Last days in Ireland...

Woke up to another full Ulster Breakfast this morning in the gorgeous dining room at Crockatinney- the decor is delightful- birds, lighthouses, ships, seaside themed room. Made a faux pas with the waitress- poor girl. I couldn't finish my sausages as I had started with a full packet of cinnamon squares, and I said to her "You've got a dog, haven't you?" meaning that the dog could have my leftover sausages, but she thought I had said there was dog (or dog hair, I'm not exactly sure which,) in my sausages and ran out of the room almost in tears. In comes the owner to seek the cause of the problem, "What's wrong with the sausages?" I had to explain there was nothing wrong with the sausages I had just eaten too much and was too full to fit them in! Not a good start to the day! And it went downhill from thereon in!

First stop- the Giant's Causeway. It didn't look as good as it does in photos and it was a very long way down- 1km down and then 1 km UP which I just wasn't prepared to do in the frame of mind I was in. So I skipped that. On to Bushmills still feeling out of sorts so didn't imbibe any of the hard stuff. Then back to pick Kiryn and Keeley up who had walked the 7.7 kilometres of cliff-top paths from Giant's Causeway to Dunseverick Castle Ruins. We waited for them, and waited for them. Our calculations were way out, but they eventually appeared over the brow of the hill, sunburnt, windburnt, hot and thirsty but exhilarated with their achievement! Having conquered any fears of heights they may have had, they now wanted to go and walk across the suspension rope bridge at Carrick-a- Rede. It was onece again a kilometre walk down to the bridge and a kilometre walk UP, so I decided to skip this one too, which was probably just as well. I took some lovely photos though.

Dale dropped Keeley and me back at Crockatinney while he drove Lorelle in to Ballycastle to see a doctor as she was still very sick. We had the key to the front door but could not get it to work so sat on the garden swing until we were let in by the owner. I pulled all my clothes out of the dryer and went up to the room to pack. Dale brought home Chinese for dinner and we stayed up playing euchre and bloody mary and drinking pear cider and whiskey (not together!) This was the best part of the day for me.

Once again woke up to a full Ulster breakfast ( you will find a few around my middle regions!) without the sausages, and headed off to Dundalk via the Antrim Coast. We arrived at Carrickdale Hotel and SPA before noon so spent the afternoon in the jacuzzi, sauna, steam room and hot tub, with cold plunge pool in between- feeling quite refreshed ready for our flight to Paris tomorrow. Finished off the afternoon eating, drinking and playing cards and extreme scrabble in the bar! It is Ireland after all!