Thursday 3rd June

Well, last night I had an unbelievably good night’s sleep! I slept pretty much straight through, and I felt absolutely fine this morning. With the exception of my right upper ribs of course, which were still pretty sore.

Today we went over to Howth, a peninsular to the north of Dublin. We had spotted a coastal footpath which we thought we might explore, although not ALL of it as it would have been far too long for me to do! The first thing I said when we got there was that I would need the loo before going on this long walk. We walked around in Howth centre, as we had found a map of the peninsular in our holiday cottage. We read that there was an abundance of shops and restaurants. Perhaps Howth had some good tourist shops with decent postcards?

The answer of course, was no. Howth, it seems, is a working harbour and has only really recently decided to cash in on tourism as they have obviously learned that tourists like fishing villages like this. There was indeed, an abundance of cafes, coffee shops and of course, seafood restaurants and fish and chip shops, which we expected to see. On the other side of the shopping, there was one jewellery shop and a couple of newsagents. There was one tourist shop but it was one of those bad "kiss me quick" shops selling nothing particularly Irish - more on the theme of seaside in this one. What baffled me was the selection of postcards - yes, there were some pretty decent looking ones finally….but when I turned the postcards around to see where the photograph was……oh dear. Yes there were postcards of Dublin, which were very nice but we wanted Co. Meath. What did we find? Co. Cork, Co. Kerry, Co. Limerick…

Excuse me?! Who's idea was this? So it turns out that either we haven’t been going to the right places, OR there are NO postcards of anything in Co. Meath. Other than Newgrange at Newgrange and Knowth at Knowth. Even they didn’t have postcards of anything in Co. Meath except the actual attraction we had some to see, and some of artefacts found there. Where are the rolling hills? Why were there no photographs of the coast? Cliffs? Fields? Flowers? Why no photographs of the mountains in Co. Wicklow?! Seriously - this is like going to the Lake District and finding NO postcards of the Lake District. It is really incredibly strange!!

Anyway….where was I? Oh yes, we went to Howth. Disappointed yet again with the NON abundance of shopping (unless you want to just eat fish or buy fishing supplies of course. Oh and golf paraphernalia.), this is not what we came for. We FINALLY discovered where the public toilets were just as we were wondering if there were any, save for the single toilet outside a pub at the other end of the road which seemed to just be there for anyone. One more thing to say about Howth is that they have signposts - to the restaurants. Nothing to say where the public toilets are, where the main village centre is…just where the restaurants are. Yet more oddities!

We parked in one of the many car parks and found the coastal path which we headed along, and of course I used my sticks again. I don’t think I had quite as much determination as I seemed to have yesterday, but we walked all the way to the lighthouse at the end and all the way back again. This was only part of the entire coastal walk, and I really would have liked to have gone much further, but my feet just don’t allow that kind of walking, which I find terribly irritating because the rest of me really wants to do it! We had lunch overlooking the Irish Sea, and we had a nice little snooze in the sun when we got to the lighthouse. The weather was nice, but quite humid on the way there. The views we had during the walk could have DEFINITELY made it to a postcard, so I have no idea why there are none of this picturesque coastline.

After the snooze, we went on our way back to the car, although this time there was more of a breeze in the air which was really very pleasant, and my breathing became easier. Back to the car, we went up to Howth Castle - which is still privately owned and lived in so it’s not open to the public - but we could go into the gardens which was (oddly) behind the golf club, and contained lots and lots and LOTS of Rhodedendrons, everywhere. They were all in flower and there are apparently over 200 species of them here. We didn’t walk up into the cliff side where lots more of them were, but we walked around at ground level which ended up being more of a forest than a garden. Walking back to the car, some golfers amused us by taking a short cut through the rhodedendron garden and flinching and swatting at flies in the same manner as what I used to do when I was 5 years old. Obviously, not used to forested areas and bugs!! Back into the car we got (just Mathew and myself, NO golfers…!) and off into the main town of Howth once more to buy something refreshing (Mathew: fizzy drink, me: ice cream! Yey!) before we set off to Ashbourne where we stopped off to pop into Tesco, fill up the car, and then we were off home to have another nice cup of tea.