More Irish Holiday Pics

We got back from Ireland at 2.30am last night. We had a wonderful time in the land of Leprechauns. Lots of picture of cheeky little ones coming up!

We stayed near Cloghane on the Dingle peninsular. Here are some Google maps with the cottage highlighted by a black arrow.

And here it is from the bottom of the drive. It's all on one level with 4 bedrooms and plenty of room to relax. It's owned by the Laws family and we were lucky enough to be invited to stay with Helen and Stephen. The bay is tidal and at low tides lots of sand banks are exposed. We saw this seal on a rock at high tide.


Here is the view from the kitchen window looking out at the mountains and the rhubarb patch.

The local pub is very homely, and pulls a mean pint of Guiness. Here are Helen and Helen, and in the next picture, Alex and Emma. Alex is 6 months old and 7 weeks or so older than Emma.

Here's me (David) and Emma on the beach outside the cottage.

Although the age gap is only 7 weeks, Alex has quite a number of skills and levels of development that Emma has yet to achieve. He is almost fully weaned off milk now and has meat, vegetables and dairy. He particularly enjoys his root vegetables. He is more vocal than Emma and one can quite a conversation with him!




We went for another swim at a nice club in Dingle. The pool was warm, and the jacuzzi was even warmer!

This was Alex's first taste of chocolate. After our swim we went for a "coffee" at this Dessert Room. The sundaes were amazing! In the picture I've got chocolate ice cream with espresso coffee poured over it - yum!



We never went hungry on holiday! On the first full day there, Stephen and I went to the shops and got lots of meat and tons of vegetables. The cottage had a slow cooker Stephen cooked up two enormous stews, one lamb and one beef. Each cooked for a full 24 hours and came out extremely tender. On Tuesday he did us this chicken dish. The chicken had been marinating in garlic and lemon. Very tasty!

On Friday I prised the freezer open and found the last occupants had caught lots of mackerel. We defrosted three and Helen Laws and I had some baked with onions and white wine. The fish haters, my Helen and Stephen had sausages and sneered at our fishy supper.

A short walk down a path from the pub in Cloghane is where this stream meets the bay. I took the first photo looking out to sea, and the second looking back up.

Back in the Cloghane pub where Stephen and Alex are doing some Irish dancing!


After lunch on Thursday, Helen, Emma and I went to Brandon point. It was about 5 miles from the Cottage and at the end of our road. We were lucky in that it stayed dry, but Emma was crying after we walked up the hill because the wind was quite strong. There was an old WWII look out halfway up the mountain.






To get to Dingle, the nearest town, we had to drive over the Connor Pass. There is a view point at the top but with the clouds the visibility wasn't great! On the way back from Dingle after the swimming, Helen was able to take this picture of a torrent coming down the side of the mountain threatening to wash the road away!


Here are some gratuitously cute baby shots.




Here's Helen chilling out with a glass of wine in front of the peat fire.

And here's our wee baby on the flight home. We flew at 8.50pm so she was tired all the way through the airports but extremely good.

Click here for all the photos full size on Picasa.

Exploring Ireland

We've had some very wet weather here on the Dingle Peninsular. Our cottage is on this hillside overlooking the bay. Can you make out the rainbow?


Here's Helen enjoying PROPer Guiness!

Here's the view from the living room.

And here's Emma today after a swim.

And here's the hat shop Helen ((both Helens) bought a waterproof hat in to protect against the weather.


This is hopefully not a good example of Irish time keeping: This was taken on the 24th!

Here's Emma after eating some peaches, strawberries and cream baby food. She's getting the hang of solids now.

Here's Alex at the bar on the sea front in Brandon, a fishing village with a quay 5 minutes up the coast from us.

After visiting the pub, we went for a walk and were followed by this friendly dog. At this point he had found something nice to roll in!

Here's Emma after having her nappy changed.

Birthday Fun

Many thanks to everyone who got me a card or present for my birthday. My favourite was a new compact panasonic camera with a zoom lens and 6MP of resolution. You may see an improvent in the pictures on the blog from now on! I worked until 6pm on Friday, my birthday, then Leila came round to babysit Emma. We headed off at 7.15pm and Helen treated me to a meal at Fishers Restaurant in Clifton. The menu is 90% seafood which isn't Helen's cup of tea at all, so it was an act of self sacrifice, although she found some good options that she enjoyed. I felt a little silly photographing the food as it arrived, but it did look SO good and I had my new camera to play with too! Oysters with tabasco and paprika are highly recommended by the way!



Helen was a little anxious to hear that the babysitting was going OK. She rang home to find that Emma hadn't woken once! We got back after 10pm just as Emma was waking up. Such a relief as it was the first time we'd left her since August.

My other gifts included lots of books which I shall enjoy reading in Ireland next week. We fly on Monday from Stanstead to Kerry to spend a week with Helen, baby Alexander and Steve in his family's holiday cottage. We can't wait - we feel due a break! Mum gave me a gorgeous Kate Good pottery clock which I shall have to photo and include in the blog. She's a Tisbury potter with a very distinct attractive style.

On Saturday after finishing at work for my week's holiday I was invited to Rob and Leila's who had got some lovely quiche from the Continental Market that was in Clevedon. Helen had roasted some vegetables that we needed to use up, then made them into a delicious soup. Rob tried out some different settings on the new camera, including a rapid setting that takes a series of photos.




On Saturday evening Helen and I were treated to an evening at a Divine Comedy concert in Bristol University. We miraculously found parking quite close on the street. Neil Hannon and his band were fantastic. They alternated their classics with newer material and were on really good form. It was the first performance of a new tour.
I'll put a link here to some video I shot of a cover they did of a Prince song.

Today's been a lazier day of lying in, reading the paper, doing some bottling of elderberry wine and giving Emma a bath after she smeared apple and rice all over herself. She's been really taking to solids this week and it's been helping her sleeping. On Thursday and Friday she went down at 7pm, woke at 11pm for a feed as we went to bed, then woke up again just before 6am giving us a pretty good night's sleep. Happy Birthday indeed!