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Just to wind up this blog I have the highlights of the Ireland trip in no particular order.

Slieve League, the highest sea cliffs in Europe and the scariest road in Ireland.












The 35Km Mourne wall built early in the 20th century to enclose the water catchment area for Belfast. It is 2.5m high and 1m thick and encloses 15 mountains. We climbed the highest, Slieve Donard to get this view.















Newgrange, a five thousand year old passage tomb in County Meath, Ireland. http://www.mythicalireland.com/ancientsites/newgrange/

Heading home

Today is my last day in London.
Paul is safely at home after an arduous journey. It started badly when his incoming flight was diverted to Gatwick after he had arrived at Heathrow. He made a hasty journey to Gatwick to board the delayed flight and arrived in Dubai to find he had missed his connecting flight. He had an 18 hour wait with no bags and no hand luggage before he continued via Singapore and Brisbane. Three days later he arrived home.
I'm hoping for a better experience.
Once I'm home I'll load up a few photos to show the highlights of the trip.
Wish me luck for tonight.

Terrorist alert

We woke up yesterday morning to the news that a terrorist plot had been uncovered to blow up 10 planes in the air. Heathrow airport was brought to a standstill. We arrived back into Heathrow about 18 hours before the shit hit the fan. Lucky!
Now of course we have to navigate the new security arrangements for the flight home. Paul flies tomorrow and at the moment there is no hand luggage allowed. Most annoyingly that means no books and no water bottles. If you have nothing better to do you could send up a little prayer to St Christopher for him.

Baby Hannah again

Just because she is so beautiful and deserves her own post.

I get to hold her lots and Paul gets to take heaps of photos.

Pubs of Ireland

We have hundreds of photos of crumbling castles, quaint cottages and stunningly beautiful coastline but it would make very boring reading on the blog.
Each night though we have tried to find a new Irish pub. In Derry we stumbled into a very old pub which was obviously a stronghold for IRA supporters. The walls were covered in banners from the marches and the young lads we spoke to were Belfast lads with extremely broad northern accents. They were heading up the road to another pub that had an IRA band playing. We decided talking football might be safer than politics.
I have tried the black brew (once)... and we couldn't resist the photo with Paul's very own pub.
Paul thinks I have become a bit obsessed with peat. It really is fantastic stuff. We did a really interesting bog train ride to see how they harvest it to fire their power stations. Hand cut peat is a very common sight in the country.

Delayed transmission

Here we are on day 4 in Ireland and we are in the heart of Northern Ireland. It has taken us until now to find Internet access.
Much Guinness has been sampled and because it "gives you strength" we decided to climb the highest hill in Ireland, Slieve Donard. Two days later I am still hobbling everytime we go down hill.
Still waiting for someone to say "top of the morning" to me.
We might have possum roadkill at home, here they have foxes. It was all I could do not to jump out of the car and take a photo.
When I find a computer with faster Internet access I'll put some photos up on the blog.
Heading off to the north coast now.

Happy Families

Hannah Gitta is perfection. She is all soft and pink and snuffly.
Paul and I are totally besotted.
Tracy and Ethan are parenting like they have been doing it for years. Very relaxed.
What a lucky little girl.

Groundhog birthday

I woke up on Friday and Paul wished me a happy birthday. We drove to Auckland and boarded our evening flight to London. Ten hours later I woke up somewhere between Brisbane and Singapore and Paul wished me a happy birthday again. Another many hours later I woke up somewhere between Singapore and Dubai and Paul wished me a happy birthday again. Best value birthday I've ever had. Does that make me 3 years older???
The picture is one of my many wonderful birthday meals complete with plastic cutlery and crockery.