Well finally a break, or is it a holiday?  2 weeks, or just over, in Ireland!

We were lucky that one of the country houses that Steve wrote their web site for, and also manages, offered a free week accommodation in one of their cottages – well partly commuted work and some days “on them”.  Very nice.

They have let us have their “Forge” cottage for a week.

The house is called Roundwood House in Mountrath, Ireland. An old country house dating back to 1731.  See Roundwoodhouse.com

Here is the Forge:

It sleeps two so Shaun was offered, by the owners, Hannah and Paddy Flynn, accommodation in the Yellow House for €30 a night, an offer not to refuse!

Here it is:

No that is not him in the dress, even though that is his door into the property!

We drove up from Farnham at 6am on the 5th, as Irish Ferries cancelled the Dublin Swift, due to ship at 5pm in the evening, and offered us the slow boat instead leaving at 2:15pm.!  The drive was some 5 hours or so.

The journey was fine, though Steve was knackered and as we had booked “club” we got onto the boat as a priority and could crash out in the club lounge, with free canapes, snacks and drinks.

The drive from Dublin was 1.5 hrs and we arrived at Roundwood Monday evening Sept 5th and Hannah and Paddy generously asked us to join them for dinner with them and their family.  Paddy did a roast chicken with veg.  Yummmm.  We also got stuck into the Tempranillo with gusto!  One of their daughters, Lucie, baked some wonderful chocolate cookies. Very naughty!  But nice.

The cottage has a wood stove, which was lit when we arrived and ceratinly gave off some heat.  The bed is on a mezannine so the heat rises and this can get quite warm so we turned down the one radiator downstairs, eventually to 10.5 degrees C and this did the trick.  We’ve not lit the fire since as there has not been a real need, despite all the rain.

As Hannah and Paddy had taken three days off there were no breakfast’s in the house but Hannah, again generously, furnished us with some bacon, sausages, black pudding and eggs for our breakfast, so we could have this in the cottage.

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