Spring on the Conwy

Last weekend, I discovered a hidden gem in North Wales. It's as much a well-kept secret as it is a well-kept garden. Nestled on a tributary of the River Conwy near Tal-y-cafn, Bodnant must surely be one of Wales' largest and most pristine estates open to visitors.

Spring was in the air last weekend at Bodnant - and so too was a cloud of yellow daffodils, with brash golden trumpets held aloft on lemony petals. (Fun fact: scientists now reckon the trumpet of a daffodil is not related to the petals, but is a new organ, a corona, as found in Passiflora spp. (passion flower)).

The fields of yellow daffodils were an inspiration. They even inspired another visitor to don her own corona. 

One of the most exciting things about Bodnant was its setting. You can visit gardens all over and many have stunning backdrops - from my own favourite, Lyme Park, you can see moorland and green rolling hills; but rarely will you find a hinterland quite so dramatic as the mountains of Snowdonia before Bodnant.

Another things I loved was that, in spite of the lateness of Spring, there was still plenty to see. Manicured roses were pruned and trained in vast swathes along the walls of the formal garden, (I hope) ready to charm visitors with heady aromas come Summer.

In fact, wherever I looked I found surprising beauty in kempt Winter-ready hibernating plants. The Wisteria, still not quite in bud in mid-April, wrought its twisting, gnarly form over the historic fountain (which I think they're hoping to restore this year).

In Manchester, even in April it feels like we're in the depths of Winter: I've found climate is the only guage for season and we're left distinguishing one type of rain from another. Here in Bodnant, however, the garden heralded Spring wherever you looked. Magnolias (ignorant of paint charts in back bedrooms) were in full bloom, and the rhodies were beginning to show their colour, too.

Of course, weathering all seasons, the lichens crept on...

And in the dell, Lysichiton americanus (American skunk cabbage) grew rampant amid the hue of fallen petals. It would give the impression of some romantic alien jungle (if it weren't for the occasional skunky smell!)

What struck me about Bodnant was the sheer scale. If Lyme Park seems big, Bodnant is huge! When the National Trust took over the 80 acre site, they opened only a fraction of this to visitors. Since then, over half has been made accessible - and staggeringly, this whole area is not just accessible, but preened and manicured. 

I have a couple of dates in the diary to return to Bodnant, and am looking forward to seeing it develop through the year - watch this space!

Profile of a place: Malaga's Alcazaba

When I toured around the towns of Andalucia in October, I saw my fair share alcázares (castles) - not least the Alcázar of Seville and the Alhambra of Granada. These stone-built strongholds are reminders of the moorish hegemony of Andalucia that lasted right through to the late 15th century and makes the cultural history of the region so rich. 

It's hard not to be wowed by the Alhambra: set atop a rocky mass with the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada as its backdrop, the complex of fortifications, palaces and pleasure gardens certainly demands praise. It's not just a feat of engineering, but also a testament to the power of art and architecture to represent dominion.

The Alhambra and the peaks of the Sierra Nevada

However, it was the Alcazaba (or citadel) of Malaga that stood out to me above all the rest. Although I'd hopped straight off a plane from cool, dank England and found myself 16° further south and probably 16°C warmer, my appreciation of the Alcazaba can't just be put down to start-of-holiday wonderment. 

After all, the Alcazaba is the best-preserved citadel of its kind in Spain, let alone Andalucia. Sited on a rocky outcrop beside Malaga's historic town centre and forefronted by the exposed remains of a Roman arena, the myriad walls and towers of the Alcazaba don't just represent great architectural beauty, but also a rich history of medieval war defence. Within the outer citadel's massive entry fortifications is a labyrinthe of inner walls and towers complex enough to confuse the enemy, if nothing else.

Looking up to the Alcazaba - you can see the Roman arena in the foreground.

... and looking down again!

