I am totally spoiled (and liking it a lot). Breakfast overlooking the Irish Sea before a day of adventure.
Powers Court, up in the hills where the heather is blooming, is an old family estate (probably a first cousin to Downton Abby...and actually mentioned in the series) that is now maintained as a group of shops, formal gardens, retail hub of Avoca, the last (or is it largest?) woolen mill in the world and, of course, a tea room. Every, positively every public building has a tea room. Flowers, flowers everywhere. Never have I seen so many varieties of hydrangeas.
Driving higher above the treeline, we came upon what looked like a page out of Heidi. One could see for miles, endless green and hillsides dotted with grazing sheep. Banks of clouds showed off, rolling into big purple masses that ushered in a shower, and then dissapated into docile white fluff. Sunbeams poked through and turned droplets of rain into sparkle on everything. This went on intermittently all day. Umbrellas up. Umbrellas down. Umbrellas up. Umbrellas down.
On the other side of the mountain, we explored the site of an eleventh century monastery and cemetery where monks served and sought to convert the population, even as they forded off the attacks of the Normans, (thus the tower that looks like Rapunzle's). Juggling cameras, raincoats, spare socks, brochures and emergency chocolate a sense of serendipity washed over us on the drive back to Dublin when a rainbow crowned our day. It was all quite a display of God's splendor.
One more delight came in the form of the Thursday night sailing classes that swirled right outside the apartment windows. There are sometime several hundred boats all bunched in their own little classes doing a kind of choreography as they maneuver in a circular pattern (literally "learning the ropes", I suspect.) Those are my wonderful hosts on the observation deck. I heartily recommend this "bed & breakfast".
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