Ireland with Jim and Jenny, Post 1

Better late than never... here's what we got up to in Ireland! I'm going to TRY to tell this as succinctly as I can (always difficult :P) as we're busy with exam study at the moment and I also have Scotland to write about! By the way, Jim and Jenny left 6 days ago and are now safely back home and recovered from their jet lag etc. It was so wonderful to have them here - it felt both surreal and quite normal to all be together in England! Anyway, here goes with the Ireland adventures...

We flew into Cork (see point A on above map) on the afternoon of Tuesday 20th May. That night we stayed at a hostel in Cork - a colourful place on a narrow street called "Bob and Joan's Walk", not far from the bridge leading across to the city centre. As we wandered around Cork that night, trying unsuccessfully to find a nice restaurant for dinner (we ended up getting burgers and chips, as everywhere else was either closed or only serving drinks), we had an entertaining encounter with a self-proclaimed leprechaun...

We were walking down a street when an old man stopped us to ask about our accents. Next thing we knew, he had hold of my hand and didn't let go for about 15 minutes, while telling us all about some song and a woman named Anna Maria who was miraculously healed, and asking us to meet him in the same spot in 450 years! He was appalled that we were only in Ireland for 5 days. Not sure about the leprechaun bit but let's just say he seemed to have recently been quenching his thirst!! Jim and Jenny escaped quite early on, but eventually he thanked Ben for letting him hold my hand, wished that "all our troubles be little ones", and wandered off (later to be seen bailing up various other people). :)

The next day we drove around the Ring of Kerry. This is a well known scenic drive in Ireland's south-west - see the loop below Killarney (point E) on the map. We had a delicious lunch at The Red Fox Inn somewhere on the way. At one point we took a detour to follow signs to a Tin Soldier Factory in the middle of nowhere, where we were treated to an individual casting demonstration and walked around the factory - very interesting! This was the rainiest, foggiest day of the trip, and we were following the coastline for much of the Ring of Kerry drive, so we mostly couldn't see very far but could still tell it was spectacular!



After the Ring of Kerry, we had a very rushed drive back to the Kinsale area (point F), where we were staying that night. We had a really nice visit and dinner with a family whose contact details we had been given by our friends in England, and then we went to the gospel meeting with them. They invited us to come back the next day so they could show us around their farm, so with those plans made we headed off to our B&B. It was just a little way out of the picturesque seaside town of Kinsale and had a beautiful view down over the inlet and surrounding farmland. The photos below were taken the next morning during breakfast.



Later that morning we were back at our friends' farm for our tour. Jenny stayed in the house with the ladies, while Jim, Ben and I put on our borrowed wellies and sloshed down to the cow paddock with Jacob, the son of the family who is the farmer in charge. He told us all about the running of the farm and his stonemasonry sideline, and then took us for a drive over to his brother's nearby farm where he keeps another herd. This was a very fun and interesting morning and we thoroughly enjoyed our rural adventuring and the time spent with Jacob and his family!



Before leaving the area, we headed up to Charles Fort, which had been recommended to us that morning. This was an old fort and lookout spot with incredible views over Kinsale. It was absolutely gorgeous and I've got no doubt you'll agree!!



After a little while enjoying the view, we drove back down through Kinsale and then stopped in to visit some other friends. We enjoyed morning tea with them and had a tour around their grounds, where preps were well underway so we met lots more people! Then we set off for Waterford.

Anyway, having written this much and then realised I'm not even halfway through our time in Ireland, I think I'll leave it here for now so you don't get sick of reading. I'll continue when I can - goodnight! And happy birthday to Dreana! :)

PS. People who use Internet Explorer - until recently we assume you have have always had the first word or two of a paragraph appearing beside the last photo in a set? We didn't know this was happening as we use Firefox and it looks fine in that! Hopefully we've fixed the problem now. If there are any other unusual things happening - such as photos appearing scattered rather than in neat rectangular blocks of 4 or 6, a problem I've noticed on a couple of peoples' computers - please let us know so we can see if there's a solution. It's not supposed to look strange so please tell us if it does!!