July Favourites

 Not so many, though I made a couple of fours and fives of Christmas cards which I was very happy with.

The Towers

 Our last trip, on Sunday morning while we waited for the tent to dry, was to The Towers, near Lismore. 

According to "Discover Ireland", Ballysaggartmore Towers are imposing gothic style buildings situated near Lismore in pleasant woodland walking and picnic areas. The magical towers provide a fairy tale setting which does not reflect the sad period in Irish History where extravagance and starvation lived side by side.

They were constructed for an Anglo Irish Landlord, Arthur Keily-Ussher no later than 1834. He held an estate of approximately 8000 acres, the majority of which was rented to tenant farmers but he retained approximately 1000 acres as a personal demesne.

The Towers: Built in 1850 by Arthur Kiely-Ussher for his wife, the extravagant gates were the only part of the castle to be built as money ran out soon after their completion. The Kiely-Ussher family then resided in a modest house on the grounds - since demolished the small castle is not open to the public.

We had been here before with my brother; admittedly a good number of years ago, as R finished school this year, and on that occasion she was still young enough to go in one of those back carriers. But I find it hard to understand how C could remember the fact of the walk, but have zero memory of the towers! I'd have thought they were pretty unforgettable. There was a sign saying that woodpeckers had been recorded earlier this year, and to report any sightings to the biodiversity watch as they are not common here. But we weren't lucky. We did see several of the silver-washed fritillary butterflies, which we had also seen in Glenshelane the day before. 

We stopped at the little farmers' market in Lismore on the way back, where I got a Shasta daisy and some lemon balm to go with my purchases from Fota. 

Glenshelane Woods

 Our third trip was to Glenshelane Woods, near Cappoquin. When the kids were smaller, they used to go there for picnics after riding on Saturday mornings - they could paddle and cool down. I paddled too when we got back from our walk - with the sun right behind the bridge, getting on the other side of it was the only way I could take any photos showing it clearly. It had three arches, in diminishing sizes. There were some tiny little fish swimming in there, too. As the river seemed to divide in two after I got to the other side, it still wasn't possible to take a picture showing all three arches. 

We followed the long trail, though I'm not sure I agree with their 3 1/2 hours time allowed, as we did it in two and I wouldn't have said we were walking that fast. Luckily I had downloaded a pdf with the map, because there was no phone coverage, and as we had only been walking just over an hour at that stage, it was hard to believe that we had reached the end of the trail even though the arrows clearly indicated that we had.  As we got higher up, there was a lot more dew still remaining even at midday, and our feet got quite wet. After returning to the carpark we retrieved our picnic and refreshed ourselves beside the river. It was mostly deciduous woodland, skirted by some coniferous planting. 

As usual the photos aren't in order -the ones that show first are actually the last ones I took. 

Fota Arboretum

 On our second day, we visited Fota Arboretum. I had been there a couple of years ago with my sister, but C had never been. The walled gardens had fewer wildflower beds in them than on my previous visit, but were beautiful, and the shade in the arboretum was very welcome on a hot, sunny day. 

We got lucky with our timing after walking round the walled gardens and the working Victorian walled garden (staffed by volunteers. (I came home with some basil and some lysimachia, which you can see in the foreground of one of the photos of the pond. The lady who sold it to me warned me that it spread, but I knew that already. ) There was no queue at the coffee shop, and a couple of empty picnic benches to sit at. The jam for C's scone came in the neatest little folded paper pot, very eco-friendly. 

Our borage seems to be very late - this was in full bloom, and also in my brother's wildflower bed. Mine is only just barely starting to come into flower. I think it might be swamped by the Chinese Lanterns!

Angel's Fishing Rod

One of the many tree palms

A swamp cypress (taxodium distichum), and it really was vivid green. 

The lake was rather smelly, due to the algal bloom, but still very pretty.

Although I had chosen the day that, from the forecast, looked to be more cloudy and hence a bit better for photography, it was very bright sunshine and a bit too contrasty to be ideal. But a lovely day out. 

A beach - at last

 We took a few days break away from home last week, and camped in my brother's garden so it really felt like a holiday - especially combined with the amazing weather we've been having. 

Our first outing was to a nearby beach, and it was wonderful to walk on sand, paddle (and swim) after barely having seen the sea for over a year and a half.

It wasn't a large bay - but large enough when we walked to one end from the car park, and then to other end and back.

We saw plenty of gulls (mostly black-headed), some oyster-catchers, an unknown little brown bird, and at each end there were sand martins nesting in the "cliff" front. I could swear I heard a curlew too though I didn't see one. It's possible, I used to see them from the train when I was visiting my Dad in Midleton. 

Due to the blogger issues I'm not going to try to sort them all in order. 

Sand martins on fence

Oyster-catcher

Martin nests 

Black-headed gull

I'll be back with some photos over the next few days. We also visited Fota Gardens and Arboretum, and had two forest walks.