It's a Long Way to Tipperary!!!!!

We are traveling around the fascinating country of Ireland, the people, the culture and the countryside are awesome.  We are staying in Tipperary, yes of the same name as the song!  We are centrally located in the south middle part of the country which allows us to take day trips to just about all parts of the island.  We have been to Dublin but found it to be another big city with a few tourist things to see but what we really enjoy is the small villages, the countryside, interacting with the locals and most of all the beauty of Ireland.  Every turn of the road is a new adventure and we guarantee you that the pictures do not depict the beauty of this country.  Every chance we get we have interacted with people in the pubs, along the streets or in the shops; they are very outgoing friendly and willing to share their stories and their history of their country with us.  One of our favorite trips is along the Ring of Kerry and the Wild Atlantic Way of western Ireland.  Rugged beauty, towering cliffs and wide valleys mark this part of the country.  We have posted a few pictures on Facebook and a few here but we have literally taken hundreds of pictures, making Tom pull over to the side of some very narrow roads.   We have stopped old and young people in the villages to ask their favorite place to eat and have always ended up with the best food at a reasonable price along with a little history lesson.  BTW...Guniness is the favorite beer and Tom and George have mastered the art of ordering it with at least one meal a day.  Another little tidbit of information we gathered is that Jameson whiskey is not distilled in Dublin.  We toured the Jameson Distillary outside of Cork and discovered that they are the only Distillary in the worl that distilled Jameson whiskey...of course Tom and George volunteered to taste three different whiskers, a Scottish, Jack Daniels Black and a Jameson 3 year old ....Jameson won hands down and they had another shot just to be sure.  

To say we are having a wonderful time, enjoying each other's company and exploring Ireland would be an understatement...we will have many memories of this trip and most of those in addition to what I have already said, will be of the laughter and the drives along some of the narrowest cowpaths a car can go on while meeting another truck, car or tractor coming at you. 

Can you believe a Swiss Chalet in the middle of Ireland...you never know what you will find when you ask a local about the surrounding area.  Interesting local sights, great places to eat or a place to enjoy a Guiness.j

Here it is ----the world famous Blarney Castle, home of the Blarney Stone.  George had to kiss the Blarney Stone (although he never has had a problem dispensing a lot of blarney).  so it was up to the top of the tower, lay on you back, stretch outside of the wall and raise your lips to the Blarney Stone.  That hole at the top of the tower is where he kiss the stone.

West coast of Ireland along the Wild Atlantic Way on the Ring of Kerry.  The terrain varies from gentle sloping pasture land, deep gorges, towering cliffs, or wide beaches...a fascinating drive around western Ireland.

Stopped along the Ring of Kerry -- What no guard rails!!!

Enjoying the seabreeze in the Atlantic, heading towards the "Cliffs of Moher"

The Cliffs of Moher on the Ring of Kerryb

The birds using the Cliffs as a sacturary 

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The village of Dingle on the Dingle peninsula, West Coast of Ireland on the Ring of Kerry.  Avery colorful village with the typical narrow streets.

Pasture lands for the millions of sheep we saw throughout Ireland.

We have only a few days left in Ireland as we will board the ferry on May 1st to sail back to England for four days before crossing the channel to Pick up another car in Calsis to begin the continent part of our adventure.  If that part of our excursion is anything like the month and half we will have spent in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland, this 3 month trip will go down in our book as historic!  We will keep you posted and hope you enjoy our pictures and adventures.  Stay tuned, there is a lot more to come from the four crazy old people traveling together in Europe!

Touring England, Scotland and Northern Ireland

When we left the Cotswalds and drove to East Anglia we decided to take our time and enjoy Britain at a slower pace.  We visited the northeast coast, drove down the coast and back to our home base of RAF Lakenheath.  We thought England was a small island in the North Sea, across the channel from the continent of Europe...what we found was a charming friendly country full wonderful people who embraced us and welcomed us in their country with open arms.  As we continued to drive around the UK exploring new back yards, we discovered a country rich in history and proud of traditions.  We visited the ancestral home of Pat's family near Lancaster (see the special blog we posted on her family's history).  We drove across the country to the city of Edinburgh and its massive castle.  What we also found in Edinbrugh was a total stranger, Norry, who we stopped to ask directions to a good place to eat, changed his plans and took us to a pub about a quarter mile away.  Along the way filled us with the history of Edinburgh, the castle and pointed out other interesting facts on the city.  When he left us to go to work, we were amazed that a person would take a half hour out of his time and who was on the way to work to befriend four strangers from the USA.  Our next stop had to be St Andrews, the birthplace of golf.  While visiting the Old Course at St Andrews we tried to make arrangements for lodging on the west coast of Scotland.  The owner told us we had to be there no later than 8:00pm and we were 3 1/2 hours away and it was 4:30.  We raced across Scotland and was rewarded with the best bed and breakfast in Great Britain.  The Grove will stand out as not only a place to stay but as a place we met people who we want to remain friends with long after we leave Great Britain.  Karen, the owner and Billy our hostess went out of their way to make us feel like family.  They will be welcome in our homes anytime they choose to visit either Arizona or Colorado.  Our next stop was an unexpected crash while sightseeing on the back roads of Scotland...Ouch!  But we moved on with another car (ours was totaled) and drove to Loch Ness.  We made arrangements to stay in the Abbey at Lock Ness.  What a treat to stay 3 days in the Abbey and be treated like royalty.  No we did not see Nessie...the picture I posted on Facebook was two very little clumps of dirt rising out of the Loch that looked like Nessie and we couldn't  resist posting the unique picture.  We left Scotland and took the ferry to Belfast and Northern Ireland.  Did you know that the Titanic was built in Belfast, we visited the museum for the Titanic in Belfast?  If you get a chance to visit Belfast and go to the museum you will enjoy an interactive museum like we have never seen in all of our travels.  We also drove over to see the Giant Causeway and learned of the folk lore surrounding the Giant Causeway, another very interesting site.  For some reason, the pictures we downloaded from our travels around Northern Ireland have not posted to our IPAD and we will post them on our next blog posting.