However, the walls create splendid enclosures, containing moorish patios, trees, herbaceous borders and formal gardens. Unlike the rain-soaked bare remains of some of our own castles, the protective walls of the citadel make Malaga's Alcazaba a veritable haven for plants - and so too for botanists. The exposed dry rock at the base of the citadel is home to delicious succulents from sedum-like critters to full-blown cacti. Further into the garden there are mossy, ferny niches where it's moist enough, and well-protected spaces where tropical plants thrive. If there's interest in diversity, then the range of microclimates and the variety of growing things at Malaga's Alcazaba can only be described as fascinating. 

A type of Hottentot fig?

Tropical colour: palms and orange trees line the approach to the Torre del Cristo.

For me, though, the most exciting thing about the Alcazaba was the interplay between the labyrinthine moorish fortifications and the formal historic gardens. The route through the citadel takes the visitor through a series of impressive arches; each of these frames a vista or teases the visitor with anticipation and intrigue. Arches open onto impressive formal gardens containing pagodas hung with jasmine, or lead onto pathways, expediting the visitor to the next amazing view. Water flows cleverly around the garden in channels, cooling and yet also contributing to a sense of movement around the garden. My photos really don't do it justice.

 

In a nutshell, what excited me most about the Alcazaba was that it's a perfect example of how to create movement and intrigue in a space and leave visitors wanting more. I never thought I'd say it, but if there's anywhere in Andalucia I'd love to revisit, it's Malaga, thanks to its Alcazaba!

Plants and places: Andalucia

Last Sunday I returned from a week's holiday in Andalucia. Eight days, taking in the sights of Malaga, Granada, Seville and Jerez - as well as a couple of places in between (Cadiz, Ronda, and the occasional dustbowl-with-a-petrol-station which claimed to be a town). 

It was fantastic, not just because it was 20°C+. And sunny. And I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In October. All of these things were very exciting, but to me were slightly secondary to the fantastic botanical delights Andalucia had in store.

Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia reginae)

I knew to expect oranges - after all, Seville is famous for its bitter oranges used in marmalade (I only remembered this halfway through the world's sourest orange scrumped from a public park). But having never been closer to the equator than Athens, the amazing diversity of flora and fauna in Andalucia was a totally unexpected pleasant surprise to me.

Excitingly, plants that in the UK are delicate houseplants, such as Jasminum officinale (jasmine), grew rampantly over the trellises of Malaga's Alcazabar; Schefflera arboricola (the umbrella plant), which is best known in the UK as a houseplant tolerant of neglect and unlove, was growing wild at the foot of the palace; and vast yards of cacti, that you could only dream of cultivating in temperate regions, grew as weeds on the hillsides of Granada. 

It was exciting to see these plants in situ and get a real appreciation for their natural habitat. It's one thing to see a greenhouse-grown orange tree in the Cotswolds with a single paltry fruit and say 'this is how it likes to grow'; it's another to see lines of orange trees, baked by the Andalucian sun, producing easy tons - I kept thinking to myself - as though they were apples.

Las naranjas de Sevilla/ Seville Oranges (Citrus × aurantium)

As I was travelling around, something else struck me, too. In horticulture, we learn a lot about plants' natural adaptations - be it leaf size, shape or structure, root depth etc. - that enable them to thrive in often very specific conditions. In Andalucia, there were some textbook examples of how trees and plants are suited to the mediterranean climate.

Apart from the fact it has stunning, iridescent pink pompoms for flowers and develops seeds in strange bean-like pods, the Mimosa tree is a fascinating case in point. Its bipinnate compound leaves (i.e. leaves composed of rows of tiny pointed leaflets) actually have a relatively small surface area. The leaves are also mobile, able to close up in response to low light levels (other varieties are able to close in response to touch), optimising the exposure to light for photosyntheis and ensuring low loss of water through transpiration.

Mimosa (Albizin julibrissin)

I started to notice that this was a bit of a theme - lots of the trees of Seville had feathery leaves with a low surface area, including this tree (to me, it looked like a relative of the willow).

