New Year Weekend on the Edge of Europe but still in Europe

As we’ve done for the past few years it was our plan to spend New Year on the Dingle peninsula only this time in our own place, how exciting. Packing the car on Friday morning took an hour… what do we have to take you might ask, we asked that ourselves because there was so much we could not see out the back window of the SUV.

We arrived in Adare, just two hours from Dublin at 11am and were shocked to find that our normal stopping off bar, in the Dunraven Arms doesn’t open until noon. The upside is that we had a super breakfast, albeit unbelievably healthy across the road in The Good Room. We’d normally have a classic Irish lunch of soup and toasted sandwiches.

Arriving in Ballyferriter mid-afternoon and in time to see a wonderful sunset. We’ve found out that Dingle is 44 minutes behind GMT, makes an interesting difference in the mornings when it’s dark until about 8.45am but longer evening. An evening meal with friends celebrating her son’s engagement was a lovely way to end the week.

Up bright and early, although some people don’t call 9am early to discover that himself has a dreadful cold, a real McKay cold so he does very little for the day in an attempt to be able to stay awake for midnight. Whereas I take up an opportunity to use my Christmas present and head out n the golf course with some friends. We play 9 holes and it’s hugely enjoyable.

New Year is rung in at The Bothar pub http://www.botharpub.com/ with a few people known for singing and having a good time.

By New Year Day’s its evident that despite my best efforts to avoid the McKay cold I have caught it. However, it is an glorious day albeit -6degrees. We head for a walk on the beach nearest to us, Beal Ban. It’s impossible to describe how cold it was so you can imagine our surprise when we saw two people going for a swim. To be fair though the man ran out of the sand dunes to the waters edges, paddled in for oh all of 3 seconds before running back up the beach to get dressed. Whereas the woman, got down into the water. Does this make women hardier or madder creatures I wonder?

It’s still a slightly surreal situation here, on one hand it feels very like Marsilly, the house is similar, we have the same furniture but then you look out the window and the scene is dramatically different. We step outside the door and we can talk to everyone, well most of the people.

And we’ve joined the golf club. Due to the colds we decided not to play in the captains play in, but we dropped by to get our applications forms filled in and say hi to the few people we know there, including our neighbour. Maireada. She also happens to the President, so handy person to keep in with.

All in all a brilliant start to the year and we are here for the week, “working from home”. During my lunch hour I popped into Dingle and decided because the weather was so good to take the drive back along the Slea Head Drive and this is the view.