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).

 

Here is a picture of the Kilbrony river as seen from our lovely patio.

The lovely patio

Pictures of Rostrevor

That's all for now!
 

April 2, 2022, Day 3 - Rostrevor

 This morning was clear and sunny, off and on, so we thought it would be a good day to see the Cloghmor Stone on Slieve Martin, part of the Mourne Mountains. After a rough start with the unfamiliar car we got going, the destination is just minutes away. However, we were foiled in our attempt to get to the highest, and closest, car park to the Stone as there is a two day mountain bike event going on. We parked at the bottom of the mountain and decided to walk the Narnia Trail instead. We didn't do all of the trail, it was wet and muddy and it started sprinkling rain sporadically, but what we did see was enchanting. We also figured out that we can easily walk to the trail from our place, no need to drive just for that, it's just up the hill through Kilbroney Park. The next good weather day we will walk the whole Narnia Trail.

You can see part of Rostrevor and more of the Mourne Mountains

 We drove back home and changed shoes (our hiking boots were muddy) and walked to The Church Coffee Bar and Cafe This place used to be a Methodist Church, the first one built in N. Ireland, in 1901 and then it closed about 2010 or so. It was then bought in 2014 and turned into the coffee bar and cafe, it has the original pews, light shades, doors, and stained glass. It's a really pretty setting and they have an outdoor patio. Lunch was tasty, we'll be back.

We took a stroll around the neighborhood to walk off lunch and came across this wonderful row of houses.

Street scene

We also discovered this ancient graveyard, there was no entry allowed, there was a danger sign, the monuments are unstable.

Heading back to our place we saw this on a building that is just blocks away from where we are staying, thus completing our Narnia Trail walk.

 We're staying in tonight and cooking dinner, we bought more supplies at the store, and stopped in at the off-sale and purchased a local bottle of gin for Don, Killowen Native Irish Botanical, and two airline size bottles of Mourne Dew Single Malt Irish Whiskey for me, the same stuff I drank last night at Fearon's, the shop was sold out of the full size bottles. Slainte!

 April 1, 2022 Day 2 - Rostrevor, N. Ireland

In the morning we walked a little farther through the Fairy Glen:

 

Instead of walking even more and maybe up into the Mourne Mountains we crossed a bridge back towards town.

That's yours truly, bundled up against the morning chill.

Walked past a graveyard.

Heading downhill back to the town square you can see Cloughmore Loch past the church.

 We stopped at a grocery store in town to pick up a few things and then walked past the start of the Fairy Glen, this is just steps from where we are staying.

 We had planned to drive up part of the Mourne Mountains to the Cloughmore Stone and then hike to the top from there, but it started to rain and I didn't want my first day of driving again on the opposite side of the road to be during the rain, and we didn't want to be on top of a mountain in the rain either so we hung around the house instead.

Later that evening we decided to venture out for dinner even though it was still raining slightly (some rain is predicted for every day for the next 10 days) and ate at The Rostrevor Inn again, the dinner menu is much larger than the lunch menu. We then went to Fearons Pub, known as Henry's to the locals for the man who owned it for almost 70 years.

Here is Henry's protege, Kevin, pouring pints. Not all of them were for us!

 

We had a wonderful time in the pub, as soon as someone heard us they asked where we were from and when we said "Minnesota" they invariably said "Fargo!" for the movie and loved it if we said "ya sure", "you betcha" or elongated our vowels. Most of the people know John and Veronica, our exchange hosts, and had lots of stories to tell us about them. We also met a couple from Norway, and a lot of locals who had either been born, or lived in, the USA and are now back in Rostrevor. Since this was only our second night here, and we're still getting used to the time difference, we left around 11:30, just as the pub was really getting crowded.

Roxburgh Place the street we live on.

 Good night!

March 31, 2022 - Day 1 - Rostrevor, Northern Ireland

 

We landed in Dublin, Ireland, a little after 8 in the morning and managed to find the express bus to take us to Newry, Northern Ireland, with no trouble. From Newry we took a taxi to Rostrevor and here we are! The home is lovely and so is the town. 

The Kilbroney River that flows practically in our back yard.

