In the sunny South-East for the weekend!

We spent a lovely  few days in Dunbrody House this weekend. 

Good weather was forecast and we set off in the sun on Friday to drive the 2.5hrs down from Dublin to Wexford in the Smart car.

For dinner on Friday we went to the pub on site at Dunbrody House. It is called "The Local" and we had the best fish & chips ever!

Our room was incredible. It was massive and really comfortable with a balcony out on to the garden. The arrow below shows the room location.

On Saturday we went for a short car ride to Ballyhack and then spontaneously drove the Smart on to a ferry over to Passage East. What fun!

We booked in for dinner on Saturday night in the Dunbrody House dining room.  Originally we were in for 8.30pm but then changed to a much better time of 7.15pm. This worked out great and we went straight for dinner after watching Leinster v. Saracens in the Heineken Champions Cup. Sadly Leinster lost :-( 

Pictured below is the duck breast from the tasting menu.

We had a bottle of malbec - my favourite!

Here's the tasting menu. My favourite was the duck while Ciaran liked the fish best.

There was a good continental buffet for breakfast and there was also a cooked to order hot breakfast. As well as the usual full Irish there was such things as omelettes (I had one on the first morning) and pancakes which I had on the second day.

It was a wonderful weekend and I really enjoyed relaxing, reading a lot and chilling in the sunshine.  Ireland is a wonderful country when the weather is good.

Online Release of "Pigsy"

Exciting news!

Film maker Mike Andrews has announced that his Pigsy documentary will be released online on May 20th.

While you wait for the release you can watch the trailer below




After screening in Galway, Bristol, Cork and London it's great to know that it will be seen by a wider audience once it goes online.

Edit - 

Here's the film, now available online

Litter picking......again

Yesterday, I was back out litter picking again. The first Saturday of the month is the Friends of the Grand Canal meet up day (do join in, meet up is at the first bench at Wilton Terrace near Leeson Street Bridge at 10am).

It didn't seem like it was only a week previously that a big clean up had been done - see my post on the Dublin Community Clean Up Day.

I moved slightly away from the canal and concentrated on the Leeson Street /Leeson Park area.

Look how much I picked in an hour from about 10.30am until 11.30am. 

The bag to the right is full of an old wet sleeping bag that I found on the ground. This bag was so heavy that I had to ring Ciaran to ask him to drive and meet me and take the bag back to the collection point. When he got back to the bench where the clean up starts the man from the council was loading up some rubbish from the clean up in to his van. Ciaran said he was a lovely guy, when he heard that I had needed Ciaran to pick up the bag, the council man said he would have taken it, if he had seen me as he drove around.

I didn't stick around for coffee at the bench after the canal clean up (very kindly sponsored/provided by Starbucks Leeson Street) but instead cycled along the canal to Pot Bellied Pig for a lovely brunch with a nice glass of bubbles!

How beautiful is the Grand Canal?!

Happy Bank Holiday to all my readers!

My alma mater

On Thursday I had some quite lengthy cycles (for me) to do.

I started off by cycling in to work in Dun Laoghaire and then later in the afternoon I had a meeting in Deansgrange so I cycled on to there. After this I finished work but rather than going straight home I needed to go to Rathmines to collect a book that I had reserved in the library.

The best way to get to Rathmines was to cycle along the Stillorgan dual carriage way and then cut in through UCD and then head to Clonskeagh and then down to Ranelagh and then on to Rathmines.

And so it was back to my my Alma Mater when I turned in to UCD (University College Dublin).

I was very pleasantly surprised at how nice UCD is looking these days. There had been new new buildings constructed since my time and most surprisingly was how green it all was - my memory of going to college was how it was an awful concrete jungle. I'm glad to see it has softened over the years and looks very green and attractive. Of course it was a sunny day so that helped.

The lake was very familiar to me as the Arts Block was right on it. However, I would have known it more from the other side as that is the Arts Block across the water.

There were lots of new buildings but I only got a picture of this one because I was in a rush and if I stopped to take more pics I could have missed the library.

At the time that I was studying here, I lived on the other side of the city. My memories of the place are that I was always tired and cold while here. Tired because I had to get up really early to miss the traffic on my commute over (I often arrived so early that I would park my car and then go for a little sleep in the car park before waking and going to get a coffee and heading to the library - I even brought a blanket in my car!) and cold because of all of the concrete!!

All in all it was nice to cycle through and relieve old memories of my time as a student and I then made it to the library to collect my book. I was glad I was on the electric bike all the same as it was quite a long cycle all in all.

TAKE THAT Tuesday!

After work on Tuesday and cycled from Dun Laoghaire to Ringsend and down to what was formerly The Point Depot (a long time ago!) and is now the 3 Arena to see the 3 superstars that are Take That!

I met Alice at 6.15pm and we went for wings before heading in and getting a good spot at Stage B. 

When I say a good spot, I actually mean a GREAT spot!

We were so close to the band and we enjoyed the concert so much.

A great night all in all.  And then to top it off I hopped on my bike afterwards and whizzed past all the concert goers waiting for taxis and the luas and was home by 11pm.

Here's some pics from the concert which capture how good it was.

What I got up to over the weekend....

The Dublin Community Clean Up was on Saturday. We hooked up with the Friends of the Grand Canal to clean up the canal area.  As we walked to the meet up point we picked rubbish. The walk was about 5 mins and within that time we had a full bag collected - and that was before we had even officially started!

For further pics check out #KeepDublinBeautiful on social media

On Sunday I got up early and went out for a coffee on Stephens Green and had a nice relaxed read of the papers (I had gone in early to return something to TK Maxx but it wasn't open until 10am).

Check out how deserted Grafton Street was at 9am on Sunday

And later in the evening we went to the stunning mini Stella movie theatre in The Devlin Hotel in Ranelagh

Prosecco and popcorn - what could be better?!

New handrail has arrived!

Awhile ago I blogged about Ciaran designing a handrail for the glass cantilevered stairs leading up to his studio.

Well, exciting news!  It's been installed.

Click here for information about the fabricators and also for more pics.