A Spanish relative of the willow?

Some trees took it to the extreme. This tree in particular was comprised a mass of fine filaments of feathery leaves, with the result that you couldn't even see the trunk or branches.

A mass of feathery leaves

A final point - you can't go to Andalucia without seeing palm trees - they are as common in amenity planting as cotoneaster in the UK. However, I found something it is unusual to see over here: beside the cathedral of Jerez is a public space, planted with palm trees, but there were spaces where a palm had been cut down. You don't often get the chance to see a palm stump, but it demonstrates a really interesting point about the tree - that it's not really a tree at all. 

Just pretending: the palm is not a true tree

That's because palms are monocots (they have fibrous roots and stems and bandy leaves with scattered veins) and also herbaceous - they don't have the capability to produce the secondary growth we know as wood. So there's not a single tree ring in sight!

Ringless palm stump!

Dieppe to Paris: un Tour de France

My schools chums and I recently proposed to cycle from London to Paris. After a mishap with the ferry booking, this morphed into a Dieppe to Paris cycle (which was fine, because we weren't that excited about cycling through Gatwick airport anyway!) I've not written a travelog in a long time (apart from the one I wrote last week) and I know you're all desperate to hear the lists of things we ate, with short cycling descriptions casually interspersed, so here we go: delve in!

Day 0: Home to the South coast
I travelled to work as usual (cycle to the station, then take the train to Altrincham); only this day my noble steed came with me as far as Stockport, and I have panier bags brimming with holiday. After a day at work spent mostly making sure that my projects weren't going to run off anywhere, I hot-footed to the station and took the train south. Destination: Brighton. It seemed appropriate to stay in the home of green on the night before the European elections and our epic eco-holiday en France. Plus an advance fare to Newhaven Town from London via Brighton was risibly cheap.

Day 1: Newhaven to Forges-les-Eaux
This was one of those days where you seem to have three days in one. An earlyish start. I woke up wishing I had had less to drink the night before, then realised I had had nothing at all to drink the night before, and I was probably just a bit dehydrated. Trained it to Newhaven Town, where I met up with comrades Leah and Alison, who were both at the ferry port each unbeknownst to the other.

We spent four hours on the ferry, arriving Dieppe at local time 3pm. After grabbing a baguette, some stinky cheese, and a big tomato, we started our 35 mile cycle to the first night halt, the town of Forges-les-Eaux. The countryside of Normandy was very pleasant in the late afternoon light, and we pootled along on the old railway track gradually clocking up the miles.

By about 7:30pm we had reached our two-thirds point, Neufchatel-en-Bray, where the only open pitstop we could find was a MacDonalds in a more industrial part of the town. Rejuvenated by ice cream, chips and coke, we struggled onwards to the will o' the wisp that was Forges-les-Eaux. Descending through woodland where the railway path ends (the actual railway starts just before Forges-les-Eaux), we hit the centre of the town and reached our hotel for the night around 9:50pm. The French, having closed basic amenities like cafés and supermarkets way before 7:30pm, were probably tucked up in bed at the point - and the hotel was, worryingly in total darkness. Cue a hasty and slightly delirious phonecall in broken French: 'Bonswa, je suis dans la rue, j'ai une réservation.' There was the added complication that I accidentally booked the room under the name Mr Hovard (languages degree, schlanguages schmegree), but luckily the unquestioning hotelier opened his back door and showed us to a room which was ours for the night.

This is where, usually in Howardville, you'd have a nice cup of tea and then probably head to bed; but we hadn't eaten properly (I was determined that ice cream should not be my evening meal) so we set out in search of food at 10pm. We instantly caught sight of a pizza takeaway, which would have ticked the hunger box at this late hour. But as we entered, the guy behind the counter tapped his watch and said something which equated to 'fermé.' He told us that the only place we would find food at this late hour (10pm! Late!) was the casino. I remembered at this point that I had found out through a small amount of googling that Forges-les-Eaux was famous for its casino. Given some rudimentary instructions, we set off into the night to find food - and maybe even fortune.

