Bits and bobs

Random thoughts about random things by a random person

Tag Archives: ring of kerry


by Leave a comment

Day 9 (Sept 20/19): A 19th-century church

There’s an old church near where I’m staying – St. Michael and All Angels, Church of Ireland. It is also doubles as the Waterville Heritage Centre.

I’ve passed it a few times over the last week and today I decided to pop in.

Interestingly, there wasn’t anyone there. There was a bottle of juice and an open book on a desk, so someone had been there. It was nice, actually, to have the place to myself.

It’s not very big, but is still quite lovely.

Below are some pictures of the Church itself. The windows are really quite beautiful. Enjoy!

St. Michael and All Angels, Church of Ireland, Waterville, Co. Kerry, Ireland

The pulpit

Beautiful windows


Some information about the church itself



If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to subscribe/follow!


by Leave a comment

Day 9 (Sept 20/19): Met a local artist today!

In my little walk-about after lunch today, I went into a building I’ve walked past several times since I’ve been here. I had no idea what it was, so I had no real inclination to swerve off my path to check it out.

Today, though, from the direction by which I was approaching it, I saw an open door and a little sign referring to gifts. Not having anything else on the calendar until 8:00 tonight, I decided to pop in.

Turns out it is the studio/gallery of a semi-local artist, Leo Quinlan.

I say semi-local because he was born and lived in (or near) Galway, but spends about six months of the year here in Waterville and his dad was from here.

I like to support local artists, so I looked around till I found an original that I liked and which I purchased (see below). Sort of unfortunately, the one I picked was actually by his daughter, Elaine, and not him. Oh well! (If you’d like to see more of her work, you can find her on Instagram at @elainequinlanart – I can’t find a regular Web link to give you for her.)

The piece I bought – It’s maybe 5″x7″, so not big but I really like the colours and movement. I’m sure I’ll find a place for it. 🙂
(clearly igned by Elaine and NOT by Leo,
but I didn’t notice the signature till later)

Anyway, we had a lovely chat. He had served in the Irish military back in the day and was quite happy to hear I am originally from Newfoundland. He regaled me with stories of a fellow he had met from NL when he was serving in the military somewhere. (He told me where, but it escapes me for the moment.)

We talked a fair bit about painting, too, and he was quite motivational to me. I get too much in my own head (as I think I may have mentioned in a previous post), thinking that everything needs to be perfect right out the gate.

That is such a bad approach to take with probably everything. It can be paralytic and make you afraid to even try.

I’m very glad to have run into him and will take his advice of getting lots of “brush mileage” in.

If this spurt of motivation stays with me after I get home, I might even finish a painting that I started well over a year ago!

You never know when or how that spark is going to be lit… Ain’t life grand??

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to subscribe/follow!


by Leave a comment

Day 7 (Sept 18/19): A perfect night

Well, folks, the cloudless sky of earlier did not disappoint.

The sky tonight is, if you’ll pardon the pun, stellar.

Even though I’m still inside the village and there are a few lights around, the light pollution is really quite minimal.

If I walked just 10 minutes to the right of my place, it would be much darker, but like I think I said before, I’d also end up in a ditch or down over the cliff (it is the Cliff Road, after all). Even dressing in reflective gear wouldn’t help really.

And, really, who cares? The sky here is still beautiful. I know it would be even more spectacular if it were completely pitch black, but if we constantly chase whatever we think perfection might be, we miss out on what we already have.

And what I had tonight was fabulous. I stayed out looking up, wayyyyy up, until I got a kink in my neck!

The binoculars my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday allowed me to see even more, too, which was great! (I had no idea how shaky I am, though!!! Even with my arm resting on something, it was hard to get it to hold still. I’ll be looking for a tripod adapter and tripod before too long!)

When Mother Nature decides to put on a show, she really puts on a show.

There was a star fairly low on the horizon, over the entrance to the bay that was so bright, it even reflected off the ocean! It might even be a planet. Venus and Mars are out and about tonight, apparently, so Mr. Google just told me.

I love looking at the sky and appreciating the beauty, but I am absolutely not at expert at deciphering what I see! Well, I can recognize a plane or a satellite…cuz they are moving, and I can find the Big Dipper and sometimes Orion’s belt, but that’s about it.

Anyway, it was spectacular to me. The beautiful show in the sky, complete with the Milky Way Galaxy, the ocean rolling gently onto the beach…

An absolutely wonderful way to end the day!!

_________________________

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to subscribe/follow!


by 2 Comments

Day 5 (Sept 16/19): In and out today, like the tide!

It’s been a day of not sitting very still.

This morning, I went for a few groceries that I didn’t think of on Saturday. I had also planned on going to the tourism office, but it was closed till noon. So I just went for a little walk before picking up the groceries and coming back home.

I then did the boring, but necessary, check in on the budget. It’s not my forte and if I’m not careful, I could spend the works of it within days and have nothing left for the rest of the trip. That would make for a very boring time!!

After that, I headed to the tourism office where a lovely gent named Barry gave me some really good tips and suggestions for things to do while I’m here. If I do only half of what he suggested, my FitBit will be very happy!

