Limerick Friday 29 August

Since my last post we've had a night at Derry and two nights at Sligo. We had a tour of Derry with a most interesting town guide, who showed us some of the sites of troubles there and explained the history of the troubles, looking way beyond the religious front that usually hides the real problems of poverty and lack of opportunity. He was excellent.


We arrived at our hotel in Sligo to discover that because of a lot of heavy rain we had no water in our rooms. The fire brigade were there pumping water in to clean out and refill the system, the water was brown when we eventually had some, and the hotel provided bottled water in all the rooms and extra on each floor. Adventure of travelling!


We had a fairly quiet day on Thursday which we all enjoyed - we had no wake-up call and didn't leave until 9:30 am, a great luxury indeed!


This morning we had a bit of excitement on our way from Sligo to Limerick. There was a detour for a bike race, which sent us on a little excursion across country on very narrow roads, it really was good fun! It turned out that the bike race was the Tour of Ireland, so although we missed the Tour de France we had a bit of a consolation prize in this one. We saw the riders in the beautiful little village of Cong, I think it was probably the most exciting thing in Cong for a long time!

First came the Gardi and the marshals ...

Then came the riders!

Have you noticed the colour of the sky? Yes, it's grey. There is a little bit of blue outside just now, but it's been grey for days! We have hopes that it will improve, will keep you posted!

Some Scottish photos

This bridge featured in the film Rob Roy - Liam Neeson's spectacular escape from the English.
Look who came to greet us near Loch Lomond!
Eilean Donan castle - you might recognise it from the Highlander movies.
Glencoe, where the Campbells massacred the MacDonalds.
The Giant's Causeway in Ireland - scientists say it's caused by the action of lava and a subsequent ice age. I think it was Finn MacCool, the giant!

Scottish Highlands

Much excitement after my last post - we were just getting into bed when the fire alarm went off. So back on with some clothes, grab the important papers and out of the hotel onto the footpath over the road. And then of course it was a false alarm so back to the room, into bed at last.

Next night, you wouldn't believe it, it happened again! And again it was a false alarm. There were various rumours about people smoking in their room, but I don't know if that was true or not.

Anyway, we left Edinburgh and went off to the highlands, which are truly amazing. The heather was out and looked spectacular.

We've also been to the Orkney Islands, much less rugged than I expected, very interesting place but not somewhere I'd like to live, really.

Then to the Isle of Skye, via the road bridge as the ferry has been replaced. We learnt a lot about the Jacobite history of Scotland, we visited the battlefield of Culloden, and turned into proper Jacobites. So we toasted the King Over the Water (Bonnie Prince Charlie) as we drove over the sea to Skye - we did it in style, with Drambuie the favourite tipple of the prince himself. Skye is a very beautiful and rather wild place, very windswept as you'd probably expect - there's a lot of ocean before the closest land to the west.

Yesterday we travelled to Glasgow, passing through Glencoe, the scene of the massacre of the Clan MacDonald by the Campbells. Campbells are not well received in the highlands even today after that event.

Today we crossed the Irish Sea and are spending the night in Derry (or Londonderry if you're talking to a unionist!). We'll be having some time for a bit more of a look around before we leave, so I'm looking forward to that.

Tomorrow we head for Sligo and a 2-night stay which will be very welcome. It's been very busy so far, with early starts and late finishes. Yesterday we were up at 6:00 am and reached our hotel about 9:00 pm, which was a bit later than usual, but included dinner on our way. I think we will have a free afternoon on our full day in Sligo, everyone is looking forward to that.

I'll try to put some photos on later if time allows. The internet connections have been a bit dodgy when they've been there at all, so that's why it's been such a while between posts. Hopefully it will improve now that we're back in more settled areas!

Edinburgh and the Tattoo

Last night we went to the Tattoo. Now, those of you who know me a bit will remember that I don't really like being out in the rain, and if you all thought very hard you'd find it difficult to remember the last time I willingly sat in the rain for any reason. Well, last night we sat in the rain for about 1-1/2 hours during the tattoo, and it was worth every minute!



The first photo is taken in the line-up to go in - you couldn't call it a queue, it wasn't that tidy - then we made our way through the gates up to our seats in the stand. The seats are not large, to say the least, in fact we were all quite cosy and close enough to each other that there wasn't much room for rain to get through at all. So although it rained for just about the whole performance we weren't soaked at all.







The second photo is the massed bands at the start of the show. I didn't take many after that because of the rain, but it might give an idea of what it was like.



If you ever have the chance, take it and enjoy it as much as I did!



Tomorrow we head off to the Highlands, then to Thurso from where we go to the Orkney Islands for a day. More to look forward to!

