A Long Wet Summer :(

Well we are back from our summer holiday and although we enjoyed ourselves, there was one major draw back, it rained every single day. Some days just  drizzle or two to let us know it was there, other days we were treated to the full force of Mother Nature, Thunder, lightening, rain, torrential rain. We became expert at dodging the weather!!

Our holiday started on a wet Saturday two weeks ago, we drove 280 miles to Holyhead in Wales. We were  driving to Ireland. The holiday was a bargain, we rented two cottages in different parts of Ireland and paid with them with our Tesco Club card vouchers!! All we had to pay for was petrol and food. 

We arrived in Dublin in the afternoon and drove north to the first cottage in the little town of Castle Blaney, it was a fairly easy drive up the M1 towards Belfast. The cottage was lovely, very well equip and comfortable. It had full central heating, which by the end of the week we were using on a daily basis!

You can check out the cottage HERE It was spacious only four of us rattling around in a cottage for 10!!

On the first day we were tired so decided to take a drive to the nearest beach which was around 20 miles away, it was a quaint little town in County Meath called Bettystown!!!

We went to the beach which was just about deserted and totally windswept!

It was freezing cold so after a brisk walk we headed into the town and Beth found a mini fun fair, where she seemed to be the only person who wanted to ride on anything!!

You can see from the stunning blue sky what the weather was like!! We went back to the cottage and realised that it was really winter and not summer and put on the central heating!!!

The next day we headed for Belfast and the Titanic exhibition. 

This year The Titanic has been in the news, its a hundred years since the ship sank on its maiden voyage. It was built in Belfast and the exhibition was on the original construction site. Its a really popular exhibition and we were on the way where I thought I would check out if pre booking was needed, thank goodness for iphones and the likes because I had to book our tickets on line, by the time we got there (in the pouring rain) it was fully booked!

We walked around the exhibition, it was very good the building was full of information about its construction and about the passengers, there was a ride that took us through the construction process. Outside there was a representation of the ship laid out in the pavement. The tall brown spires in the above photo represented the launch path of the ship when she left Belfast.

Tom is looking over the front of the ship, his Kate Winslet moment!!!

Before we left we stopped for tea in the very elegant restaurant, drank out of cups like those that went down with the Titanic, it was a nice end to the trip.

While we were looking around we noticed that there were some television vans outside, the ones with the big satellite dishes on the side. There were loads of Police around, so we were wondering what was going. Later that night we were watching the news when there was an report welcoming back the Irish Olympic team, they were invited to a reception at the exhibition.