The boat stopped in at Ashwood Castle giving us a chance to get a good look at it. The castle was the country estate of the Guinness family and is now a posh hotel that is very popular with film stars.
My parents have been staying in Cong for a week, during which we took the chance to go out on Lough Corrib. This is a huge lake (44,000 acres) very close to us which dominates the whole area. Although it is a freshwater lake it often seems like we are close to the coast, as the lake has its own beaches, irelands and (lots of) fishermen. Its surrounded on the far side by the mountains of Joyce's Country and Connemara. There is also lots of interesting archeaology, such as a 5th century church and the legible Christian gravestone of St Patricks nephew. Most recently a number of log boats have been found on the bottom, some viking and one even older - 4,500 years old. The boat stopped in at Ashwood Castle giving us a chance to get a good look at it. The castle was the country estate of the Guinness family and is now a posh hotel that is very popular with film stars. All the pubs and restaurants around here have great fish, salmon in particular is practically a staple of the area. We have been regularly receiving gifts of fruit, eggs etc from our neighbours, but this trout was our most recent gift - freshly caught that day. I did fillet it, sort of, but definately need more practise!
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Thanks to yet more friendly neighbours, the long grass in the un-grazed fields is now cut and I can use the corner field (in particular) for lunging and riding. They were out yesterday evening till 10:30pm getting in the hay bales before the rain today. In return for the hay they made they've given us a trailer load of the hay (about 25 bales) delivered straight into the hayloft and €200.
How many tents can boast a rolltop bath? We have now set the bath up in the tent with drainage and even hot water (from a large tea urn). It does get chilly at night though, so we are sleeping in the house. We have cleared out what will be the sitting room and have the bed set up on one side and the "kitchen" on the other.
The robin I mentioned previously (who came into our tent one morning) has now realised that Brian can generally be relied upon to start smashing something, digging something up, or ripping something out. He shadows him fairly constantly whenever he is out and about and agreed to pose for some pictures yesterday. As Freya says he is very cute.
The answer to that is 7! We have finally finished clearing out the rubbish and debris (in between the more important jobs) so that we can now see what we have in terms of outbuildings. 1. The Barn Pretty much every small farm around here has one of these two-bay hay barns. Ours isn't in bad condition, one bay has concrete block walls below, the trailers were stored in here but apparently it used to be used to keep sheep in winter. Above is a hay loft which again isn't in bad condition, just a couple of soft areas where some water has got through around the bolts in the roof. The other bay has a load of turf in (i.e. peat cut for burning). 2. The "Garage" We're currently using this to store the remaining junk until we can get rid of it. I barely noticed it originally but it is actually bigger than it looks. It also has a lean-to on the side with a solid floor, though it's roof had collapsed so it is currently open to the elements. Freya has taken a liking to the lean-to and currently adopted it as her house. 3. The Shed This is the main shed / workshop. Its currently full with tools and furniture / boxes but once the furniture is out it should make a good workshop, the door is large enough to get a car inside so the days of Brian working on engines in the rain should hopefully be over. 4. The Cow Shed The other end of the main shed is currently set up for cows. We're using it as general storage and for dusty / dirty jobs we don't want to do in the main shed with our furniture in there. The long-term plan is to convert it to a hobby room, but that is obviously a big job and some way into the future. 5. The Hen House That is how it was described to us! Unfortunately the roof was dangerous so Brian had to remove it, so for the moment its not much use. No idea what we are going to use this for, maybe for hens! There is a good roof on the old water tank (see side picture) so when we pull that down it can provide the roof for this. 6. The "Bunker" That is what I have nicknamed this one, it was a complete surprise as we didn't even see it when we viewed the house (I'm not sure the estate agent knew it was there). It has a solid concrete roof and is not for the claustrophobic. Clearly cows have been kept in there (poor things) in the past. No idea what we will do with it but I am sure it will come in handy once we've removed the undergrowth. 7. The Stable
Brian's thatch clearance has reached the kitchen area and there are some nice beams! They are obviously not original but have been added as some point to add additional support to the original thatch in this larger room. They appear to still have some age to them (certainly more than 20 years as that is when we think the new roof was added), and are much more attractive than the original tree trunks. Since this was the room in which we were hoping to keep some of the lower roof structure on display as a feature this is great news. One of the rafters (the one above where the crucifix lightbulb was) is decorated with two crosses and a St Brigid's cross, which had been hidden by the ceiling. We've now cleared out sufficiently for Brian to cut the hedge (clearing up two more rubbish dumps in the process). This means we can drive all the way around the house, so after 10+ years as a two car household we can finally stop playing musical cars whenever they are parked in the wrong order.
Trigger gave us a bit of a scare yesterday morning, he broke through the fence and decided to have a play with some 10 year old bales of straw in the barn. This triggered his dust allergy badly and he was pretty ill for several hours, necessitating a visit and injection from the vet. The vet was lovely, but warned me beforehand that he wasn't a horse vet - i.e. he only treats horses whose owners can catch them and get them to stand still. I was able to reassure him this isn't a problem with Trigger! He seems fully recovered now. The offending straw was duly removed and Brian carried on and cleared out the barn more fully. This allowed as to take a better look at the two tractor trailers parked under the hayloft. I think it is fair to say that one of them has had a previous life (probably several). The marriage of a pony trap and the axle and wheels from a Morris Minor is certainly novel. Sadly I think this is beyond rescue, but we hope to be able to do something with the other trailer.
Finally it was Freya's last day at pre-school summer camp, which she has absolutely adored. The lady who runs it turned out to be a neighbour and has been lovely and very helpful. Freya has just had her first day at preschool, thanks to their one week summer camp. She absolutely loved it. There are three preschools all within a short distance of the house, all of which seemed very nice. We chose this one because of the emphasis on being outside. Rather than having a playground where the children spend an hour of play, they aim to be outside the whole time and only go indoors if forced to because of severe weather (light rain does not count). The usual classroom is outside, although it does have a roof. After a few days doing more clearing up around the outside, today it was back to the thatch for Brian. He finally broke through and removed the ceiling in one bedroom. We can now see the whole structure at that end. On the inside we discovered the original roof structure (probably around 200 years old) which is made of roughly cut logs, though they are properly jointed together. This is covered with woven together branches held together with twisted straw rope - still strong despite its age. A layer of turf is over the branches, and then over a metre of straw thatch. Only the very outer layer of straw is loose and can be pulled off, the rest is so compacted it has to be essentially dug out. There are hundreds of wooden (hazel?) pegs in the straw. The strong smell of smoke and tar is coming from the turf, presumably from the many years when it formed the ceiling of the cottage. |
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Laura Nash and Brian Brett's blog about our move to Ireland. Archives
December 2020
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