Morning in Kinsale, Then Moving On

After touring Kinsale and sampling some quality pizza and some excellent seafood, we retired to our bed and breakfast for the evening.  What adventures would experience the following day?

We woke up to a glorious sunny day with a bit of fog below us in Kinsale and its harbor…

The beautiful fog along the water just added to our upbeat outlook for the day…

Before breakfast Laurie went outside and she took a couple of photos.  This is the first of what she terms “God Shots”…

You must admit that this is an ethereal or celestial light that is shining through the trees…

Time for breakfast at our Bed and Breakfast on Compass Hill just above Kinsale Cork Ireland.  This is the lounge/breakfast area at Rocklands House Bed and Breakfast.  What a warm comfortable space!

This is a reverse view from the previous photo showing the breakfast buffet and another dining table… 

Here is the breakfast menu at Rocklands House Bed and Breakfast.  There were plenty of options for us…whatever our appetite demanded.

This is a close-up of the breakfast buffet.  There was cereal, muesli, fresh fruit and juice.  I don’t think that those liquor bottles at the right rear are part of the breakfast offering…but curiously I did detect a bottle of Southern Comfort.  It must be something that some visitors really like…

One of our breakfast choices was the pancakes with maple syrup…enhanced with a strawberries, blueberries and grapes.

This was the full Irish breakfast complete with poached eggs, grilled mushrooms and tomato, black pudding, sausages and Irish bacon.

FYI…If you didn’t read one of my early posts from Scotland, blood pudding is a type of blood sausage commonly eaten in Great Britain, Ireland and other parts of Europe.  It’s generally made from pork fat or beef suet, pork blood and a relatively high proportion of oatmeal.  I guess that the oatmeal makes it ‘healthy’.  It is definitely an acquired taste…

This was the cheese omelet with grilled mushrooms and tomato with a side of Irish bacon. 

In addition to the breakfast main courses, we managed to consume a few of these lovely scones with butter and some quality jams. 

Our breakfast at Rocklands House Bed and Breakfast was very nice indeed…but then again so was everything else about our stay here.  We would highly recommend Rocklands House to anyone visiting Kinsale in County Cork Ireland.  It was a real value too!  Check it out at http://irishfarmholidays.com/accommodation-listings/rocklands-house/.

…on the road again.  Our eventual destination for the day was Killarney in County Kerry.  As we headed west on R600 from Kinsale, we rolled through the little village of Ballinspittle.  We loved the name and I had to take a picture of it!

Of course, the village’s name is a bit different when translated but I still don’t understand it or how it originated.  In Irish Gaelic, it is “Beal Atha an Spideil”, meaning “ford mouth of the hospital”.  What the heck!?

Note:

·         In the summer of 1985, Ballinspittle gained national and international attention when local residents claimed to have witnessed a statue of the Virgin Mary moving spontaneously.  Subsequently, thousands of pilgrims flocked to the site and many visitors claimed that they also saw the statue move.  To see the BBC report on this happening, you can go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZjM83wZmWw.

We like seeing livestock so Laurie snapped this photo of dairy cattle grazing on the green, green grass of Ireland as we cruised along.  For much of our drive on this day, we followed “The Wild Atlantic Way”, Ireland’s scenic coastal route.

In general, the roads along the route were fairly narrow but with great views. 

At 1,600 miles in length (2,600 km), The Wild Atlantic Way is one of the longest defined coastal routes in the world.  It winds along Ireland’s west coast from Kinsale, County Cork all the way west and north to Derry, Londonderry in Northern Ireland.   

This was one of the peaceful coastal scenes along the way… As advertised, everything in Ireland is really green!  There wasn’t much traffic along R600 which suited us just fine… 

We’d rented a Global Positioning System (GPS Unit) when we rented our Ford van at Dublin’s international airport.  We really needed a GPS unit in Ireland as addresses here are sketchy at best, unlike what we have in the USA.  However, despite her utility, sometimes our lovely GPS ‘lady’ would lead us off the ‘main route’ on side roads that she considered to be more direct… This grassy 2 track road leading back down to R600 along the water is a good example.

At this point we had only driven 22 miles since we left Kinsale.  The town viewed across the water is Timoleague in County Cork.  There will be more about this village and its primary historic tourist site in my next post.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave