The Emerald Isle

The lovely lounge at the Old Monastery Hostel.

Castle.
Richie at the top of Tully Hill
Steph (applying sunscreen - it was that sunny!) on Tully Hill.
The view from Tully Hill
Near the top of Diamond Hill
Poulna-something Megalithic Tomb
Ruins and stone walls on Inish More
The Cliffs of Moher

We went to Ireland for a week during the Easter holidays.
We hired a car from Shannon and drove to Doolin, on the West coast, near the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands. We stayed there 2 nights, ate Irish stew and drank guinness and ate potatoes while listening to Irish music in the local pub.
We were very neglectful and didn't take any pictures of the guinness consumption.
We spent a day on Inish more, the largest of the Aran Islands, cycling around and looking at forts, lighthouses, stone walls and ruins.
Then,after visiting the cliffs, we drove through the Burren, which means Place of Stone (you will see why when I post the pics) and stopped to look at yet more iron age forts, tombs and castle ruins.

Eventually we ended up in Letterfrack, in Connemara. We stayed at the craziest hostel, (The Old Monestary Hostel) which has been both a Quaker family home and a monestary in it's life. Letterfrack was a Quaker settlement back in the day. It was a warren of rooms, fireplaces in each one, loads of 'stuff' everywhere, cast iron candlesticks, old pianos, animal skulls, travelling trunks.......and a lovely host. We almost had the place to ourselves, and each evening after our walk up a mountain we would sit in the lounge by the peat fire and chill. Lovely! Steven the host made an awesome breakfast each morning of porridge, soda bread, eggs and coffee which was enough to sustain us as we walked up the mountains in the National Park. The views were amazing as the area is mountainous and with loads of lakes as well as being near the coast. The weather was great. It reminded us of NZ in a lot of ways. Small towns, sheep, amazing views, friendly people.... only NZ doesn't have peat bogs to my knowledge, or burn peat logs on the fire. Peat logs are lumps of dried up peat (which is like dirt). I don't understand how you can burn dirt but you can. And turf as well, which they did in Doolin.
We walked up Diamond Hill and Tully Hill- you'll see pics.

After a fews days in Letterfrack we went to Oughterard, on the shores of a large lake. From here we went to a 15th Century Castle and Brigets Garden, based on the Celtic year and St Brigit. It was really interesting and we saw bats in a cave here. Very relaxing place and they do drop in guided meditations if you turn up on a Sunday (we didn't).
We walked around the bog and the lake here and eventually drove back to Shannon to catch our flight home.
It really was an amazing and very relaxing holiday.

Some Cornish pics

Here we are in Cornwall. We camped for 3 nights in freezing, rainy weather over Easter. But as you can see, it didn't rain the whole time and we had a great break, going to the Eden Project, The Lost Gardens of Heligan and Walking the beaches and cliffs. We also got to see a Badger at the campsite hide. There were also piglets and very new lambs at the campsite so it was all very cool, in all senses of the word.
On the way back we stopped at Lanhydrock house, as well as Avebury Stone Circle near where I spent my childhood.
A great break over Easter!