One to remember

Well the holiday over new year was certainly one to remember, although it was not the holiday of a lifetime, and it was certainly different. In the run up to our departure the weather here in the UK was subzero with the threat of fog for the morning of our flight, which made me wonder if we would even get to the airport. As it happened the motorway to the airport was clear and the fog did not materialise. In fact we had a very smooth and uneventful trip to our holiday destination, unlike our journey home. Our problems started at the airport with the slowest, most chaotic check in that we have ever experienced. Our flight was delayed, but that is no excuse for a slow check in. Eventually we were informed that the reason for the delay was a medical emergency on the outbound flight, which resulted in a detour to get the passenger, who was ill, to hospital. Nobody wants to be in that situation and everybody was very understanding about the cause for the delay.  Our return flight took off nearly three hours late with the promise from the captain that he would be stepping on the gas to get us home as soon as possible. About forty minutes before we were due to land we were advised that they had another medical emergency on board and would be landing back in Manchester as fast as we could. Once on the ground we were to remain in our seats to allow the paramedics to take the casualty off. And boy the landing was certainly fast! Forty five minutes had been shaved off a flight which should have taken four hours. So we had landed safely, but now the bridge to the airport terminal could not be connected to the plane. At least the captain, who must have had a stressful day, could see the funny side of things.

For us problems did not end there. Husband had woken me up early on our last morning with what seemed like heavy breathing. During the journey home a cough and a snuffle developed. He was obviously coming down with some bug. The first day back he went to work, but by the next day he really was not well enough for work. He ended up having three days off work, which for him is very unusual. I could count on the fingers of one hand, the number of days off sick he has had in the 25 years, that I have known him.

So on a lighter note, where did we go? Well I do know where we went, but I wonder if you can guess from these clues where we have been. We went to an island where the second language is English. They have cable cars and a toboggan run but there was no snow when we were there. 

The streets are steep

and the taxi cabs are yellow.

It is a popular port of call for cruise ships, but we were not on one having flown there.

It is an all year round destination with millions of visitors every year. Time wise the island is on GMT, with milder climate than the UK, making it a paradise for horticulturists. It almost looked like England in the Spring, but these yellow flowers are not daffodils.

Everything seems to grow there from the most English of plants - the ubiquitous Ivy, to the colourful South American bougainvillea

 and the exotic South African protea.

The island is famous for its' cake and wine and recently a museum dedicated to one of the island's famous sportsmen was opened. We really enjoyed our stay and hope to return to the island at a different time of year.

Amnesia or dementia?

 

I am back from warmer climes and no longer singing the praises of technology. I am a very patient individual, but over the last few months my patience has been sorely tested. After the problems of recent months with a tired laptop, erratic broadband, problems commenting and third party cookies,  I  had hoped that a new all singing and dancing laptop would solve the problems that I was experiencing, but no. This shiny new laptop cannot/does not want to/will not see photographs that were taken before some arbitrary date in September 2014. I do not know if this is due to Windows 8 (the previous laptop was Windows 7), Blogger, which also seems to be a different version to my previous laptop or Picasa, which seems to delight in being a law unto itself. The photographs are at least still in my camera and I can remember taking them. It just seems to be the laptop that is suffering from amnesia or dementia. Well whatever the diagnosis this latest difficulty has given me a bit of a headache. When I started to have problems preparing posts I decided to opt for subjects where I could use several photographs as a quick means of generating the post, as putting in text was proving very time consuming. For a time this approach worked. However, the post Last Month had to be prepared using two laptops - the new one and the old one, as the old one will at least see my photographs, although it has other problems. Loading the photographs onto my old laptop did not please husband who had started to wipe my old laptop. Clearly I cannot continue to operate in this fashion and in any case it was very time consuming.