It was bizarre: while the rest of the town was a sleepy hollow, even eerily quiet, just out of town, rising up in the marble columns of a greek temple, illuminated pink, was the grand casino of Forges-les-Eaux, throbbing with life. We gravitated towards this almost Oceans-like construction, and pledged the maximum amounts we would gamble. First things first: in this strange, highly glossed, polished, and strobe lit world, the only food we could secure was a cheese sandwich and a glass of red wine. Then, on machines which dubiously promised you the fortunes of the greek gods, or krazy kats, or rock legends (they were all identical but mocked up in different stickers) I won €1 but lost €5. Concluding that gambling really was of the devil, and headed back to the hotel to rest our weary limbs.

Day 2: Forges-les-Eaux to Vernon
A less early start. Got up and realised that although we knew what time breakfast started, we had well overshot this time and did not know what time breakfast finished. After quick freshen up, we went for our petit déjeuner and were plied with more empty carbs than you can shake a dodgy diet at. I think the French need to realise that a croissant, while tasty, isn't one of your five (or seven) a day.

After our tea and orange juice, having found out that the speciality of the region is Neufchatel cheese, we set off in the direction of Gournay-en-Bray, our one-third pitstop. This must be one of the legs which felt the longest. We were not just going along winding country lanes; we were experiencing the countryside in 3D as we looped over and around the rolling hills of Normandy. Don't get me wrong, the were beautiful, and it was satisfying to have some downhills, but the speed you clock on the downhill doesn't really make up for the time you spend on the uphill.

Towards 2pm, we arrived at Gournay-en-Bray, feeling like we had been 'nearly there' for hours. We wolfed down some more empty carbs (I had a pain au chocolat and a delicious apple turnover) before hitting the road once again. However, it wasn't so easy. The yellow signs which mark the Avenue Verte had so far been pretty consistent; if there was any room to doubt which direction you should go, bam, there was a yellow sign confirming that you should follow the left fork and not go down the farm track. In Gournay-en-Bray, though, I think someone had been having fun with the signs. We went round and round the same one way system about three times, uncannily finding ourselves cycling back into the town as soon as we thought we had found our escape route. A helpful French guy tried to explain the route to us, but we then caught sight of an English couple who had invested in the Avenue Verte guidebook (I hear it's a thrilling read). The woman was very concerned about whether we'd eaten or not, and when Leah and Alison (if not me) had allayed her fears, we headed off in the direction the guide suggested.

It just so happened that the main road we were begrudgingly taking passed by the train station. Salivating at the prospect of a train ride to our two-thirds point, Gisors (which we had hoped to reach by lunch), we investigated the station and found that a train would be heading to Gisors in about an hour and a half - a perfect lunch break, we thought, and headed back into the town centre of Gournay-en-Bray. Only... we lost Alison! Leah and I had gone back the same way we'd come, along a green lane-cum-promenade, and as soon as we realised Alison wasn't with us, we cycled back the length of the lane. No sign of her at all. I tried to call her, and got a short 'I dropped my glasses' before the call broke up. We quickly made up the theme tune for Alison's serial.

Alison's adventures
in Gournay-en-Bray
first she lost her glasses
then couldn't find the way - hey!

...before realising that she would probably be somewhere obvious in the town centre. When we'd reclaimed our Todd, we all had an avacadoey lunch (we were a bit carbed out) - though we did still have some bread and some delicious Neufchatel cheese.

We did not feel guilty about the train at all. As we watched the kilometres drop off, we knew we still had a long way to cycle - from Gisors, we had a 20-something kilometre long railway path to Bray-en-Lû, which was in turn about 10km away from out night halt, Vernon.

