Andrew came running into the house, excitedly saying, “Porcupine, porcupine, you gotta come see, there’s a porcupine out here!” So we trotted outside and over into the neighbor’s yard, where we saw, not a porcupine (porcupines are apparently a new world animal, and are much larger) but a hedgehog. This also gave us an occasion to meet our neighbors to the east, a retired couple named Ian and (I think, […]
It’s rained off and on since we arrived in Ireland, but it’s never stopped us from doing anything until today. We had planned on driving back up the Antrim coast (we considered a trip to Derry/Londonderry, but decided the drive was too long. We started out a little before noon in a light drizzle/mist, which changed into a medium- and then a heavy drizzle/mist. We were searching for the cliffs […]
For those of your who recall the horrible incident involving Luxembourgeoise cows several years ago (detailed here), I am pleased to report that Irish cows, at least those in County Antrim, appear to be peaceable and docile, if somewhat stubborn. There is a very large monument sitting on a high bluff overlooking the neighborhood in which we are staying. From our house, it looks like this: Thursday was a bright, […]
We had a fairly restful day touring yesterday. The weather was mostly sunny, but it was extremely windy. We went southeast of Belfast, down and around the Ards Peninsula. Bound on the east by the North Channel and on the west by Strangford Lough, it is a fertile, relatively flat land. Suzie read somewhere that at some time in the past the residents were offered extra incentives to build towers […]
We decided today to stay close to home, as I was tired of driving after our trek yesterday. Our destination was the Belfast Castle and Cave Hill Park, which is next to it. The weather forecast for Thursday on looks very bad, so we decided to take advantage of being able to be outside. The Belfast Castle is not really a castle at all, but rather a large, elaborate 19th-century […]
We just returned from a 9-hour trip to the Antrim coast and back. It was amazingly, stunningly, incredible beautiful and dramatic, just what we imagined Ireland would be like. Best of all, almost no rain, and lots of sun. Just lots of green, hundreds of shades of green, all of it lush and deep, dotted with thousands upon thousands of sheep and cows. Lots of narrow winding roads, and ancient […]
For two people who are basically fairly conservative (personally, not necessarily politically), cautious, risk-averse, middle-of-the-road folks, Suzie and I often find ourselves in unusually odd, slightly dangerous-seeming places during our travels sometimes. Last night was one of those, when we found ourselves in a hot, packed gymnasium in West Belfast with 300 or 400 highly partisan supporters of what was (and maybe is, I’m still learning this) the Irish […]
Our streak of no-rain days since we came to the U.K. ended today at nine — an amazing run, I think. But today is not just rain, it’s a full-fledged storm — cold, windy, and raw. Fortunately, the worst of it didn’t hit until about 3 this afternoon, so we were able to get out a bit this morning, and it’s kind of nice being forced into some down-time, sitting […]
We have routinely been going to bed well after 11 p.m., which is unusual for us (we are usually early-to-bed and early-to-rise). The reason … we are way, way north, so the days here are incredibly long, particularly since today is the summer equinox, the longest day of the year. The map below shows how far north we are in relation to Santa Rosa (the latitude of this point is […]
It’s 7 p.m. in Belfast (Greenisland, actually, pronounced “Green-island” not “Green-is-land” as we were corrected shortly after arriving) and I actually feel partly OK for the first time in a couple of days. Last night was about the sickest I can remember being for a few years — a horrible cold followed by uncontrollable chills followed by a fever. As is often the case with a fever, my mind was […]