Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Dunluce is a ruined castle sitting between Portballintrae and Portrush. It is built on a rocky outcrop of land that is connected to the mainland by a bridge. Excellent for defending if a little intimidating to cross. A good place to defend and you get some fantastic views down the coast while you are there.

It’s a bunch of rocks.

They are cool rocks. I always imagined it being a whole coastline of suff, but it is one rocky ourcrop. Much smaller than Filey Brigg, but then everything is better in Yorkshire. Still, it was cool to see, and the scenary around it was lovely.

The site is managed by the National Trust who heavily monitise it. They have to provide public access for free. But what they have done is built a visitor’s centre and car park that they do charge for. So if you want park near the site, or want to have a wee, it’s £15 per adult. And if you want to use the shuttle bus ro get up an down the hill, that costs extra money.

Our first base camp for our road trip was the seaside town of Portrush. Long beaches, fish and chip shops, arcades, the whole classic British seaside town feel. It also had a parkrun. With Portrush being a summer hotspot, over 500 runners turned up for an out-and-back along the beach. The sand was firm enough under foot but there were some wet bits to run through. A lot of runners did it in bare feet.

After parkrun, Venla and I built the first of many sandcastles.

Earlier this month we a wee trip around the north coast of Ireland. Starting in Larne we followed the Causeway Coast all of the way to Derry where we picked up the Wild Atlantic Way and followed that, on and off, as far as Sligo.

I will be filling in some blog posts here, but if you want to follow the whole story, visit our North Coast Road Trip photo essay.

While we were down in Waterword we hit the beach. We had already ben to Tramore and Dunmore East so we decided to head over to Clonea in Dungarvan. Beautiful sand and I managed to get a sea swim in.

Venla and I also built a sand castle. Classic three-ring construction.

Last weekend we visited Galway for the first time.

We arrived Friday and drove over the nearby town of Barna as a friend had recommended eating a Donnelly’s pub. Would recommend the cheesecake if you find yourself there. It was dark so we didn’t see much but did get a good meal and make it out in time before the rugby kicked off.

I completed University of Galway parkrun and then we headed over to Salthill to visit the aquarium. It specialises in local sealife which was great because as much as I enjoy a sealife centre, they get very similar once you have seen one. We also had tapas at Black Cat in Salthill which is very much recommended.

They have lots of reptiles.

I learnt some cool stuff. Did you know, for example, that an axolotl is a real creature and not just made up by Minecraft?

I was a bit unsure at first. Everything is in one room and you can get around it in around 30-45 minutes. That in itself feels like not much for the entry fee. And there were no talks on. But it turns out they just had the wrong sign up for the talk times and they started 30 minutes later.

Once the talks started, they were great. We went to two, spaced 90 minutes apart, with Dr Polly who brought out three animals each time. She told us a bit about them and then we got the chance to touch them. Snakes are lovely and soft: no wonder they used to make stuff out of their skin. Each talk was 30 minutes so there was a good hour of live stuff going on which made it well worth the visit.

There is a small cafe selling toasties where you can grab some lunch.

A bunch of cool stuff to see here including the valley itself, grave yard, tower, ruined church and other buildings. But really shines if you fancy a hike. There are two lakes you can walk around so well suited to a range of fitness levels. And there was a food van selling toasties, so that was lunch sorted.

Scenery is gorgeous.

I did get eaten alive by insects at upper lake, though. I got bitten eight times despite having jeans and a hoodie on. They got my on my arms, wrists, ankles and hips. Why am I cursed with being so tasty?

We did a family trip to the Chocolate Garden. They have a small playground and a toilet, so that is lovely. But they could probably do more on the chocolate front. They had a small wall of chocolates for sale and ice cream, but only one of the flavours was chocolate, and if I am being honest, I hoped for a little more there.

We also had lunch at the MerryTree restaurant at Rathwood garden centre and that was excellent.