The New Walk

Now that we are settled in our new house I take a new walk. We only have one rental car (hopefully that will change this week), and so most of the time Jason has it and I am on foot. It is about a mile to the kids school. This is what I get to see:

There are bollards on the side of the road to make a sort of sidewalk for the kids to be safe on. Adam and all the other kids his age ride their bikes to school.
Like at our last place there are lots of blackberries to eat along the way!
This where you can see the Atlantic Ocean comes in to meet our village. The tide comes in and out so sometimes it's high sometimes low. You can see this from my bedroom. You can walk down this little lane anytime you want to see the water. BUT there is a man who lives on a houseboat that is permanently moored there. We have never seen him but there is a huge goose that guards the boat!
At the bottom of our road (which by the way has no name posted, but I am thinking is called the sea road) there is Kelly's. Kelly's is a little catch all shop including the post office. We send Adam here sometimes to get us sodas. You turn left here to head to school.
Here is a far away picture of the sidewalk we walk down. You can see there are a series of houses, three of them are pubs, one a cafe, a carpet shop, and a boutique. I think there are also some residences mixed in there.

As you walk past the pubs there is a bridge for which our town is named. It crosses the river Clarin. Thus it is Clarinbridge. After the bridge there is a little business complex that has the grocery, pharmacy, spa, hairplace, cafe, and art gallery. Pretty posh if you ask me. Finally after passing the abandoned convent you come to the school. I am sorry I am short on pictures but you can see and read about the school's history here.

As I walk nearly everyday, I have a lot of time to think and take in the scenery. I cannot explain how I feel about Ireland. The closest I can come is that I am in a relationship with it. I love it so much I am already afraid of the time when I will have to say goodbye. The scenery, the people, the cool weather, Jason's job, our neighborhood, it all feels like home. I hope you all come visit, cause I ain't leavin!

And Then We Moved to Ireland.

In August we moved to Ireland. It was a very long day. The kids did great on the airplanes, but it was the in between and after the airplanes that was rough. But heaven knows it could be worse (and it has in the past) and I was just grateful to get it over with and grateful I don't have to do it again for a year .

Our rental house wasn't ready and so the company put us in a temporary place which is a holiday house on a golf course. The house was sufficient but far away from anything, and since we had to share one car, and I was terrified to drive, I found myself pretty housebound for 3 weeks. I would get the car about once a week and at nights, so I managed to go to the grocery store, movie rental place, and the public library. On most days we took advantage of the nearby park. When I say park I mean a huge expanse of land with fields, paths, woods, playground, and castles.

Since we are Americans it took us a while to get used to all this walking, but then it become routine. This is what our normal day was like:

We start at our cute rental house. It was very lived in, had little hot water, huge spiders, and mold. But other then that- it had comply duvets, cable tv, and a fully functioning kitchen. I am always grateful for dishwashers!

We walked down the road until there is a gap in the stone wall. There we entered the forest.


After about 5 minutes we emerged. There were a lot of blackberry bushes at the exit. We loved eating them everyday. Do you know there are no bears in Ireland? We had the berries to ourselves!











As we walked through the fields we could see the sea in the distance.















We walked about 5 minutes through the fields.











After the fields we came to a pond or boggy type place. There was water but it was covered by lily pads, catails, and something like bamboo. The funny thing is there is a life preserver station just in case someone is swimming in there. Weird.








We finally make it to the park. It has a stone wall around it and has lots of things to play on. The weather is about 65-70 F and the wind blows the clouds quickly along. Sometimes we have rain but it doesn't last long. We love Ireland.