UK Adventure 2024

Went to visit the King on this day.  Either he wasn’t home, or he peaked through the curtains, saw who it was, and refused to acknowledge us.  Our new travel companions are our Surrey BC friends, Don & Bev.  They’ve been touring Scotland, and we managed to successfully connect at the car rental agency at Heathrow.  As we experienced in Ireland, Enterprise came up with a vehicle upgrade that totally suited our needs. I’ve traditionally had terrible service from rental companies, but now my faith’s been restored. We settled into the Park Farm B & B, which was a one mile walk from Windsor Castle, and directly beneath one of Heathrow Airport’s very popular flight paths, which did cause us some concern.  Fortunately, we found that British Airways pilots tend to have an early bedtime, so the planes caused us no sleep issues. We dutifully trundled down the road to the castle, a task that should have been easily manageable.  Alas, what actually happened is ...

Well today we ventured to Carrick-a-rede which puts us as far north in Northern Ireland as you can get! We can see Scotland in the distance.  We had a wee sleep-in to start our day as our get-up-and-go after a party isn’t what it used to be! Chris is feeling a might poorly this day and it was not the party last night as he was the designated driver. Rather, he came down with symptoms of a cold yesterday which turned into something much more substantial today. Luckily, Robbie and Chelsey are staying in the cottage across from us and Chris could take the day off of driving duty. Brave chap that he is, he soldiered on to the tourist things we wanted to do despite his achy body and cough.  We soared along the laneways at less than the 60 mph posted (the Irish truly are a crazy people when it comes to speed and automobiles) and met Jeremy’s family for lunch and then it was off to the Dark Hedges of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame. The dark hedges are a hedge of 150 beech trees planted in 17...

The wedding was magical.  The venue was amazing, the agenda perfect, the weather blessed us after days of rain, but most importantly, love shone above all else. There have been so many obstacles for these two over the last 11 years, and today they got to say to the universe, “we win, love wins”. My makeup was ruined as my sister Heather walked my niece Kaitlyn down the Irish green grass to the music of a harp to greet the love of her life, Ciaran. The celebrant was Ciaran’s best friend from childhood. Ciaran and Kaitlyn exchanged personal vows, tears and laughter in front of about 50 guests.  The ceremony was followed by about 2 hours of ‘barn time’ where a traditional Irish band played, yard games were set up to be played by guests (with champagne in hand), and the wedding cake was cut. The bride and groom had a pretty competitive game of Connect4 going!  When ye old dinner bell was rung, we were off to the supper hall for the toasts and dinner. The meal was amazing....