Up at 8 again and got ready for breakfast and our departure. We head into Dublin today and spend a final few nights before heading home.
Planned route is R346 to R344 to Headford N84, N6, M6, M50, and then R139 to Clayton Airport Hotel.
I took a stroll in the rain while Kelly finished getting ready to depart. I walked over across the bridge and found St. Mary's Church in the mist.
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| St Mary's Anglican Church |
We departed at 10:45 in the pouring rain and arrived at the Clayton Airport Hotel at 1335. It was a very straight forward trip across on the motorway. We even saw the sun a few times! . Kelly quickly checked us in and we brought our bags up to the room. It looked nice for about a hundred seconds and we were gone.
Back onto the M1 for a twenty five minute drive north to the
Ardgillan Castle. I spotted this place on google maps and low and behold they offered free tours! Well this week anyway! We hiked down to the castle and checked in for the 3 o'clock tour... the last one of the day. We grabbed a coffee and treat to hold us over till dinner.
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| Ardgillan Castle |
The tour was very interesting and covered the original owners of the building, the Taylor Family. It was a time stamp of life back in the day with lovely ornate furniture of the period. It also has great wood work within. As this started as a summer home, it eventually grew larger with additional rooms added along with the Castle like appearance, which was popular at the time. Some say it is haunted by the ghost but we didn't see it :-)
After the tour we hiked the grounds and found a geocache up towards the parking area. This took us to a great view of Balbriggan.
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| Fire place. |
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| Dinning Room |
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| Amazing woodwork. |
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| Incredible detail preserved for future generations. |
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| Kitchen in the basement... no sign of Mrs Patmoore!!! |
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| Original Taylor dinnerware. |
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| Only three of these piano's remain... or so we were told. |
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| Balbriggan in the distance |
On the way back to the airport we topped up the rental BMW with some diesel and returned the car earlier than planned. (We will bus/cab it in to simplify our plans.)
The rental car was pretty scratched up when we got it but the guy pointed out a scratch on the front right bumper that he felt was not there before. Well now.... I have video!... I showed him the iPhone video we took when we picked up the car and the suspected new scratch was plainly visible. We were released from rental car jail and grabbed the shuttle to the main terminal. From there we jumped on the Clayton shuttle bus and we arrived at 6PM. Some organizing of clothes and a Facetime call to Lauren back home led up to a quick dinner downstairs in the hotel restaurant.
Back in our nice room, Kelly started the arduous task of rearranging her suitcase to fit all the stuff she acquired over the past three weeks! She will need some of "my" suitcase space I am thinking.
We have a couple tours planned for tomorrow based on some recommendations from fellow band members.