The consequence of all this is that I shall not be able to write some of the posts that I had planned to write where photographs would have been key to the subject matter. For a time I was thinking of throwing in the towel, but I have realised that posts can be written without photographs and the schedule of posts that I had planned is not set in stone. I needed to do some lateral thinking and make some changes. However, all is not lost as when I did some forward planning I loaded some photographs onto the draft posts and they are still  there. It is disappointing to say the least and just goes to show that change is not necessarily progress.

Happy New Year

Technology is wonderful when it works and if you are reading this then it has worked, as I scheduled it a few days ago and should now be enjoying myself in warmer climes than the frozen UK. Our week away will go all too quickly and we shall soon be back home in Chester. Alternatively I may be spending New Year at Manchester Airport if the weather is bad and we are not able to fly.

Wherever I am I wish you a Happy New Year

Season's greetings

 I had not intended to leave it this long before I got around to posting again. Life has been rather busy doing nothing special or worthy of posting about. The last few weeks seem to have been a marathon, but at last most of the necessary preparations have been done. The tree is decorated, I have made my final visit to the supermarket and the presents are wrapped. I just need to ice the cake. But before I go off to do that

   Happy Christmas everyone

Last month

Recently the weather here in the UK has been wonderful - dry, warm and sunny.  However, I can not pretend that I like this time of year when the days get shorter and the evenings draw in, the leaves turn and fall off the trees, the garden looks permanently untidy and the new series of Downton Abbey hits our television screens. I will admit that I am a fan, but alas Matthew is still dead. OK, the early Autumn colours are good this year, but we are desperately short of rain and I am having to water some of our established shrubs, that are struggling with the dry conditions. The prospect of Winter being around the corner is depressing. Yesterday morning in the post office I saw a pile of boxes of mince pies for sale and then  in  the afternoon I saw my first Christmas tree!

Regardless of all this the garden continues to be a source of colour. I have been making the most of the good weather and spending time in the garden, so rather than bore you with another post about a holiday here are some photographs taken in our garden during September.

The first photograph is the only one from our front garden and is of a fungus which I think is honey fungus. It is growing out of the stump of an ash tree which was cut down several years ago. Since I took the photo the fungus has disappeared.












Round in the back garden we still have lavender in flower.

Along from the lavender is Dahlia Bishop of Llandaff

and Crocosmia Lucifer which grow along side one another.

In the bed that we call the shrubbery is this perfumed rose whose name we do not know.

Then if we turn back in the other direction we have Dahlia Melody Gipsy

 

and a peony in its Autumn colours.

While further down the garden the sedum is coming into flower and it looks as if the wasps are enjoying themselves.

Finally in my white border the Japanese Anemone are looking very graceful.

In the vegetable garden we have had a good crop of mange tout, runner beans and courgettes. The tomatoes are now doing well. These are a trailing tomato that I have not grown before. They have been very easy to grow requiring only the minimum of attention unlike conventional tomatoes.

And we can not forget the apple tree which is still holding on to its bumper crop, despite the fact that there are wind falls on the lawn every day at the moment.

Third time lucky

I have been trying to write this post for three months now, since we returned from this trip to Ireland back in June, but have been unable to finish it because of the problems that I have been having with my laptop. I was determined that it would get finished, as you will see from the photographs the west coast of Ireland could not have looked better.

We left home on a Saturday 14  June around ten o'clock for the 90 minute journey to Holyhead ferry terminal on Anglesey. Our route took us along the coast of North Wales to Anglesey. It's famous royal residents, William and Kate have moved away, now that William is no longer working as a Search and Rescue pilot based on Anglesey. We arrived at Holyhead in  good time and after a short wait boarded the ferry to Dublin. The sea was calm and we arrived in Dublin ahead of schedule. We soon disembarked and were on our way from Dublin to Ennis in County Clare where we were staying the night. As we left the outskirts of Dublin I looked at the map and wondered why we were heading to Ennis and Doolin for a third time, as there is so much more of Ireland that we have yet to see.  By the time that we arrived in Ennis the sun was out. After a cup of tea and a quick unpack, as we were only staying here for one night,  we went out for a walk around and booked a restaurant for our evening meal.