This is the Kilbroney River right outside our door and just beyond the stone patio. There is a narrow path beside it that we walked on for a short distance.

Here you can see the path along the river.

Beer at the Rostrevor Inn and Restaurant. The food was very good.

A view of part of the town with the Mourne Mountains in the background.

The home where we are living for the next six weeks. Behind the shed is the Kilbroney River.

 

The light green building with the three chimneys is The Rostrevor Inn where we ate lunch. The bridge and the river are the starting point for the Faery Glen. We are just a few blocks away from this bridge which leads into the main square.

 

 

Even with flying overnight, and having to stand outside the Dublin Airport in cold and windy weather to catch a bus, it was still a very good day. We didn't lose our luggage, we didn't get lost, and I didn't have a nervous breakdown. The town is lovely and the people are friendly and a neighbor, Mary, has already been here to check in on us and to drag the recycle and composting bins down the lane for pickup tomorrow morning. She's a huge help and a hoot too, I like her.

 We are traveling and home exchanging again after a 2 1/2 year hiatus!

Our last home exchange was in July of 2019, when we went to Seattle, Washington. We had to cancel our scheduled home exchange to Porto, Portugal, for 2020. However!We were lucky and fortunate in that we got our money back for the airfare and we kept our jobs and were able to work from home during the pandemic. We turned down a few offers for home exchanges in 2021, it's not that we weren't traveling, we went to Ohio for a wedding and visited friends in Chicago, because we decided that we would only visit family and friends during 2021. Now, that has changed in a big way!

We are going on a two month exchange in the UK! That's right, two months! We have a heck of an itinerary planned too, we are going to be visiting our many friends on that side of the ocean and that means a lot of travel: 

1. March 31st: Land in Dublin, Ireland, and then take the express bus to Newry, Northern Ireland, and then a taxi to our home-away-from home in Rostrevor 
2. March 31st - April 20th: See as many sites as possible in Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland, all while driving on the opposite side of the road. Make day trips to Belfast.
3. April 21st - April 24th: take bus to Dublin airport and fly to Gatwick Airport where a friend and former co-worker is picking us up and then driving us to Rye, England, where we will all spend four days doing touristy stuff along with her boyfriend, who is driving separately with their luggage and their dog.
4. April 25th: Our friends will drive us back to their place in London where we will stay the night so Don and I can meet up with different friends for a night out.
5. April 26th-May 6th: Fly back to Dublin and then a bus to Rostrevor. See more sites, visit more pubs, and do more stuff in Northern Ireland.
   
6. May 7th: we go to Scotland via - driving to Belfast and taking a ferry to Cairnryan, Scotland, then we drive to Fort William where we will stay the night at the Loch Leven Hotel & Distillery. 
7. May 8th-10th: Leave Fort William and drive to the Isle of Skye and stay with friends for three nights.
8. May 11th-13th: Leave the Isle of Skye and drive to Edinburgh where we stay for three nights.
9. May 14th-18th: Drive back to Cairnryan and take the ferry to Belfast and drive home. Do more touristy things for a few days and then say goodbye to all the friends we will have made in Rostrevor.
   
10. May 19th-25th: Leave Rostrevor for good. Take the bus to Dublin Airport and fly to Stockholm, Sweden, to stay with our friend for seven nights.
11. May 26th-29th: Leave Sweden and fly to Dublin. Stay in Dublin for four nights.
12. May 30th: Leave Dublin and fly home. 

Whew! That's three different airlines (Delta, RyanAir, KLM), four different hotels (Loch Leven Hotel and the Radisson Blu in Scotland, The Old Borough Arms in Rye, England, and the Aloft in Dublin), five countries (Republic of Ireland, N. Ireland, England, Scotland, and Sweden), three currencies (Euro, British pound, Krona), express buses, taxis, local buses, and one ferry. I have been working for days putting all of this together, looking up timetables and comparing times and prices, emailing friends to set-up dates for visiting, and checking websites to see what we need to do to enter different countries (as of now, nothing, all restrictions have been lifted, except for the USA, we will need a negative covid test before arriving back here, but that could change by May 30th). I'm tired but ready to travel! Stay tuned for pictures in about three days!