From there I headed to An Corcan restaurant for another late-ish lunch. I had the chicken panini and fries. The panini was delicious but the fries were meh.

I think they maybe had been through quite a rush during the regular lunch hour (I had counted at least 5 tour buses in town on my way to the tourism office). It seemed a strain for the owner to be friendly.

I don’t mean to imply that she was rude. She wasn’t. She just seemed…frazzled. Bless her heart.

After that, I popped into the post office. I had bought two postcards there this morning on my sojourn, but couldn’t find them when I got home. So I checked in and yup, I had left them there. (See…when I say I’m forgetful and easily distracted, I’m not joking!)

I came home again then, postcards and all my pamphlets from Barry in hand, and caught up on a few emails.

I opened the windows for a while, but dang…there were a kajillion little flies all over the place! I massacred a goodly number of them (they wouldn’t shoo out the window) and closed everything up. New investment idea: Window screens. One good marketing campaign and you are in the money!

We were heading towards 5:00 by then and I thought about putting the chicken in the oven. But then I figured that by the time it’s done and I’ve eaten, it would be dark.

I wanted to go for a walk and doing that in the dark isn’t the smartest thing. The roads, as you may know, are very narrow and there aren’t shoulders to speak of.

Ending up in a ditch (or the hospital) is not on the top of my list of things to do on a holiday (or any time, truth be told!), so I opted for the walk first.

I went to the south/east this time, on a path along the bay for about half of it and then along the road. I went as far as the Currane River and it felt like it might rain so I turned back.

I’m in now for the evening, I think. That’s enough in-ing and out-ing for one day I do believe! Except now (7pm) it’s a bit late to put a chicken in the oven, so I might need to go out again for supper. 🙂

Speaking of in and out, below are a couple pictures for you showing low tide and high tide today. (NOTE: They might not be the actual lowest and highest points – just the lowest and highest that I saw today.)

The third picture is for my cousin Juanita who is following along. 🙂

Low tide, Ballinskellig Bay, morning Sept 16/19

High tide, Ballinskellig Bay, late afternoon Sept 16/19

For the O’Reillys!!

_______________________

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to subscribe/follow!


by 2 Comments

Day 4 (Sept 15/19): Fixing the WiFi, more switches, figuring out the oven, locking a door, a walk, and relaxing

I’ve been playing catch up on my posts because when I arrived yesterday, the WiFi wasn’t working. When I was at supper last night, I posted some quick things to Instagram, but the WordPress app requires a bit more attention than IG.

I talked to the owner of the place today. She didn’t know how to fix it, but said she’d reach out to the guy who had installed it. She warned me, though, that he might have gone to Dublin for the football match yesterday and might not be back. Not a biggie…I could survive a day or so without Internet, right?

Before I go further, let’s step back. Remember the story about the light switches in the hotel in Killarney? Well, it turns out that switches are very popular here, too. Now, I haven’t found a master control light switch here, but alllllllll of the outlets have switches. One for each plug. So for each outlet with two plug sockets, there are two switches. You have to turn the switch on in order for that socket to work. (I imagine it saves on electricity, which is a great idea!! It just takes a little getting used to.)

And remember the windows without screens? From what I have seen nobody uses them. I didn’t see them on other hotels (or any building for that matter) in Killarney or on buildings (homes or otherwise) on the bus trip. This place doesn’t have them, either. A Google search has revealed that it’s actually common across Europe not to have screens. Apparently they don’t have as many mosquitos as we do in North America. Who knew!!

Now, back to the Internet. I had, like you would, done the unplug-and-plug-it-back-in thing with the router. It powered up. My tablet said I was connected. But there was no Internet.

While I was talking to Siobhan, I noticed that something else was plugged into the other socket where the router was plugged in and that 2nd socket switch was turned off. I turned it on. It didn’t seem to make any difference, so Siobhan said she’d try to reach that guy and get back to me.

About half an hour later, I thought I’d give it a go again and ta da! It worked!! So…that was fixed.

A couple of other “How does that work?” things also happened:

1. The door to the deck off the master bedroom would not lock, no matter how much I tried to coax it. Siobhan told me the tricks about that via text. (It wasn’t a big security concern as it’s on the 2nd floor, but I thought she’d want to know. I also didn’t want to end up having it look like I had broken it.)

2. I wanted to roast a chicken, but could not get the oven to work. Mary, the caretaker, dropped by to see how I was doing, so I asked her about it. She had no clue, beyond someone must have flipped the switch on the wall (again with the switches!!! Seriously – invest in switches in Ireland) and reset the programming on the oven. It’s not a fancy oven…I have no idea what programming is involved, but in any event, she said I should reach out to Siobhan, which I did, and she walked me through that fix.

In addition to working out those little bugs, I went for a walk today once the mist and fog cleared a little and did some colouring, totally relaxing with the sounds of the ocean. (You will hear me talk about that a lot…it’s one of my favourite things in the world, so yeah…it will be a repeated theme on this trip!!)

A foggy, misty morning today

On my way back from my walk

My perch, sitting on the rocks above the beach, across from my place

Some colouring after my walk