Winter?

So, it appears the weather has skipped directly to winter, without passing autumn...

That's not frost, folks.

Things I have done this year and failed to blog: Part 6

August: To Cork for a Wedding

After being married for six years I finally met the Irish half of his family. There are a lot of them. His aunt was getting married, which was the excuse for a family gathering.

We flew from Aberdeen to Dublin and drove down to Cork on the newly completed motorway. It's kind of like a Scottish motorway, you know, only two lanes each way, but with toll barriers. Can anyone tell me why it's cheaper to leave Dublin than arrive in Cork?

We arrived in Innishannon after 11 to find a large part of the family leaving the hotel bar. Which was lucky as we had no idea how to find the B&B and had to follow his parents along the little windy roads - the surfacing of which made Aberdeenshire look good...

The wedding was on the Friday afternoon so we went into Kinsale in the morning for a look around.

The wedding was held at the Innishannon Hotel, which is quite pretty and right on the River Bandon.

Are civil marriages new in Ireland? I heard quite a few of the cousins saying that they had never been to one before.

There was quite a lot of football talk, one of his cousins is a sports writer in Mayo, the groom (if I remember correctly) is related to a former Kerry manager and played for them himself, but the family is Cork. (Yes, we have one of the Cork names).

We were also reminded that my other half is the last of the male line... No pressure there then.

On the day after the wedding we went with his parents to Glengarriff, where his paternal grandfather was born. We stopped in Bantry to buy a picnic lunch, then visited his great uncle who still lives in the family house at the top of the glen, and went up to Barley Lake.

There was then a detour to see the tunnels on the Kerry road and a stop for fish and chips which left me in a state of stress as we were meant to be going into Cork in the evening to the bride and groom's house party. We were late.