Home again, home again

[radegund]

Too many holidays.

So far this year:

First weekend in March: Choir trip to Galway. Two nights. First night just me and Oisín; niallm came down the following day. Pretty packed schedule, featuring a three-hour rehearsal on the Saturday morning, which I spent following Oisín around the church. Choir folk mostly unchilded, poor understanding that minding a toddler may not actually be as relaxing and easy as it looks. Good time had nonetheless. Rocking concert; got to go out for drinks afterwards.

Mid-March: Long weekend away in a guest house in Midleton, Co. Cork - finally using a voucher we got for our wedding in February 2005. Beautiful Georgian country house, full to the brim of knick-knacks and books and toys. Biggest bed I've ever seen (easily 7 feet wide) - nice surprise, since we were used to the three of us being squeezed into a double on holiday. Lunch in the Café Paradiso in Cork: gobsmackingly good. Fota Wildlife Park: magnificent. Lovely trip.

Mid-April: Quick visit to Belfast to see Niall's family there. Warm and welcoming as always. Very serene, hospitable people. Good chats with Niall's cousins, and much admiring of Oisín's small second cousin. Dog desensitisation programme initiated with resident canine. Flying visit, mostly spent in the house.

Easter: Week away in rented cottages in Connemara with about 90 of my relatives (somebody said the headcount was 93 this year). Fabulously relaxing for me; pretty excellent for Oisín to meet so many adoring fans, not to mention a BIG DONKEY and several more dogs. I read almost a whole book.

May bank holiday: Cork Choral Festival. Four rehearsals and three performances in three days, one of which was a major international competition. Great fun, but a pretty gruelling schedule - even though my sister (also in the choir) and a second cousin (who lives in Cork) helped out with the wrangling, I almost didn't make it to the final gig. Poor Niall put his back out on the Sunday morning, lifting Oisín in a park. We stayed in two of the mankiest rooms in Cork, if not Ireland: the first one reeked of poo, so we asked to be moved; the second one had been smoked and drunk in for two weeks, then aired through its one small window for a few hours before we moved in. Oisín's pyjamas smelled of smoke in the morning. Impossible to describe how much I hated that. I didn't get to hear any of the other choirs perform, which was a pity, but on the other hand we did take my sister out to the Café P. for her birthday. Yum.

Mid-May: Twelve-day trip wherein we went to Harpenden for a gaming weekend, then Niall went to Seattle for work, and Oisín and I swooped down upon Reading and stayed with ailbhe, rrc and the inimitable Linnea. Chronicled elsewhere. Brilliant fun. Took a certain amount of getting over.

Mid-June: Annual week on the Dingle peninsula with college friends of Niall's. Fabulous weather. Company much more clued-in than last year about the exigencies of child wrangling. Beaches, games, good food. Trip to the astonishing Great Blasket (seals, precipices, sheep, donkeys, green roads and ruins); Niall went on a boat trip around the islands (including INISHVICKILLANE! I know! We're not worthy!) and took pictures of puffins. Gradual acquisition of important new skills: Walking On Sand and Paddling. Mild sandcastle construction. Oisín slept in his own room - and I remembered to bring blackout lining to darken the window so he wouldn't wake up at the crack of dawn. (He woke up anyway, but it wasn't because of the light, dammit.) Horrendous hay-fever, complete with racking, bubbly wheeze, undented by over-the-counter antihistamine, necessitated ruinously expensive trip to the doctor and cocktail of drugs, one of which gave me an unpleasant wobbly-shaky side-effect. Bah. Leisurely journey home, stopping at Listowel for tea with an old friend, and at Limerick overnight with cousins. Overall, a pretty fantastic holiday.

But I've had ENOUGH. Seven trips in four months is ... many. I'll enjoy going nowhere for a while now, and with a bit of luck Oisín will get into a beneficial sleep rhythm after a bit. He's not in one now, is all I'll say about that.

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

But you will come to see us in September, right? You'll've recovered a bit by then? We'll be relaxing, because I'm boring.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's definitely still the plan! Part of the reason I said autumn was that I knew I'd need some recuperation time after all this haring around.

