Swapping homes for around the world travel

Sunday April 3, 2022 - Day 4 - Rostrevor

I thought we were going to stay in last evening but the weather turned out so nice and clear that we went for a walk after dinner. We are only blocks from Carlingford Loch (which feeds into the Irish Sea) so we walked along Kilbrony Park and then down to the Loch and then up through town, making a circle back to our place.

Kilbrony Park

There are signs on homes, businesses, and walls all over Rostrevor put up by the Poetical Association of Rostrevor (PAR)


CarlingfordLoch. I'll have to look at tide schedules so we can get a picture when the tide is in.

Here is where the Kilbrony River feeds into Carlingford Loch

We walked across the street to take a picture of the same river from the opposite direction. The Kilbrony river flows down from the Mourne Mountains and through the Fairy Glen and past our home and then on to the Loch.


Only blocks from home at this point. We plan on visiting the Old Killowen Inn and Pub at some point. But not the funeral director next door.

Today, a Sunday, we woke up to clear skies and warm(ish) weather and decided it would be a good day to drive part of the scenic Mourne coastal route. We filled up the VW sedan with diesel (3/4 of a tank cost about $102 USD so don't be complaining about gas prices if you live in the US. Doing the math a gallon of fuel is about $8 USD) and headed out on a truly beautiful drive. Unfortunately, the roads are narrow and there weren't very many places where we could stop and take pictures but here are a few:

Here you can see the car that is included with the home exchange. Oh, and the Irish Sea.

On our scenic drive we saw a place with parked cars and and an information area so we pulled in. Lucky for us it's where the "Bloody Bridge" and the Coastal Path is located so we did some minor hiking.

The start of the Coastal Path.


Small waterfall seen from the Bloody Bridge.

We went down a little side path on the coastal route and found the clearest pool and little falls.

After walking part of the coastal path (the full path goes for miles and is for serious hikers) we got back in the car and headed up the road to Newcastle. This is a fairly large town and the traffic and one-way streets were a nightmare for this driver who is still getting used to driving on the left and shifting with my left hand. But, we had a tasty lunch and walked around a little bit.

We decided to head back then because I was just a wreck from driving in Newcastle. We took a different route, up into the Mourne Mountains, but we didn't get a lot of pictures because we were driving on narrow roads with nowhere to pull over most of the time. And I took a "shortcut" into Rostrevor that ended up being eight miles of single track road (a road that is not wide enough for two cars in most places so you have to be careful and look for oncoming traffic and then one of you has to either pull over as far as possible or you both slow down way, way down and squeak by each other).