boating on the blackwater

Whilst at Abigail's, we took a boat trip up the Blackwater river from Youghal, with captain Tony and Pharaoh the boat dog. Sylvia was a bit sceptical about taking the wheel - surely Tony knew what he was doing - but magnanimously agreed to do so. She was also very interested in the bilge pump, though less so in the old castles, monasteries and grand house we could see on the banks. The best game was doing tug-of-war with mummy then falling back onto a big pile of soft lifejackets when mummy let go.

Lovely Lismore

Whilst with Abigail, we popped up to Lismore Castle, and just got in before closing time. There's a lovely formal garden, and also some fruit and veg. Sylvia loves looking at those, and sneaked the odd tomato and berry. She's also getting quite smart about knowing her plants (mummy's girl) - "That's a nice geranium". And she knows some of ones which smell nice if you rub your fingers on the leaves (like sage).

She smells all the flowers and says "aaaah". I can't always smell any fragrance, so I guess she either has a much better sense of smell or a good imagination.

The video below is of the run, catch and fall over game she loves.

goat island beach

This is Goat Island beach which is a 5-min walk from Abigail and John's house. It's beautiful, better than the pics show really. Quite sheltered, rocks arches, soft sand and cold, cold sea. We came here several times and spent the time building large sandcastles, which Sylvia then became the princess of! Also splashing in the sea, with Sylvia in her groovy new wetsuit, and flying red plane kite. It was just great.

princess of the castle

We stopped at Cahir castle on the way from Galway to west Waterford, where Abigail and John live. The castle is great, very old and very well restored with lots of windy little stone staircases, turrets, towers and battlements for Sylvia to explore. We went on a guided tour with the theme "the defences of Cahir castle". Which meant a run through of all the gruesome ways the inhabitants of the castle had for dispatching attackers, including boiling oil and hidden arrow slits. Ciara devised her own "star" defence as well (see pic below).

There was a well too, which was down a lot of very dark and dank steps, and Sylvia was very brave. She didn't want to leave at the end, saying "can't we do some more exploring?"

climbing at Coole

While in Galway we went down the road to the Coole estate, former home of the literary Lady Gregory, now very nice woods for walking in. We walked through the seven woods in WB Yeats's poem.

Sylvia also learned what limestone is (that's my girl) and climbed every boulder in sight (Rab would be impressed!).

cousin ally

Sorry for the lack of posts. We were all in Ireland on holiday, so I'll slap up a few posts about what we did, with some pics.

First of all we were royally hosted by Rosaleen and Jerry in Galway, and Sylvia got to know Ally a bit more. Along with Julia and some other local children, there was lots of little company for Sylvia. The crowning glory was a big party for all the kids, at which godmother Jackie starred by providing deluxe arts and crafts entertainment. And I missed it all as I was surfing at Fanore.