Bank Holiday day trip...

On the last Bank Holiday in May we decided we would take our first proper day trip as a family.  It was a really sunny day and we contemplated going to Castle Ward but decided in the end to go to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

We spent most of our time in the transport galleries looking at all the trains, buses and cars.

I was particularly taken by this Land Rover fire engine as it has so much in common with our camper van.  They really are very versatile vehicles!

We thought it would actually make quite a good mobile shop with the openings on the side!

So many of the vehicles had brilliant badges.  They just don't make them like that anymore.

I also really liked all the commercial vehicles, again modern commercial vehicles really don't cut it compared to some of these.

This little blue car was pretty cute.  It's a Peugeot Bébé.

Always love a Morris Traveller.  Maybe some day!

We then went across to the Folk park part of the museum were we had a picnic, with tasty bread and olives from the Poachers' Pantry in Lisbane and then we went for a walk round the rural part, mainly getting ideas for our own house and garden!

One of the last building we looked at was the rural school, it had some lovely vintage posters inside.

We reckoned that the older the kids got they must have moved up to the higher coat hooks.

All in all it was a great day out, I'd definitely recommend it if you're looking for an interesting trip.

Me on the radio talking about camping!

This morning I was on Radio Ulster trying to convince Good Morning Ulster presenter Joel Taggart that camping is good fun! You can listen for the next seven days here.  I’m on at 1hr 21mins in.  They didn’t quite believe that we’d gone camping for our honeymoon!  I tried my best to convey how much fun camping can be but I don’t think I managed to convince Joel, Sarah, the other presenter, said she was definitely up for it though!

I realised then that I’d never posted up the photos from our honeymoon camping trip so I thought I’d do that now.  There’s so many I liked I couldn’t edit it down anymore so I’m afraid this is going to be a long one!



Our tent with the sea in the background.



Me inside the tent with a piece of essential camping kit - the woolly hat!



Some more camping essentials! - well it was our honeymoon ;-)



Time for a cuppa!



Cooking breakfast.



Sunset at the beach.





This was the first campsite we stayed at and it was definitely one of the most picturesque campsites we’ve been to.  All the pitches were really private, surrounded by their own sand dunes.  Where we were pitched you could just step out of the tent and over the dunes and you were right on the beach. Lovely!



We had some rather changeable weather, the scenery could go from this to…



…this!

We took a day trip out to Inis Mór the largest of the Aran Islands.



On the ferry on the way over.



We took our bicycles over on the ferry and cycled to the Dún Aengus fort, where the views were absolutely amazing.



But taking a photograph could be perilous!

We mostly stayed in seasidey campsites that were out of the city but Dee wanted to see the Volvo Ocean Racers which were in Galway city so we stayed there one night.  The campsite was in Salthill just a few miles outside of the city and it wasn’t exactly the most picturesque place in the world (especially in comparison to the first place we stayed!) but it was incredibly handy to the city - we were able to walk across the street and get on a bus to get into the centre with no problem. We saw the boats and had a really delicious italian meal in a restaurant we’d been to the last time we stayed in Galway four years ago.  To round the night off we saw a brilliant band play in the Arches pub.



After Galway we headed down to the Dingle Peninsula where we stayed in the western most campsite in Europe!

The scenery was amazing and the pubs were pretty great too!





While we were looking around at the waterfalls a car of lads pulled up and one of them jumped out, stripped to his undies and ran under the water! It was freezing that day - I was wearing a winter coat, wellies and a woolly hat!



We drove along the Conor pass and saw this lake shaped like a heart!

The next photos are from a folk park which I couldn’t resist looking round.



Lovely trunks.









Dressers galore!











Lots of beds and quilts.







and bicycles!

Finally one of the lovely old roads we drove down with fuchsia hedges.  The verges in both Galway and Kerry are gorgeous with lots of wildflowers and tonnes of oxeye daisies.