Our last destination in Ireland was Dublin. We had a cosy apartment near the centre of the city, adjacent to shopping and transport hubs and from here we walked and bussed all around. Our first day in town we decided to join a walking tour and our guide set a cracking pace for what seemed like hours. So fast in fact that I paused to take a photo and completely lost the group for what seemed like an age – ugly feeling to be lost in an unfamiliar city. We were reunited after some tense moments but the guide seemed to just plough on regardless of whether her flock were with her.

We covered a lot of ground, saw many sectors of the city and learned a lot about Irish rebellion. There are many things Irishmen seem to want to talk about, the potato famine, the rebellion, breaking free from English rule, the country divide between staunch republicans and monarchists. Seems every location had some key part to play and each person telling the story tells it with a different slant.

Suffice to say, with Brexit and the current EU instability, big business is flocking to Dublin (many of the biggest blue chip countries now have their head offices here) for tax reasons, England seems very much the loser in this deal, but I barely understand the politics and economics of it.

Our first day was capped off by using the hop on hop off bus service to ferry us to The Guinness Storehouse for the obligatory tour. Read more »

Our drive back to Dublin, our last destination in Ireland, took us through the Wicklow Mountains. A clear, crisp day opened with blue sky – our first since arriving in Ireland and it is interesting what a psychological difference seeing sunlight can make.

After packing up, getting the car out of parking and heading off, we spent a short time on the motorway before heading off-main motorway and back into the quaint country lanes that I actually enjoy driving through. Twists and turns as we went ever upward, the green fields giving way to low browned off heather and gorse, bleak and windy. By this time the sun had begun to hide and the grey skies making it even colder. On the way up we spied patches of white, thinking it not cold enough to still contain snow we reasoned it must have been white rock outcrops.

We ended up at Glendalough, and decided to do a pair of circuit walks up through the forest, around black lakes and freezing streams. The countryside was lovely, trees tall, mixture of birch and spruce, old trees covered in moss, just magical. Amazingly, without too much puff we reached tthe top of the circuit, near headwaters of a babbling brook, then wended our way back down beside a black lake.

The water here seems tea-stained, presumably by vegetation, the streams like a weak cup o tea, the lakes proper brown. There were abandoned stone dwellings along the way and a rather charming chapel ruin set into the bank with stone-lined paths and retaining walls. Read more »