Actually, we were vaguely thinking we might try to combine an Edinburgh trip with a visit to Niall's grandmother in Whitby. Do you know if there's a decent train service between Whitby and Edinburgh, and how long the journey might take? Or where I should go to find out?

[merryhouse.livejournal.com]

looking at the road map, we have Edinburgh to Darlington on the East Coast Main Line, then you probably have to go through Middlesbrough and a long way east.

East Coast line is good - one of the first to be electrocuted, for example. From my experience listening to announcements at Durham station, I am not sanguine about the rest of the way.... I shall try and find a rail site.

*****

Ok, I was right - you want the Middlesbrough-Whitby (Esk Valley) line operated by Northern Rail. northernrail.org has timetables, as pdf files.

http://www.northernrail.org/travel/download/2006_B_timetables%5C05.pdf

Page 5. Also tells you connections from Darlington.

{hugs} on the sleep thing, by the way. (You do realise that he might decide not to have a nap any more, don't you...)

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

National Rail says two changes and four-and-a-half hours. No fun. You should ask Edinburgh-based goths, since Whitby is the home of goth.

[ainetl.livejournal.com]

wow you certainly have been busy! that's so great that your family all goes to connemara for holiday, is that an annual event? it seems i have read it before.

i think it was 4 years ago that i took kelli touring around ireland and she loved it. dingle was one of her favorite places. unforunately the weather wasn't good so we didn't make it on a boat trip to the islands. on that trip we also went to dublin and connemara.

i haven't been and would like sometime to go to an cobh and fota wildlife park - i've been wondering so it was good to hear that you liked the wildlife park. when i go to west cork i usually fly into cork city or shannon, arriving early morning but without sleep and too tired to make the long trip to beara. so i like to spend the day seeing something nearby cork or shannon and then stay overnight there and drive the next day.

bah, i'm still not sure about the trip this fall. i do have some time off in october and would love to return, but sadly the plane fares are so high and the dollar continues to go down. i might have to settle for a yoga retreat stateside. but i'm applying for some funding so i guess we'll see.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, that so helpful! Thanks a million for taking the time.

(Hugs appreciated. Yes, one day he won't need a nap any more, but at the moment he really seems to. At least, when he doesn't get one, or doesn't nap for long enough, his night sleep goes haywire, which is ALL we need...)

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Well ... not utterly no fun. Train travel is inherently exciting, if you ask me - and Oisín's done very little of it. But tiring, certainly. (And more expensive than I was hoping. Boo.)

Thanks for the link, is what I mean to say :-)

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'd somehow managed to miss that Kelli came to Ireland with you. That's so cool.

Yes, the Easter holiday is an annual family event. It's not always in Connemara, though - we move every year or two. It's quite a production, just finding a place that'll take us all. Next year I believe we're going to Killarney.

I thought Fota was brilliant. Not that many species, but the setting is just gorgeous, and they have lots of less "showy" animals, such as birds. I can thoroughly recommend it - particularly if you can arrange weather as glorious as we got :-)

Fingers crossed your funding comes through.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I love train travel, but I love it less when be-toddlered. Gnome was brilliant on the (works-delayed) train to and from Glasgow yesterday, though, trotting up and down and charming people with her smile and scandalising them with her "queerspawn" t-shirt. Then we sinned by getting a taxi home from the station, due to a missed nap and no chance of finding a buggy-friendly bus and getting home via it before Gnome had a meltdown. And she sat in the buggy in the taxi saying "Buggy! Car!" in tones of wonderment, and fell asleep as I was lifting her out. Aargh bad mother aargh.

[leedy.livejournal.com]

I still haven't been to Cafe Paradiso! I must rectify this at some stage, methinks.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Yes, you really, really, really must! I cannot exaggerate the divinity of that food. It's not cheap, mind you, but worth every cent. Worth a special trip, even. They have a few guest rooms now, too, which we totally can't afford but may splurge on one day...