At the bottom of Ireland (or near enough)

A few weeks ago I spent the weekend in Cork visiting a friend I had gone to school with. I cheated and flew down rather than doing it in the car and on the way down had a really clear view of the east coast, including the Mournes, before the plane cut cross-country. It was my first time in Cork, the furthest south I’ve been is probably Galway or Bray. When I arrived Wendy took me for a wee wander round the city, it’s a pleasant place, if you’re into shopping I guess you’d enjoy all the usual high street stores. Wendy showed me the English Market which floated my boat more than the other shops – we got some lovely fresh bread, some salami, some cheese and a selection of olives for supper – mm-mm. For lunch Wendy took me to a wee café within the Crawford Art Gallery – it was a really lovely place and I had the tastiest chickpea salad ever. On the Saturday we took a drive to Cobh – famous for being the last pit-stop of the Titanic before it headed across the Atlantic. To be honest there wasn’t much to Cobh so we hopped back in the car after a wee cup of tea in the local heritage centre (heck I was on my holidays, so there was no need to rush things!), and drove to Kinsale. I have to say I really liked Kinsale – a cute wee harbour town, with its houses painted a variety of bright colours (some more tasteful than others it has to be said) and lots of wee nooks and crannies to explore. We found a couple of nice galleries – one with paintings by a guy called Eoin O'Connor which were really bright and cheerful, and the other showcasing the stunning black & white landscape photography of a local guy, Giles Norman.
Kinsale

The rest of the weekend was spent lazing around, catching up on each other’s news, watching DVDs etc. Oh and we went to the cinema and enjoyed watching Matt Damon kick some butt in Green Zone (good movie). All in all I think I’m more of a Donegal or West Coast girl – I need hills and mountains. The area around Cork is a bit flat and I kind of felt like something was missing. Although you’re never far from the sea geographically, it’s really hard to get a good view of the sea – we drove to the other side of Kinsale to find a beach. But all in all it was a great weekend break and i must get down to planning my next one!

The beach at Old Head

Merlin's Keep, Kinsale

One of things Ruth & I did last week in Donegal was to climb Muckish – Donegal’s second highest mountain. When I say climb, well, we got most of the way! We got about three-quarters of the way up to the snow-line when Ruth felt she’d done quite well enough. I headed on up another wee bit for about 5 minutes leaving her with instructions to keep moving as it would have completely foundered ye (as they say in the country) and discovered that we had reached a false summit and there was probably one fairly more steep bit to go that would probably take at least another 20 minutes to get up. When I got back to Ruth she’d been busy taking some of the great photos below and we admired the wonderful scenery then slid & laughed most of the way down – it was rather wet and boggy! We’d parked the car on a dirt-track which got progressively boggier the further we went with more and more grass growing up the middle but on the way back to Rathmullan we noticed a road we’d missed previously which we have a feeling leads to a carpark and possibly a better/clearer route to the top. But sure, we had a good day out and some day I’ll go back and explore a bit more.

Errigal is mid-right in the picture.

The view towards Falcarragh.

After a wee picnic at the side of the road we did a little exploring round Fanad Head and I showed Ruth my favourite beach in Donegal and discovered that Ruth had sailed to this beach from the other side years ago with her family!

This is the beach at Rathmullan, I think it’s another one of my favourites now:

From North to South, to East, West & back again



Life has been all go in the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago I was getting wined and dined at Dublin Castle for a Reconciliation Networking Conference – there was an evening reception in the State Apartments then the following day’s programme included panel discussions on a variety of topics including reconciliation work with young people. Some interesting perspectives and some good speakers so it was definitely worth the trip. But I think I need to perfect my networking skills! I travelled with Rev Liz Hughes of Whitehouse Presby and she was great at introducing me to people, so we both passed ourselves off respectably.

Last week was a really good week in work because I felt like I was getting stuff accomplished and ticked off! At the moment I’m doing a lot of marketing/PR/admin kind of stuff so not seeing any young people which is kind of strange and certainly it’s not the kind of work I ever really expected to be doing. But I’ve got into the swing of things a lot better in the last couple of weeks and am quite enjoying it all. It’s a new challenge and there’s plenty to get my teeth into which is good.

Then last Friday my Dad went into hospital with suspected meningitis. Thankfully he’s home now and has responded really well to antibiotics so is on the mend, but things were a bit scary over the first 24 hours. I headed off to Aberdeen on Saturday for my holidays – there wasn’t anything I could have done at home so I just kept in regular contact with my Mum and big sis Jenny, a nurse and the family medical expert – very good at keeping us all calm!





Aberdeen…was great! A cousin has just moved up there this year so it was really good to spend time with her, her hubby, their 19-month old son, James (such a wee pet, I could have taken him home!!!), and Boo-Boo the dog (I question how a pitbull terrier can have any credibility with a name like Boo Boo but he doesn’t seem to mind too much). My cousin is such a good cook so I was well fed in-between sessions of reading books to James and watching recurrent episodes of Noddy! We had a good dander along the beach at Cruden Bay on Sunday and the weather was actually warm enough to wear shorts – something that didn’t happen too often when I was at uni there! I also got the chance to catch up with some folks from the church I attended during my uni days which as always was really special and reminded me of how much I love and miss Aberdeen. It’s such a nice part of the world with some fantastic people. Unfortunately we ran out of time to visit my old haunts at the King's College campus (see below) in Old Aberdeen – I used to absolutely love every day walking into campus, but hopefully I’ll fit that in the next time.



I arrived home on Wednesday – I’m now very glad that my flight wasn’t booked for yesterday as it turned out to be a nightmare for travellers in airports all over the place. My 14-year old niece was heading off to the States on Wednesday to help another cousin with her 3 children and although they had delays and hold-ups with immigration, they got there safely, we would have been freaking out completely if they’d been travelling yesterday.

Today I headed to Donegal to do a few errands for my parents. Managed to fit in a quick walk on the beach and missed the rainshowers – great to get the cobwebs blown away! So in one week I’ve managed to see both the North Sea & the Atlantic Ocean.



And finally the most exciting news is that I’m an aunty for the 9th time! Baby Sophia arrived into the world this afternoon weighing in at 7lb 2oz. My big bro Michael is quite possibly the happiest man alive today. Congrats to him & mum Joan. I’m looking forward to seeing them all.

…and actually I think I’m looking forward to life calming down in the Erwin household!