I have to say though that if you’re going to find faeries then Ireland is the place to look, real live fairy mounds abound! I think I almost gave myself whiplash the first time I spotted one. Farmers won’t touch a faerie mound if it’s in their field, or cut down any trees on them due to bad juju. Even the ditches are beautiful here, with creaking trees and moss – I’m sure I spotted a dryad. We went to Dooley’s Cairn today too which was fantastic, standing stones over 3000 years old, enough to make my brain hurt. We actually drove around for half an hour looking for 2 other Long Stones but the directions we got were in Irish so we couldn’t find it. “Go down the road half a mile and turn right. At the top of the hill you’ll see a lane, drive down that til you get to the dip in the road and you’ll see a grey house next to a bungalow – from about here to the houses down there away there’s a field that belongs to my uncle, there’s one in the field there.” Needless to say we could not find the dip and grey houses appeared on every crest. The lanes were lovely though.
But of all the places we’ve visited my favourite is The Dark Hedges. It is really magical, we came past it on our flying visit of Cushindall and Cushindun; it’s a row of beech trees that have grown together over the road to make a real Hansel & Gretel path. Apparently used in the Game of Thrones (S2 E1) so check it out and weep with envy that I was there and you weren’t. I made Himself take me back there at 10pm one evening* so he could take many photos hoping to get that one money shot we could possibly hang on our wall.
Here's an interweb pic from Game of Thrones
I sampled the haute cuisine of Ballymoney - curry chip and battered onion rings – I drew the line at the battered chicken fillet burger, though I did have a bite of Himself’s. We did go to some fantastic restaurants though (thank you TripAdvisor), but apart from them the diet is fairly hairy.
The wildflowers are also amazing – bluebells, daisies, buttercups, wild fuchsia, poppies, wild roses, snowdrops, violets, and that’s just on the side of the road. Rhododendrons also kick off in Ireland, they put Blackheath in the Mountains to shame – City of Rhododendrons my arse.
I won’t talk about the trips to endless relatives, there were a lot of them, they talked about ‘stuff’ mostly I couldn’t understand them (probably for the best). Himself did warn me that a trip to Ireland was fraught with relatives, I should have listened. The other interesting thing to note here is that as you all know, I’m a talkative girl… not so! In N. Ireland I am shy, retiring and generally mute – when compared to an Irishman in full voice; damn they can talk.
A highlight to understanding the Irish Psychie was our trip to Bundoran (which was a hole). It went like this: We left at about 11:45. It was a 3 hour road trip there, 6 adults in the car. We stopped at the first off-licence (bottle-o) to stock up. It was then drinking and talking (not me, I’m mute) all the way there. The Bro-in-Law may have got lost one time, taking us to Donegal at first (sad we didn’t stay there instead). We checked into the Hollyrood Hotel (Hollyrood = geriatric retreat), they were racing their Zimmer frames down the halls. Drank some more, had dinner, Himself and I had to send our steaks back. Apparently medium rare = medium well, ironically the chef agreed and commented to the waitress that clearly “we weren’t from round these parts”. They came back perfectly done. More drinking eschewed. Staggered back to the lumpy bed then up in the morning for rubber passing as an Irish Fry. Himself tried to dip his toast in the egg, the toast broke (true story). We then drove home, hung-over. The redeeming feature of this trip was the side trip to Donegal (Dhon na nGall) Castle, it was nice.
*it gets dark at 11:30 here in summer – outrageous!
No comments: