are bare of all but grass, heather and sheep, but around the house and gardens are hundreds of trees. He certainly had the long game in mind when he planted this garden. One hundred and fifty years later, we’re getting the benefit.m
We slowed down beside the only fjord in Ireland, Killarney Fjord. During the Second World War, pilots would use the fjord as a line to guide them through to Europe.
Once during the war: there was a huge storm in the Atlantic and a British submarine took refuge in the fjord. They got a ping that a German submarine was right beside them. Neutral waters so they didn’t fire on each other, and when the storm abated, they went their separate ways.
Ferry used to travel faster and the dolphins used to play with them. Now that petrol is so high, the ferries have slowed down and it’s no fun for the dolphins anymore.
Peahen and chicks, just wandering around the road in front of us.
Lines in the land means potatoes. The people who lived on these hills were a driven-down race of people who were driven from their ancestral lands and ended up here. It was poor land, so the displaced people were left alone.
They used to drag seaweed up to the top of the mountains to fertilise the potatoes. Over time they became experts on growing potatoes and that’s all they grew. When the Famine hit, they were decimated.
In the famine, 2 million people died and 2 million left. Those who could afford to, left. Those who couldn’t were left to take their chances. The population of Ireland hasn’t yet recovered since the famine. They’re still a million people short, even now.
The queen sent an envoy who wrote that the Irish were simply being lazy. Ben pointed to the lines in the mountains and said, “People who wouldn’t farm like this, do you think they would be lazy?”
Queen Victoria sent a shipload of corn. The trouble was, that corn was totally unfamiliar to the Irish. She helpfully included recipes, but they were written in English when everyone only spoke Irish. Plus they were illiterate, because they were forbidden to go to school.
The Choctaw Indians sent $450. They’d been through their own troubles with white settlement. Then during Covid, the Choctaws set up a Go Fund Me Fund an A million and a half euros sent back to return the favour. I guess the Irish never forget.
Village of Cong, where The Quiet Man was filmed.
This place was doing a roaring trade with people just wanting to sit at the bar and drink a pint of Guinness.
Gayle was so happy. ‘The Quiet Man’ is her favourite movie so she was pretty much in heaven.
Cong is certainly living off the back of this movie! It’s a pretty little place though.
Turn your head to the side…
I bought this little card. It reminds me of the photo at the top of this post.
Dancing With Frogs 