It's Flickr time!

Just finished setting up my own Flickr account!

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

Hen night

Last night I attended my friend Shalini’s Bhangra and Ladies Sangeet – her Indian hen do, which involved food, music and dancing – always a good combination particularly when you get a proper curry (no Patak’s jars in sight!) and some good Bollywood music. In between the starter and main course, the Indian ladies gathered on the floor for a bit of drumming and singing, and following tradition, Shalini danced with each of the members of her family, with her aunts, her uncles (it’s no longer strictly just a ladies-only event), with Barry her fiancé and with her friends as a way of celebrating her forthcoming marriage. It was a really lovely way for family and friends to gather and express their joy in each other and for each other.

Cape Town photo diary

It's time for some photos from my recent trip. Cape Town has got to be one of the most beautiful cities on the planet because of Table Mountain - it dominates the skyline everywhere you go and we had a great view from our hotel:
Often the top of Table Mountain was shrouded in what locals call, the 'Tablecloth' - fluffy cloud spilling over the top, the photo below was taken from the very touristy Waterfront:
We took the cable car ride up to the top of Table Mountain one day and had a great time soaking up the panoramic views of the city from the top:
We could also see Robben Island in Table Bay, beyond the peaks of Lion Hill (L) and Signal Hill (R). I would have loved to have gone there for a visit, but we ran out of time - it's top of the list for any future visits!
Cape Town has its very own '12 Apostles', cliffs which jut out along the coastline:
We got the opportunity to encounter some of the local wildlife when we hired a car and went to Boulders Bay to say hello to the penguins:
Nice location for a penguin to call home, I'll bet it makes the Emperor penguins in Antarctica kind of jealous!
They were rather cute!
We did an open-top, hop-on, hop-off bus tour and made a stop at the World of Birds on the outskirts of Cape Town, where as well as various multicoloured and exotic birds, we saw monkeys - they had a special enclosure where you could get up close and personal, and I think they know what they're doing as this little guy made a beeline for the zips on my bag!
Again, they're cute wee guys:
One of the stops with the bus tour was Imizamo Yethu township where local guides showed you around and told you something of their lives. We wrote about this on the work blog and we were all struck by the levels of poverty. 20,000 people live here in a space of 18 hectares.
It was cool to discover strong links with Ireland with the contribution of an Irish businessman to building houses for people in the township. But the thing that was most difficult to grasp was that when we got back on the bus and travelled down the road about 5 minutes we were seeing views like this and lots of very fancy villas/apartments.
On the weekend we had the car we made the most of it with a stunning drive along the coastline on Chapman's Peak Drive. The road isn't always open because of high winds but we were able to get through and were completely wowed with the spectacular views of Hout Bay:
Of course we did actually do some work here and there! I was very impressed with Bush Radio and their work with young people from all over Cape Town. We got to see some members of Bush Tots (6-11 year olds) doing their own radio programme live in the studio when we visited the Saturday morning CREW (Children's Radio Education Workshop) project - truly inspirational!
And I really enjoyed getting to know the young people at the Media Kidocracy Konference, who were a confident and passionate bunch without any arrogance. They struck me as the kind of young people who really want to make a difference to their communities, their country and the world, and they're not going to sit back and wait for it to happen, they came across as being determined to be the people to make it happen!
There was always laughter and smiles at the conference:
In fact, this maybe sounds a bit cheesy, but the smiles of the children and young people just ministered to my soul!
Incidentally there's a good write-up here about MKK with slideshows etc of the work produced by the young people.

Possibly what strikes me most about Cape Town and its people is the colour. Beautiful blue skies every day, the deep blue of the ocean, the way homes were painted a variety of bright colours, the people from all cultures, backgrounds and ethnicities, the colour and vitality present in the townships - stunning! (The New York Shop below can be found in Imizamo Yethu township)

Across the water

I got back on Monday from a long weekend in Aberdeen catching up with friends from my uni days. It’s hard to believe that it’s over 11 years since I graduated and it's about 3 years since I was last across but it’s always great to know you’ve got good friends with whom you can just pick up where you left off. The weather was generally kind with beautiful blue skies every day although I nearly got blown away on Saturday with the strong winds. And I’d forgotten it’s always a few degrees nippier in the north-east than at home! On Friday I met up for lunch with a friend on the main King’s College campus(King's College chapel in photo above) in beautiful Old Aberdeen and then I wandered into the city-centre to enjoy the luxury of having time to browse in a bookshop and play a little with a DLSR I’ve bought recently. I’ve always wanted to at least half-know what I’m doing with a camera so not being able to kayak these days makes room for learning something new! On the way into the city-centre I came across this beautiful old graveyard.I also got to the beach a couple of times (see below) and my friend Jim took me for a look around Footdee, a small quaint community located at the harbour mouth (also below). I’d never even registered the existence of this old fishing village when I studied in Aberdeen.On Monday morning I took a walk with Norma to the 13th century Brig o’ Balgownie which was very peaceful and we even spotted a few basking seals.Overall it was a much-needed and welcome break I can tell you!

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:

Arizona PhotosI enjoyed driving round Phoenix, there were mountains pretty much every direction you looked.

This was a view from Camelback mountain which I climbed, unfortunately my camera was playing up so I didn't get many photos, but I absolutely loved it. Below is a photograph from Summitpost which gives you a better idea of what it's like:

This was Sedona which was just stunning. It's kind of a spread out town but the road you can see on the right leads you right through it. How amazing would it be to live there and drive past those kinds of views on your way to work everyday? Bound to lower the blood pressure!

Cathedral Rock - awesome!

The landscape at Cathedral Rock.

A view from Cathedral Rock.

Me at Cathedral Rock!

Can you tell that I got trigger-happy with the camera?

This just shows how steep it was to get up and down Cathedral Rock, thankfully there were some footholds cut into the slickrock. If you look carefully you can see someone dressed in pink sitting on the rocks, she was one of the New Agers I met and mentioned in a previous post!

At Slide Rock State Park I spotted a couple of guys about to jump into the water. It was a fairly big drop...I don't know if I could do it. One of the guys was trying to encourage the other to go for it and he was having a hard time getting himself going, the other guy would try to count him down and then he would take a step but immediately step back. I felt nervous for him! Eventually he did it - fair play!

Slide Rock State Park is a popular swimming spot - lots of natural little water chutes and perfect for the whole family, a good place to cool down.

I enjoyed taking a walk along the West Fork Trail through Oak Creek Canyon, a total contrast to the broad vistas of the Cathedral Rock trail.

It was nice to get my feet cooled off in the stream as I went along the trail.

And at this point my camera decided to call it a day which was a shame as there were a couple of place where the red rock hung over the stream and you could see how it had been worn away by the creek over time.

I wasn't sure what the results would be but I took a couple of pictures with my mobile phone camera (remember the days when we thought 3.1 megapixel was good?!) on the offchance I might get something half-decent. This was a view of the San Francisco peaks near Flagstaff on the day I walked up to the Inner Basin.

This was a view on the way down the forest road, Arizona landscapes are just stunning.

Again this was a bit of a hit-and-hope shot at the Grand Canyon, but I guess my shadow proves that I was there! This was taken at Cedar Ridge on the South Kaibab Trail, I could have sat there for hours.

This is also taken at Cedar Ridge, man I just have to go back there and do the Canyon properly!