Scotland, Belleek and Ballintubber Abbey

Click the photo to enlarge it
And see Scotland

We left The far North of Ireland today and the weather was beautiful!  To paraphrase Sarah Palin, "we could see Scotland from our window".  Ok, it was Tina Fey - but we really could see Scotland. We have a friend, Vlad, who studied in Ireland, who once wrote, "Ireland is the only country that uses all the different shades of green crayons in the Crayloa box. 

Today was a road day.  We drove from the North Atlantic

(BallyCastle) to the West Coast.  The Belleek china factory was our only stop on the way.   The were no tours as it was Saturday but we still got a nice sense of the place, visiting the museum and gift shop.  Belleek China is normally considered a collectible and is often handed down from generation to generation but I couldn't help but remember a news article that I read titled "Your kids don't want your stuff and nobody else does either".   We left the China on the display shelf.  

800 year old baptismal font
Made famous by the baptism
Of Sean Joyce

We are spending the night in Ballintubber, in County Mayo. It's a very rural community.  A friend of ours, Sean Joyce, was baptized at the Abbey here.  We attended Mass at 8:00 pm on Saturday and we were blown away!  The church is 802 years old.  I think I personally knelt on one of the original kneelers (LOL) but seriously folks, the Abbey was 300 years old when Columbus came to America.  After Mass we asked the 83 year old priest if there would be tours on Sunday Morning but they didn't begin until after the 11:30 Mass, too late for us.  However he brought us into the closed museum/gift shop and set us up with a video about the history and preservation of the church.  "Turn the light off and make sure you close the door if you don't mind" he told us. Spoiler alert regarding the video - we don't like Cromwell and Priest Killers were a real thing.  

Making the Balintubber Abbey even slightly more unreal if not un-nerving was that we parked

in the Car Park and walked through the cemetery, an easy walk before Mass but bizarre at 9:30 at night when we were very much by ourselves.  

On to Galway!

Causeway and Bushmills

Our first morning waking up in Northern Ireland began with a full Irish breakfast consisting of eggs, sausages, toast, potato, Irish soda bread, tomatoes, bacon, bangers, juice and coffee. We declined the cereal.  I now better understand my Irish family's heart condition.  

Cathy at Giants Causeway

After our traditional angioplasties, we jumped into

Look closely, I'm in this photo

our car and drove to the Giants Causeway.  It didn't disappoint.  Rain had been predicted for the day but we were blessed that our visit was cool but dry. The bizarre rock formations that make up the Causeway were created by prehistoric volcanic activity.  The activity happened well before the Atlantic Ocean was formed.  We truly enjoyed our time there.

Upon leaving the Causeway we drove a short distance to the

small village of Bushmills to tour the Bushmills Irish Whiskey Distillery.  The 45 minute tour was surprisingly interesting.  This distillery is the ONLY Bushmills distillery, bottling 8 million bottles every year!  Equally surprising was the "sampling" room following the tour.  Now, I hate to beat a dead horse here but again it's about driving.  Following the tour we had three "samples", the size of each were larger than a shot!  Who in the world thinks THAT is a good idea?  Place that on top of opposite side roads, opposite side steering wheel, roads about the size of the alley that we had when I lived on North Oakland and now it was raining!   

However, we made it back to our Bed and Breakfast safely and are happy to be tucked in for the night.

We're in Ireland

Day one and I guess day two of our Ireland adventure have gone well.  As Trump would say "a lot of people" said I did really well going through security at the airport.   Who are "a lot of people"?  Just a lot of people.  I went through the security better than anyone else.

 The second take-a-way from the day is:  why are they giving me keys to this nice car and then turning me loose with no instructions knowing that I'm horribly sleep deprived?  I didn't know so much as how put this weird key into the ignition, turn on the lights, or start the defroster and all of a sudden with no instructions I'm driving down the motorway at 120 KM per hour on the opposite side of the road and the steering wheel on the other side of the car!  Who in their right mind would think THAT was a good idea!!!!!?

Our first stop as we exited that death trap of a car was Belfast, Northern Ireland.  We

The Catholic side of the wall

took a tour called a black taxi tour.  It's part taxi cab ride and half history lesson regarding the Catholic/Protestant "troubles" which had come to a head between 1969 and 1980.  The biggest surprise to me was that they still close the barricades blocking the Catholic/Protestant neighborhoods from one another at night.   Seeing many of the murals on the walls showed that Belfast is still a city with a great divide.  When we got off the plane we moved our watches up 6 hours and our hopes for a united Ireland back 50 years.  

Our Bed & Breakfast

We left Belfast and headed to BallyCastle, still in Northern Ireland where will hope to visit the Giants Causeway and the Bushmills Irish whiskey distillery.  Who am I kidding?  We ARE going to the distillery and perhaps the Giants Causeway afterwards if there is time.

We are the only guest at the Crockatinny Bed & Breakfast and after fish, chips and a Guinness at

Cathy outside of our B & B

the Diamond Bar, will be in bed by 8:30.  You see Cathy is struggling with the time change.  She thinks she's been awake for 40 hours straight but really it's only been 31.    

