Meeting the Neighbours

We arrived to our holiday cottage on the Wild Atlantic Way yesterday.  It's a typical Irish cottage, rustic and comfortable and, most importantly, peaceful.  This morning we awoke to the sunshine and I wandered outside with my camera, at which point these lovely ladies in the field opposite came to see their new neighbour.  I caught up with the local gossip and my blip was secured.

Our host is most obliging and after breakfast, her Mum arrived to take me in to daughter no.2's house to choose a book to read.  I met Dad, both lovely folk and we discussed everything from allotments to the Famine years and religion!  Then we were off in to Sligo for Tony to visit the Heritage and Genealogy Society.  He was light heartedly offered a job for the research he has done up to now, and had a useful talk with Adrian, one of the researchers who was interested in his work so far and was able to give advice on some places to visit when we meet up with Tony's cousins on Thursday. 

From there we did a bit of a tour of the town, taking in Il Furino Café for cuppas and snacks; several bookstores and outdoor shops in the search for local walking maps; the Post Office for postcard stamps (look out for them arriving Trevor and Karen!); and the Famine Graveyard.  Tony sought out a café to sit in whilst I visited the Yeats Society,  Yeats being one of my favourite poets and a local here in Sligo.  Sadly it was closed when it should have been open so that was the only disappointing point of the day.  There is a Yeats trail in the area so hopefully we will come across some of the installations on our walks.

Once back at the cottage I walked up to the local stores for ice cream.  They are the kind of stores which stock pretty much everything, including for local farmers.  On my way back from my second trip for flour, I waved at Stanley in his drive and had another interesting chat about the area and family.  He pointed to the cottage where he was born across a couple of fields.  It must be great to have family in such close proximity.

We've now just had dinner, somewhat later than expected because I turned off the power to the oven!  When we've washed up, we are going to explore down the nearest lane and hope we can get to the beach.  Tomorrow we will walk up Knocknarea which apparently has fantastic views and we are booked in to the Beach Bar at Aughris Head for dinner.  At some point I need to fit in a seaweed bath.....