Ireland - another pub crawl - just for a change

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Waking up early the next morning and after a delightful home made breakfast - we made our way to Blarney Castle - eery place that is - but in beautiful grounds - had to walk up a very narrow, low ceilings, narrow, concrete, winding staircase - say 4 floors up, to wait in a queue to kiss the Blarney Stone. Now I don't know if you know this BUT to kiss the blarney stone you have to lay down on your back, hold onto bars behind you and slide backwards and down to kiss the Blarney Stone.

Well I gave it my best shot but all I could see when I leaned back was the lawn all the way down to the ground and me slipping through this entrance there so no I didn't do it I am reluctant to say - I am disappointed but not as much as I was scared at the time!!! Yes John did it and he said he could see why I couldn't do it. I thought with my sore hips I was brave enough getting up and down those horrible stairs.

When leaving Blarney we took the Coastal road through some very quaint villages - bearing in mind it's Saturday morning - hopeless trying to find a toilet in one, and another one - Kinsale - got caught in the traffic at lunchtime on a Saturday in the streets in roads you could barely get a car through let alone traffic coming the other way - OMG how did we do it??? eventually found our way to Bantry Manor - how gorgeous was this place? Apparently an Earl still lives there and the tourists keep the place running. We had a look around at the magnificent gardens and lake and had afternoon tea.

From there we went along the Cape of Beara' which followed the coast all the way between the sea and the mountains - horribly narrow in some places and finishing up at Kenmare a little bit late - what great shops there!!! We found where we were staying and then went to the pub - Landsdowne Pub.... another great and huge meal. As the shops are open until 10pm we went and had a look at a couple of them before we headed home and slept like logs- but not so for the other couple as some drunken guests were trying to get into their room at 2.30am!

Sorry folks the pictures for this one are in the last blog....

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