Welcome to Ardmore!

 

                        Just off the bus - welcome to Ardmore!

What with the Olympics and my particle physics adventures at CERN and what not (you can read all about all that excitement in my last two posts), I have been distracted from expounding on our adventures in Ireland last June.   So now I am back to tell of our few days in Ardmore Co. Waterford, a tiny corner of heaven on the south coast of Ireland.  It is there we had a dream come true, a Jacuzzi, a visit to one of the best preserved round towers in Ireland,  a rather ´out of this world´ musical experience while dinning with cool cousins,  and glorious cliff side walks.  Did I say we gate crashed a wedding?  And a high light for me – seeing a world class Irish dancer do her world class dancing thing.  The best way to go here is with pictures.   So enjoy!

  A rainbow on our arrival

 

Romeo  H had never stayed in a five star hotel and wanted to.  Hey, was I going to object!  Here he is in the Cliff House Hotel; every where you looked the views were stunning.

And so to the jacuzzi....

                           Life ain´t so bad sometimes or wha´

Ardmore village at approx. 11.00 p.m. on the longest night of the year.

This is exactly as I remember Ardmore over 45 years ago. 

  A room with a view

With only 3 months two weeks and four days to the All Ireland Hurling final, wearing the Kilkenny shirt in support of the Cats is obligatorily -  even in bed.

St. Declan´s Oratory.

It is thought St. Declan brought Christianity to the area in the late 300´s or early 400´s... before St. Patrick arrived.

The following photos are of the cliff walk.....

I love this photo of the round tower in Ardmore:  An architectural and historical masterpiece almost a 1000 years old, perfectly preserved.  It is an  invaluable part of Irish history and culture - and there you have a corrugated shed built right next to it!

The cousins. (And ones I would have chosen, even if they had n´t been cousins of mine to start with.)

We met and ´did´lunch together on a sunny day in Ardmore.  Good food, good company, good chat, a walk on the beach afterwards...  Did I say the sun was shining!!!.

A magical day of perfectness!

Heck even if the temperature in the water is 15o C / 57o F give or take a degree or so.  I am in Ardmore, so I have to  go for a swim, that´s the rule.

Well a quick in and out at least....

I love this picture, and the one previous.  The boy above is carrying a hurl and sliotar (a ball used in hurling, also called a puck).  In Ireland, especially in Kilkenny, it is a very common sight to see boys and girls between the ages of 3 and 18 carrying a hurl and sliotar or dribbling the sliotar as they walk.  

But this young lad took the biscuit.  He took his hurl and sliotar swimming!  He is one of the spots you can see in the sea in the previous picture.

 A sign of the times; as a child I recall 3 or 4 trawlers tied up at this pier.  Now there are no trawlers fishing from Ardmore.

  

This gentleman stopped and chatted about his dogs and God and the world!

..... Now if I could only put that peace and ease in a bottle and sell it, I could make a fortune....

.  

 These two musicians played a collection of hand made bells, whistles and boxes that gave unique sounding twangs and twings. Different, but easy on the ear none the less.

 ....And the wedding we gate crashed.

Afterwards we all went for a drink in Gallaghers Pub, which was the setting for the author Nora Robert´s trilogy of love and what not,  set in Ardmore.

 

Seeing Deidre Kiely in action both as a teacher of Irish dance and strutting her world class Irish dancing stuff was amazing. And a privilege.  Ms. Kiely was holding classes on the Thursday afternoon we were in Ardmore.  My cunning plan was to ask if we could look on so that Herbert H would be so inspired that he would take Irish dance classes himself.  

My plan failed miserably! 

When he saw the young girls between the ages of 11 and 14 or so, do these step dance moves so effortlessly, he figured there is no way he could even try to start Irish dancing at age 50 plus. 

There was a consolation however, Deidre Kiely agreed to dance for us.  A wonder to witness!   Unfortunately my pictures don´t do Ms. Kiely, or her students, justice; they moved so fast my camera could not keep up with them.  But I tell you on a holiday already jam packed to the brim with highlights, that 30 odd minutes in Halla Declan on a wet miserable Thursday afternoon was one of the sweetest of memories. 

