On Saturday in Dublin I lost my Mc..

...and gained  some new friends.
We came over to Dublin to attend the launch the of the centenary celebrations of Templogue Tennis Club. I was a bit surprised to be greeted on arrival by the President of the club with "hello you must be Peter Kay, Sheila's husband" which was so welcoming that I thought it a little rude to correct her. On going to our designated table I saw that I was on the table plan as "Peter Kay"

Welcome to Templogue Tennis Club

As the evening progressed I was overwhelmed by countless friendly approaches and made to feel very welcome by Eddie, Tony, Johnny, Damien, Dorothy, Sherri, to name but a few. I started to wonder if they all thought the wonderful northern comedian Peter Kay had turned up, but since no one asked me to do a turn or tell a joke, I reckon it was just an expression of their welcoming approach.

The evening began with a very creditable performance by the Templogue Tennis Centenary Choir and proceed with a pretty decent meal and concluded with a couple of hours of dancing. The whole event was a great success and I can see the why the club attracted around 150 folk for the celebratory launch.

Sunday morning and a trip to Greystones

On the coast, south of Dublin city centre, and no more than a 25 minutes drive from Charleville Square is Greystones. This was my first visit and it is smashing and I can see it becoming a regular trip out. 

We pottered around enjoying the winter sunshine and views across the bay. Sheila tells me that it has a population of 17k. Hard to believe as you wander about the place but probably explains how a good number of trendy shops, cafes, coffee shops and the wonderful Happy Pear, all prosper. 

We scooped up some food for lunch from The Happy Pear and returned to CS via Bray. In stark contrast to Greystones, Bray looks rather down at heel and struggling. 

Flight back to Gatwick later this afternoon so that is all for now.

We have been in Ireland for two years...

...that is to say the last fours days of 2016 and the first eight days of 2017.

As Sheila reports...
And so, like all good things, it’s the end of our New Year break here in Ireland and as if it knows we are leaving, the sunny weather has gone. We are shrouded in extremely low cloud with little or no visibility and it feels like weather is hiding the magnificent scenery from us so we are not sad leaving.

Today (Friday) is a tidy and clean-up day which includes a trip to the dump recycle centre – I will be adding that onto the must do section of the travel tips for Dingle. As well as the dump trip I’ll be doing washing and ironing and clearing up after last night’s dinner party… yes only a wet week in the place and we managed to find three people to join us for dinner.

Camilla and Mike, owners of The Dingle Bookshop, and wonderfully lovely people, who along with another friend, AM experienced Peter’s version of Chicken Parmentier. We’d seen it on the Rick Stein Long Weekend (in Bordeaux) programme and thought it looks great and sure enough it turned out to be a bit of a winner – well they all ate it. Lovely evening some great chat although one slightly worrying part was how we spent over an hour talking about the Catholic Church in the UK!

Our week’s trial of working from home went reasonably well. Of the four days we had three very productive days and then Friday; the low cloud proved too much of a challenge for the satellite broadband so that we had no internet.  Himself felt adrift without the access to the wide, wide world and his office files.

We’ve joined Ceann Sibeal Golf Club, as beginners which we are of course. No playing in just paying the fee and Steve, the office manager says to use “sure off you go, you’ll be fine”.

Roll on Easter.

Peter adds...
Back in Dublin for Saturday night before flying back to Gatwick and on home on Sunday afternoon.. We treated ourselves a meal at Enigma in Rathfarnham village - just 1km from the front door. It was a mild evening so we strolled there and back and well satisifed that such a decent restaurant is so handy.

Just one of the many benefits of being in the EU, I am sure!

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.