Cromer...a secret RAF base during WWII!

We drove through A village called Hope....this was in the next village!  A little English humor!

A Roman aqueduct on the road to Lancaster

We found a pub in Lancaster that was established in the early 1700s...eating in wine cellars was a little different but then again so are we!

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Edinburgh Castle

This picture says it all....all you golfers out there....this is Mecca!

This is a picture of Tom and Maryann, Pat and George and Karen, the owner of the Grove....in our humble opinion the best bread and breakfast in the United Kingdom!

This was the result of a car passing us on the right as we were turning up right!  No one hurt badly but we were a little shaken up, but It did not deter us from continuing our adventure.

A perfect picture, taken from a bridge that was on our way to Loch Ness!  

The Abbey at Loch Ness!  Anyone for Chess?

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Our home while at Loch Ness!

The Scottish Highlands

We indulged  ourselves of a little beer at every stop...Coors owns Doombar so we had to support our son and his job at Coors!

Our last stop in Northern Island, the Marble Arch Caves...the longest caves Great Britain, very picturesque....we will try to download pictures of the caves on our next blog when we post of our adventures in Ireland.

We are now in Ireland and will stay here for about 10 days touring the countryside, trying to immerse ourselves in the culture, visiting the landmarks and enjoying the Irish pubs, music, and people we meet.  We hope your Spring is full of new adventures and will visit our blog to see what we are up to as we find new backyards to explore throughout Euope

Pat's Family History comes to Life!

Pat walking away from Ashton Hall

 

The course was a little soggy today but the members asked us if we wanted to play a round after we talked to them about Pat's family history and shared  how our research matched their research.  Should have brought our clubs, very private country club so we were honored to be asked!

The Lawrence genealogy on the wall at Aston Hall

Pat at the hearth in Ashinton Hall

Two senior members of the Lancaster Golf and Country club enjoying some tea and discussing the Ashton Hall history with us.  They also invited as to play around!

Golf displays in Ashton Hall

Leaving Ashinton Hall

Leaving the Cotswolds

We really enjoyed the small villages of the Cotswalls.  They represented to us the British countryside with the old churches, the manors of early England, the quaint shops and pubs.  It is a quiet life that has passed us by but is preserved here in England.  There are not many new houses most are from the 1700/1800 or early 1900s, refurbished and modern on the inside but on the outside have the look of a bygone era.  We will be leaving this part of Great Britain to discover the flatlands of East Anglia and the east coast of England.  We will stay on RAF Lakenheath but will travel the countryside searching for another slice of England and the how the culture differs from the Cotswolds.  update:  We made it to Cromer on the North Sea.  The seashore is always calming and we picked a perfect day to enjoy it. The skies were blue, the food was great and the scenery was spectacular.  We also drove down to Great Yarmouth....not so good as it was an Atlantic City look alike i.e., a beautiful sandy beach ruined by the glitzy arcade/gambling fake store fronts that had the look of a rundown amusement park.

The good news is that we have pictures to share....we solved the problem or I should say Alastair Gill,  a good friend of Tom and Maryann's solved the problem for us.  A big thank you to him and I will pass on to you his advice if you want to post pictures from your IPAD to a blog.  But for now here are some recent pictures.  OBTW....any typos/grammar mistakes are from George, Pat has not proofed this blog.  Please read this for content and not mistakes, enjoy the pictures and I promise to do better the next time.

The small village streets are enchanting 

We loved to just walk around the town and window shop and visit the pubs

Anne Hatwaways cottage (Shakespheare's wife)  Stratford-upon-Avon

Tewksbury Abbey, early Church of England

On the North Sea coastal city of Cromer in East Angalia, England with our friends Tom and Maryann!  No it is not cold, you will always see Maryann dressed like Nanuck of the North (that is why she lives in Tucson)!

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Crab sandwiches, crab salad, fresh cod....we are enjoying a meal overlooking the North Sea at Cromer.

