Slieve Donard Hotel, Newcastle, N Ireland – a review
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Slieve Donard Hotel, Newcastle, N Ireland – a review

 The Slieve Donard Hotel is located on the seafront of Newcastle, Co Down, where, as the song says, “the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea”. Even on a good day, they are more just large hills than actual mountains, and the weather was so atrocious that we saw little of them from our…

Summers End at Downhill Strand, Northern Ireland
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Summers End at Downhill Strand, Northern Ireland

This afternoon we headed over to part of the North Coast of Northern Ireland which we don’t visit so often, the beach at Downhill, just beyond Castlerock. Downhill beach is a 7 mile stretch of golden sand from Magillan Point to Mussenden and apparently is one of the longest beaches in Europe. It was a…

House swapping, transatlantic visitors and a political tour of Belfast
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House swapping, transatlantic visitors and a political tour of Belfast

We love to house swap (you may have noticed!) and have swapped 4 times in the last two years. One of the disadvantages of house swapping though, is you don’t often get to meet the other swapping family, despite having lots of long chatty emails asking and answering queries. When you see their photos of…