Ireland Trip

                       

                                                   IRELAND TRIP

17 years ago Cathy and I visited Ireland.  We very much enjoyed our time there and said that we would go back again for a more prolonged visit after we retired.  We are about to leave on that journey and plan on blogging about it as time allows.  No, we aren't camping!  However, as was the case with our camping trip last winter we would prefer not to advertise on FB that we aren't home so we are doing the blog thing again.  If you choose not to read the blog, that's ok.  There won't be a test.

If you'd like to contact us we think email or Facebook messenger might be your best bet.
Kblaney55@hotmail.com.    Ken
CBlaney55@hotmail.com    Cathy

Thanks for letting us share this trip with you.

Ken and Cathy

Good Bye Villages

We’ve spent the last two weeks at the Villages.  I want to make some cracks about the golf carts or the average age of people down here but it just doesn’t seem right.  Spoiler alert:  The average age is “older” and the golf carts are not only functional but fun.  We have had some wonderful times here.  Before my brother Bill left for Green Bay, he and I got in a final bit of tennis. 



It was sad to see Bill go but it was terrific that Erin and

Kathleen were able to make the trip down for a visit!  We were able to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, had some wonderful meals and also had great visits with some cousins and friends from home.  While were here we met some exceptionally nice people (not Jen the waitress at Too Jays).  We’ve run into more than a few people from Wisconsin and some were even from Green Bay!   

We did have some rain (sorry Kathleen and Erin) but in

general the weather has been close to ideal.  Our hosts, Bill and Karen Early, could not have been more gracious or generous! We loved the home they let us borrow and their new place is even nicer.  Barb and Bruce Hoag were nice enough to travel up to the Villages for a fun lunch and as my mother would say, “we had such a nice visit”.  It’s too bad we don’t see them more often.   

We head for home soon and I gotta say, The Villages was a wonderful part of this journey. 

Life off the Road

Cathy and I have truly enjoyed our time on the road.  Camping has been wonderful.  However our rest stops at The Villages served as great respites for us.  After we left The Villages following a week long stay, we wrote a letter to Bill and Karen Early and my brother, Bill.  Bill and Karen have been our hosts for our stays in the Villages.  We later returned to their home and found the letter we had written to them framed and hanging on their wall.  Here is that letter although the original was hand written:

Dear Bill and Karen and Bill,
     We hate camping and we want to come “home”.  We don’t like the other campers and they don’t like us.  I THINK it’s because they are all stupid but Cathy SAYS that they just sound stupid because of their accents.  That’s why they don’t like her – because she says it all the time – to them!
     We are sleeping well.  Not really – my Cpap machine, the one with the Reggie White sticker on it, stopped working, so I am afraid of dying in my sleep.  Cathy sleeps at night and in the daytime she spends eight hours watching me breathe while I sleep.  But it’s ok, that still gives us 8 hours to make meals and clean and not watch tv as we have no reception.
   There are no pools here.  There is only an ocean.  To get to the water you have to walk on sand which gets our feet dirty.
   The only good thing is that I don’t have to power wash anything here.
   Please come and get us.
   Love,
 Ken and Cathy

Fort Clinch

Since last we blogged, we left Savannah and headed back to life in our camper.  This time we set up our little home at Fort Clinch, located at the North end of Amelia Island.  The most prominent feature of the park is not

surprisingly, Fort Clinch.  The fort was built between 1847 and 1869 and is made up of over 5 million bricks.  Most of the bricks were shipped down to Florida from the New York area.  Besides the Fort, the park features (now say it with me) miles and miles of beach.  The nearest public beach outside the park is Fernandina.  The town of Fernandina has an old historic district conveniently located a mile outside of our park.

We have had almost all of our meals at the campsite.  I have already spent more time in grocery stores during this trip than I have during the previous 20 years and I find the experience shocking!  As my brother John has said, “If the public finds out that you can find all this uncooked food so cheaply in stores, it could have a devastating effect on restaurants!”  It seems John does not recognize the words, grocery store.  Instead he calls it “that place where you can buy uncooked food”.

On the occasions that we have ventured out for “cooked food” we’ve had great experiences.  This is in great part due to my traveling companion.  Today was a travel day so we stopped at a Waffle House.  We had never been to one and they are everywhere.  As the old expression goes, “you can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting one”.  Ok maybe that’s a Blaney expression but Waffle Houses are everywhere.  We stopped at 2:00 so the place was a quiet.  Cathy, being Cathy says to the waitress, “We’ve never been to a Waffle House, this is our first time”.  The waitress says to the other waitress who in turn says to the cook, “they’ve never been to a Waffle House before, this is their first time!”  Cathy and the waitress reviewed almost every item on the menu before deciding on waffles.

Later that same day we went to a Mexican place near the hotel we are staying at

(moving day).  You’ve never heard Mariachi music until you’ve heard a nine piece mariachi band playing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” in a smallish restaurant.

On to The Villages!