Thursday 9th June

We started the day with a visit to Nendrum Monastic Site, which is quite small, there's not a great deal there but there are some remains of a 5th century Monastery alongside some industrial works in the form of a watermill.

Onward to Mount Stewart, in a recent list of one of the top 10 'Must See' gardens in the World.  We started by going into the neo-classical house (1920s - 1950s). It was very airy and spacious, lots of chandeliers but nothing too over the top. I particularly liked the plain, non fussy ceilings!  The garden was absolutely epic. We started with the informal garden with rhodedendrons and a park like feel to the place with plenty of paths to explore.  We followed the red squirrel trail - sadly no squirrels crossed our path but the walk was very nice and enjoyable.

The formal gardens were fantastic - yes they were formal but they were fun! Lots of crazy sculpture and topiary going on, we had the Italian Garden, the Spanish Garden and the Dodo Garden which we particularly enjoyed.  Sculptures included a 'Stegosaur', a 'Dinosaur', of course Dodos and lots of orangutangs with flowerpots on their heads (planted of course), the orangutangs themselves were sitting on what I think were supposed to be goats (there were hooves involved!) with crazy human faces.  These were my favourite as there were so many of them!

After Mount Stewart we were planning on getting the boat from Portaferry across to Strangford and do a full circle around Strangford Loch but the boats had been suspended due to fog.  This sounded odd to us when we saw the warning on the roadsign, as the sun had almost burned away the mist from the day (unlike it did yesterday!), that is until we arrived into Portaferry to find it almost completely consumed by fog, probably a sea mist rolling in.  Well, we turned around and just went back the way we came which was pretty straightforward.