Stratford-on-Avon

We’ve left London and travelled to Oxford, then on to Stratford-on-Avon for our first night. Oxford was very interesting, a place I’ve wanted to see for a while now. There are 37 colleges in the University, we passed quite a few on our walk around, but they weren’t open, unfortunately, so we couldn’t go in for a closer look.

Stratford-on-Avon is a beautiful place, there are a lot of things still here from Shakespeare’s time. We saw Ann Hathaway’s cottage, and went in to Shakespeare’s birthplace – reverently referred to as just The Birthplace. I discovered that the first best bed was usually kept in the parlour, as it was a thing of status to have a four-poster to show off. Guests would usually sleep in the first best bed, while I guess the second best bed was for the parents of the family. Most unusual.

We have a welcome drink with the group tonight, followed by dinner at our hotel, which is a very interesting building, and not modern by any means. The corridor meanders along, up and down a couple of steps now and then, and the room numbering is not what you would call consistent. It has character!

London on Wednesday

We met Janice, Les's father's friend, for lunch. She works for the BBC and took us on a tour of the television centre, where we saw something we've seen a bit on TV. So Les took our photo, hope you like it!

London

So here we are in London and guess what? It's raining! Not a lot, but there was a little hail last night, along with thunder and even a bit of lightning which was not exciting as we were out at the time.

We went to the Tower yesterday afternoon, saw the Crown Jewels which really are impressive. The whole Tower site is excellent, I really liked seeing it to put some of the historical things into place.

We're having a fairly quiet time today to give the feet a bit of a rest and stay out of the rain. We're meeting a friend of Les's father at lunch time and will probably have dinner with her tomorrow night if we can organise it. He met her on the train to Darwin a few years ago and they've kept in touch with the occasional letter.

Here we are in London, we arrived yesterday via the Eurostar train under the Channel. We decided to do that rather than flying, just for a change. There was also the fact of leaving from the centre of Paris and arriving in the centre of London. The train rides that we’ve had have been really good, it’s fun flying along at over 300 km/h.

Some thoughts about France: we found everyone to be very friendly and helpful, not at all as we’d expected from other people’s stories. We could say things like good morning, please, thank you, and other such things in French, then managed more with a bit more of an attempt in French along with pointing and sign language. It worked well.

We saw lots of beautiful villages, houses are mostly stone (colour varies from one region to another), virtually all have shutters which are closed and make the buildings look deserted but which must be really efficient in the heat of the day. Speaking of which, don’t go to the Riviera in July/August, it is really HOT there! Just about every day for a week was over 33C, with the hottest being 39C, and it was very humid as well. Once we headed north again it improved and we found the middle 20s much more comfortable. Today in London would be lucky to be 20C, it’s quite cool and pleasant.

French television – the choice was usually BBC or CNN if we wanted something in English, though we caught sight of such things as Columbo, Inspector Frost, Inspector Barnaby (aka Midsomer Murders) but the highlight was McLeod’s Daughters – we haven’t watched this in English so definitely gave it a miss in French.

We had a farewell dinner with our tour group, and the subject of highlights came up. Everyone had something different, and lots found it hard to pick just one thing. I couldn’t choose just one but on the list would be the cave paintings at Lascaux, the medieval town of Carcassonne, and Monet’s garden at Giverny, but there wasn’t anywhere that I didn’t really enjoy. Trying the different regional foods and wines was also good, but we didn’t take the opportunity to have snails!

Now we’re ready for a few days in London before heading off on Sunday around UK and Ireland. If this tour is as good as the last one we’ll be very happy indeed!

The Route Napoleon

We travelled yesterday down the Route Napoleon from Aix-les-Bains to Nice, which took pretty much all day. Along the way we heard about Napoleon's place in French history, about the Revolution and lots of people being 'shortened' by the guillotine - delightful way of describing it, I think! - and saw lots of truly beautiful countryside. The road follows the crest of the French Alps, which end in the sea at Nice, very spectacular scenery indeed.

This fortress is at a place called Entre-Vaux (between valleys) and was built during a dispute between the local dukes of Savoie and Provence. It's a really spectacular little fortress, right on

the top of the hill, and it's easy to see why it was built there as a defensive place. Not so easy to see how it was built, but it looks great!

Today we are in Nice, we arrived yesterday afternoon after quite a long day in our coach. Dinner last night was in a local restaurant which has a playing ground for petanque, so we had several games before dinner, much fun for all and very dusty hands afterwards! We went to Monaco this morning, had a look around the old city, cathedral, and palace. It's most unbelievably crowded, the buildings are on top of each other, and lots of things are built underground to make most use of the space on top. There is a group going there for dinner tonight but we're having something with a group who aren't going.

Tomorrow we head to Avignon for another 2-night stay which is a good thing - it's a chance to unpack the cases a bit and organise the things again.