Irish colours!

Yesterday is backblipped ... I've yet to catch up.

Flight to Cork this morning. Confession: I have never been to Ireland, and I felt ridiculously excited looking down at the amazingly green landscape as we came in  to land. I was very lucky with the weather -- it was a glorious day in Cork while it had been overcast and chilly on the drive to Carcassonne.

I picked up my hire car, which is a ridiculously large Volvo. Then I spent ten minutes sitting in the car park. Having figured out where to insert the key fob (an anonymous looking slot on the dashboard), I started the engine, put it in gear, and reached for the handbrake. Which wasn't there. Switched the engine off again while I searched. Eventually I found a button hidden somewhere below the steering wheel that required gorilla-like arms to reach. Why don't rental agencies leave the manual in the car? I eventually lurched off and got on my way with only a couple of stalls, vowing to avoid any hill starts. Much later on, I figured out that the handbrake is an automated system. It takes itself off when you start lifting your foot off the clutch. Disconcerting.

I took the scenic route to my destination, with stops as advised by freespiral. First stop: Kinsale, which has all those features I so admire in her blips of Irish rural villages, along with a harbour where I sat and ate my sandwich. Later on, Clonakilty and then the small port of Glandore where I failed to find the stone circle but did see a group of wet suited kids and four dogs having a wonderful time splashing around in the harbour.

Later still, a bum steer from the GPS sent me on one very nice detour along a winding country road with gorgeous views over green countryside bathed in sunlight, and a less good one along a steep, grass-stubbled single track road that went nowhere except a few kilometres further up the road I'd just left. Luckily I only met one other car. Eventually after a second trip through Durrus (extra) I ended up on the right road to freespiral's little corner of paradise. The road along the shore of Dunmanus Bay is so beautiful that at one point I rounded a corner and gasped out loud at the beauty of the vista: sparkling water, green meadows, distant silhouetted trees, mountains receding into the mist. It wasn't safe to stop or I would have shared it with you; it's just imprinted on my mind.

Freespiral's appearance confirmed I had turned into the right drive, and I was warmly welcomed. Lovely supper, and during conversation a chance detour into the past established that Himself and S had both worked at Warwickshire museum in the late 1980s and hence knew each other. Small world indeed!