Its 350Km to Ballyferriter

With most of the van packed up the previous night, we got up at a leisurely 7am to take down our bed which is going down to Ballyferriter to form a proper guest bedroom.

Within minutes we have an "oh darn" moment when we realize that we need a spanner to dismantle the bed and yup you guessed it, we didn’t have one. Within minutes the day is saved by our Moldovan tiler when he arrives at 8am and has the necessary spanner in his tool box.

Bed in the van along with half of IKEA we hit the road. 2 hours later we have a pit stop at the Barack

Obama Services on the M7. Yes, you’ve read that right.

The service station is in Moneygall, the ancestry home of Barack, who’d have guessed. 

This is a photo of himself and Michael in the Obama services with our van, clearly the side that had not been hit. 

Himself being Peter and not Barack, but you’ll spot that.

We are sharing the driving, doing an hour & half each and the roads are quiet as you can see from the photo. Michael was particularly encouraged by this as he says Ann does not like travelling on busy

motorways. Bear in mind that this is a Saturday of half term!

We arrive at the house by 2pm, unload and within moments we get visitors. AM arrives from over the hill to see how we are getting on and then the daughter of the man who built our house pops in with an apple tart to welcome us. 

We find out that the house has a name, Carrigeen. Once we know how to pronounce it properly we will use it. Until then it will be known as Ballyf.

The village of Ballyferriter is 500m from the house and home to four pubs. You might be surprised to hear that as yet we’ve not frequented the establishments. We thought there’s no better time then now to make a visit. Off to Murphys we go for a lovely evening with a warm fire, excellent ales and delicious meals.

Suffice to say that by the time we are back at the gaff we are all a little whacked but that doesn't stop the DIY from tackling a shelf system for the shower room. While I keep up to date with the New Zealand v Ireland rugby match in Chicago. A fair split of tasks I feel.

BTW for those of you who missed the news, Ireland did beat NZ.