 

                     

.

It had to happen, it had to happen....

Going to a completely different aspect of humanity than the super human feats discussed in the blog postings on the Olympics....


Yes folks it had to happen and  I have seen it.  There he was a punk rocker complete with lip/ear/nose rings with varying assorted chains connecting the various rings to each other; he had bothering looking tattoos and a Mohawk hair cut.  No Doc Marten boots however.  ´WHAT NO D.M´s´ I hear you screech.

No.  Instead he was wearing orthopedic sandals!  And  he was moving very very slowing along on his wheely walking chair.

Is this the first sighting of ´senior punk rocker´?  Can anyone fore date my sighting?

A quickie blog posting today.... dealing with Olympic withdrawal  symptoms. Boy was the whole Olympics super or what, right down to the last note from the Who.... More next week when I should have been cold turkyed back to normal....

The Olympics. Wow Oh Wow!

Yes, I say it again.   The Olympics.  Wow oh wow! 

Wasn´t the opening ceremony a wonderful crazy creative event?  I did enjoy it.  And since then, all those nubile perfect specimens of humanity thrilling us with the heights they reach in sporting excellence. I promise, most of the time I am marvelling at the excellence of their endeavors, not their fabulous physiques. - (Oh alright, a good bit of the time then.)

And there I am in awe of sports I hardly knew existed, like those sort of space age indoor bike races, and the trampoline competitions.  Really it is a wonder;  I loved the dressage, the table tennis and the fencing too.  Just about any sport at such levels of excellence can be enjoyed and wondered at.  It is just a pity hurling in not an Olympic sport, Kilkenny would have scooped up all the medals. 

Do you know what Kilkenny and Jamaica have in common?  For such a relatively small part of the world, they both keep on producing world champions. The county of Kilkenny needs little explanation of course: they produce generation after generation of the best hurlers in the world.  Similarly Jamaica produces generation after generation of the fastest runners in the world. -  Did you see how Bolt bolted last night!  (Am I the only ´reporter´on the Olympics who thought to make a pun on ´bolt´!).  He ran 100 meters in 9,63 seconds.  The Women´s 100 Meter winner was also Jamacian, Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce; her time was a mere 1.12 seconds slower at 10,75 seconds.  

How is all that for wowness!

But you know, I would love to hear more on the other participants; the people who after years of hard work, time and dreaming get to participate in the Olympics.  And no doubt with great effort on the part of their families too.  I would like to hear those participants´ stories too. I suppose with so much greatness to report on, it would be hard to report everything in an mere 24 hour day.

But I tell you what, if I was a female contestant in the beach volley ball, I would want to wear the men´s uniform.  However fabulous Misty May Trainer et al look, bending over in that little itsy bitys nearly nothing bikini bottom would make me feel I was sharing a tad too much of me with the world.

Last Sunday, we had our own version of the Olympics here in Allensbach:  The 33rd Gnadensee-Schwimmen.  The Gnadensee-Schwimmen is a 1500 meter swim from the Island of Reichenau to Allensbach.  Always extremely well organized by the local life saving organization and various other groups.  About 300 took part in the swim, including moi.

Consider:   

At the 2012 Olympics in London

Mr. Yang Sun from China swam 1500m Freestyle at a time of:  14:31:02. 

Yes, 14 minutes, 31.02 seconds.  He created a new world record.

At the Gnadensee-Schwimmen in Allensbach

Frau Ehinger from Ireland swam 1500 in Rosaleen Style

At a time of:  57 plus minutes.  Breaking absolutely no records of any kind.

See pictures of Frau Ehinger below.  Also of Herr Ehinger who was in attendance to show support for the big swim.

          

P.S. Reminder to Roe:  don´t forget to write a blog post about the time you met Misty May Trainer, Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King and what´s her face, yes, Michelle Kwan that wonder of the figure skating world. 

-- Now was n´t that little post script a nice plug on the dramas of my life and times!