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…

Back to School
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Back to School

We have now had 2 weeks of being back to school, and everyone is “back to porridge” (I have always found that a weird saying!). All the books are covered, the uniforms labelled, and most of the consent forms appear to be completed, but I am sure there are still a few lurking around. As…

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…

It’s Birthday Time

It’s Birthday Time

 As a child I hated having a birthday during the school summer holidays, as my friends always seemed to be away, and by the time we got back to school my birthday seemed a distant memory. There was one advantage though – you were never subjected to “the bumps”. Did you have the bumps as…