On Sunday we made the short journey from Ennis, north west to Doolin on the west coast, where we returned to the delightful country house hotel, about three miles outside Doolin that we have stayed on our previous visits. Now I knew why we had returned to the west coast of Ireland for the third time and to this hotel in particular. The weather was glorious - warm and sunny and forecast to get even warmer.  Here is the view of Doolin from our hotel, with the Cliffs of Moher in the distance.

On our previous visits the weather had been cool, grey and damp, which had prevented us seeing some of the local attractions. The hotel is a bit quirky, but so quiet and comfortable and the food is good too. So everything was looking good and it certainly seemed to be third time lucky with the weather. We settled ourselves into our room then headed off down to the harbour to investigate the boat trips that we had not done on our previous visits, because of the miserable weather.

Not having been to Doolin over a weekend before, we were in for a surprise. The good weather was also playing its' part. The place was packed! We just managed to find a space to park the car. We are not lazy. It is too far to walk. There was also a lot of work going on in the harbour area with a new coast guard station being built and construction of new piers for the ferries. With leaflets about ferry times for the different boat trips we retired to one of the pubs, just along from this pink thatched cottage, for refreshment and a sit in the sun.

For Monday we had decided to do the Cliffs of Moher cruise. Previously we have walked along the Cliffs of Moher, but you see them from a different perspective from the sea. The cliffs stretch for 8 km/5 miles and in places are as high as 200 m/700 feet. They are sheer walls of limestone with shale and sandstone on top and are home to a variety of seabirds. On the return half of the cruise the boat took us in close to the seabird colony. I had just lined my camera up to take a photograph of the birds standing on a ledge when the boat moved with the swell of the sea and all I got was a line of feet.

We went on the mid-day cruise and did not realise until we were out on the water that the cliffs were in the shade. Had we gone later in the day the sun would have been further round and the cliffs would have been in the sun, which would probably have made for better photographs.

Back on dry land we had a pub lunch, sitting outside in the sun. Then we went for a walk along the road at the top of Doolin, from which you have a good view of the centre of Doolin (photograph below) and it eventually leads to the Cliffs of Moher walk. 

By now the sun was at its' highest and hottest and we were not kitted out for a long walk. So we turned back when the road became a track and found another pub for refreshment. This walking and sight seeing is thirsty work.

On Tuesday we had decided to take a ferry again to the smallest and nearest of the three Aran Islands - Inisheer. It is 1400 acres with a population of 300 people. All three of the Aran Islands have a barren virtually treeless, cracked limestone terrain

and simply built dwellings.

Amazingly to the side of the harbour the limestone terrain is broken by this lovely white sandy beach which is as good as you will find anywhere in the world.

After a lunch eaten while sitting in the sun, it was time to return to the harbour to catch the ferry back to Doolin.

Wednesday morning found us making our way back to Dublin. Our route took us north towards Galway, then eastwards. We drove through some absolutely stunning scenery, which unfortunately it was just impossible to take photographs of, through the mucky windows of a moving car. We stopped in Athlone to have a spot of lunch in a local hostelry and returned to our car approximately one hour later to find the temperature gauge reading 29 degrees Centigrade - that is high for Ireland in June.

The purpose of our visit to Dublin was for me to go to the World Flower Show at the Royal Dublin Society and for husband to go to the Library of Ireland to do some family history research, which we did the following day. There were over 600 exhibits at the flower show. I am not sure that I managed to see them all. This exhibit won the prize for Best in Show.

It was not all serious flower arranging - these two exhibits caught my eye although neither received any sort of prize or commendation.

There will not be another world flower show, so close to home, for some years to come, so this was not an opportunity to be missed.

We had perfect weather for these few days in Ireland and it made the holiday so much better than the two holidays that we have had there, when the weather has been miserable.