One more day in East Angalia and it is off to Ashton Hall in Lancashire, near Lancaster on the west coast of England.  We hope to stop in Hope, England to explore the Peak District National Forest but will overnight near Pat's earliest relatives, Sir Robert Lawrence (@1100AD) at Ashton Hall.  We will crisscross England and enter Scotland to see Edinburgh Castle,visit St Andrews and overnight around Dundee, Scotland.   We cross back over Scotland to make our way up to Loch Ness where we will stay at the abbey on Loch Ness for 3 days.  Our unofficial time schedule has us taking the car ferry across the waters to Northern Ireland and Ireland.  When we make it back to England we will tour Wales, drive across Southern England to Dover where we will drop our car off and take the ferry across the Channel to Calsis.  Picking up another car we will begin our trip across Europe.  After revisiting two of the bases we used to be stationed, we will drive to Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest and Prague before heading back up to Normandy for the June 6th celebrations.  

We hope to see all of that but.....as we have stated over and over, plans are made in sand.  We may find something more interesting and our whole trip might be turned on its head but the one goal is to be in Normandy, after all that was the original reason for this adventure.  The original plan was for couple of weeks in June at Normandy and it ballooned into 3 months driving around Great Britain and Europe.  It is great to be retired and to have crazy friends who are flexible and like to have fun.  

Touring the Coswalds

We have been out and about since landing at Heathrow in London.  The first couple of days were tiring due to the jet lag but we managed to push through it and see a lot of this little gem in Great Britain.  We are staying in a little cottage in Stow in the Wold and it is perfect.  The owner is a wonderful young lady who had a cake on the counter when we arrived and baked another cake this past Wednesday just for us.  Walking around Stow in the Wold the afternoon of our arrival we met a local at a tea cafe, who told us about some of the sights we should take in and gave us the best advice we had so far...he suggested that we buy a National Trust annual pass.  This pass allows us to visit all the National trust sites free and also includes a parking pass.  It has paid for itself already and we have about 400 more place we could visit in  England and Scotland and Northern Ireland.  If you have seen some of our posts on Facebook you know we have been busy.  But I would like to recap.   We started our touring in the small town of Burford, where we visited a 900 year old church that has seen Kings, Queens, and statesmen among its guests.  It was incredible and beautiful.     We decided to have an afternoon along  the banks of a small stream in the town of Burton on the Water, along with a couple thousand English citizens on holiday (Easter).  Our first taste of English cuisine was at a pub called the Croft, this set the stage to visit a different pub each day for a meal.  The next day we thought it would be nice to drive to Bath and do the Roman baths...ok, Bath over Easter is a mad house and we are not into running around the city without finding a parking place so there was no Roman bath for us....we left the hordes and drove over to Bristol to visit the Apple Store to see if they could fix this problem with no pictures on the blog...their answer...it must be your blog, not our system!  Thanks Apple!  The next day we were off to an English Manor, Snowshill Manor was a manor built by Charles Wade just to house his assembly of artifacts collected from around England from the early 1900s.  Rather eccentric man but some of his collected artifacts are one of a kind and some could have been lost without anyone caring.  Beautiful gardens and rooms in the manor.  From the manor we drove to Avebury, the site of the first Stonehenge.  It is three times larger and 500 years earlier than Stonehenge.  Very interesting and wetted our appetite for Stonehenge.  The next day it was off to legendary Warrick castle, the home of Kings and Queens and of the dungeon that held some of their rivals and outcasts.  Since there was a Costco nearby we had to shop.  Our chauffeur, Tom, drove us to Stonehenge the next day and it's remarkable history and yet unexplained origins.  We made a pilgrimage to RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath (both are US Air Force bases) the next day for a doctor's visit for Maryann and to set up our lodging when we leave the Cotswolds to visit the western part of England and the North Sea harbors.  The following day we visited the manor of Ferdinand Rothschild, Waddesdon Manor, truly a beautiful manor, that was built to display rare art, statues, and artifacts from around the world.  He never lived there but used it to show off his collections and to throw extravagant parties.  To us,  it rivals the most beautiful castles in Germany and France and to think it was a party house of the rich and famous....definitely a place you would want to be invited to and to live in...check out some of the pictures on Facebook!  Today we drove to Statford upon the Avon, the home of William Shakesphere.  We were able to secure tickets to the Royal Shakesphere Theater to see Hamlet tomorrow.  We are really looking forward to see the live performances of Hamlet especially since it is here,  surrounded by the history of this small town.  It is off to London for a one day trip, since we have all been there a couple of times we thought we could just relax on the train and see a few touristy things and come back on the train to the peace and quiet of the Cotswolds.
Again, we apologize for the no pictures but hope you visit us on Facebook were we will posts a few pictures of our adventures.  We are so blessed to share these adventures with Tom and Maryann Graue and to have Tom do all of the driving here on the wrong side of the road....We know George would have us in a head collision in just a matter of minutes.  We hope you enjoy the blog, even without the pictures, and you will follow us in our search of the backyards of Great Britain, Ireland and the continent as we drive through these historical countries and share our experiences with you.

Our little cottage in Stow on the Wold

Stonehenge...The why and how are still a mystery but Stonehenge attracts and mystifies scholars and ordinary people from around the world.

Waddesdon Manor build by a Rothschild just to show off his collections and to party...must be nice!