Into the late afternoon sun, we cycled through fields and cuttings, somehow bypassing civilisation. We knew it was going to be a late one, but by the time we got to Bray-en-Lû, Alison and Leah were delirious. As in the rocker was there and they were well and truly off it. We checked out a B&B recommended by a woman at a takeaway pizza van, and knocked on the door. I made the mistake of explaining our situation fully: we have a reservation in Vernon, but we have cycled a long way, and don't think we can make it there. 'But you must go! You must keep your reservation! They are waiting for you! It is not far' (this, followed by about 10 minutes of the B&B owner shooing me and Alison down the road and making sure we were definitely going in the direction of Vernon.)

Needless to say, we didn't make it to Vernon. We'd already decided that we'd try to get to Giverny, where there would be civilisation, we hoped, then we'd find a B&B or hostel with a room for the night. Wild camping might have been easier. We cycled down one road in a village near to Giverny which promised hotels. We found no hotels. In fact, we saw no one and nothing, not even tumbleweed.

Carrying on to Giverny, we inquired at the first hotel we found. It was opposite a pizzeria, which boded well. But they said there was no room at the inn. However, they did know someone who might have a room, could we wait while they gave them a call? With a map drawn out and explained in broken English, we cycled a kilometre or two to le Moulin in Limetz-Villez, arriving around 10pm. It turns out, despite taking a train for a third of the way, we had still cycled 52 miles!

We went inside the old watermill and were shown into a beautiful B&B living room, then led upstairs to two double rooms which connected via the bathroom. As our host, who spoke no English, was about to leave us to our oven devices, I asked if there was somewhere we could get a meal. Again, he tapped his watch, said something along the lines of 'bouf', then said it would be too late for us to cycle back to the pizzeria in Giverny and there was nothing in Limetz-Villez. Alison and Leah described my face as a picture of dispair (it probably wasn't far from Munch's The Scream. Leah went downstairs first on a recce once we had freshened up, and reported that they had put beer and biscuits for us on a table outside. I hastily snaffled some cereal bars and a bag of pumpkin seeds I'd had in reserve, then headed downstairs for 'dinner'.

Day 3: Limetz-Villez to Paris
Slept really well. The room was ideal, dressed up in tasteful French style with a hint of Goldilocks and the the three bears' cottage. There were some nice touches: I had a soft toy goose on my bed, and Leah and Alison had a large antique wash jug and bowl on their sideboard.

We went downstairs in time for breakfast, and found the breakfast table laid with everything you could want. There were the expected empty carbs (croissants, bread and jam) but also fruit muesli! Boiled eggs! Yoghurt! Fruit juice! And proper loose leaf English Breakfast tea served in a glass teapot with a tea strainer (we discussed the English word for this with the B&B host; the French, passoire is more special and used for tea and tea alone). Needless to say, we breakfasted handsomely, and stocked up our fat reserves for the hard day of cycling ahead.

First off, though, we wanted to visit Monet's garden at Giverny. Famous for its lily pads and Japanese style arched bridges, the garden was definitely worth the visit. Everything was in bloom and full of colour, to an almost excessive degree. The only thing that would have made it better was to visit when there weren't quite so many tourists about. In the water garden, it was impossible to take a photo without getting at least one tourist in the frame.

When we left Monet's garden, we decided to head to Vernon, where we could assess which trains we could catch in the direction of Paris, so we could hop out at, say, Mantes-la-Jolie or Poissy, then cycle the remaining 30-something kilometres into Paris and to the Eiffel(!) Tower(!)

Ascertaining that we could catch a train in just over an hour to Poissy changing at Mantes-la-Jolie, we went and had lunch at a proper French restaurant. The sort of place where there are escargots on the menu not because it's trying to be French but because - why wouldn't you have snails on the menu? We had the most wonderful decarb, and I had a huge salad with some eggs. I only had one piece of bread. In vegetable ecstasy, we then headed across the road to a beautiful confiserie, and ai picked out a white chocolate macaron (to see if it would make me rethink my position on macarons. It did not), a pain au chocolat, and a delicious choux/brioche/melty sweet thing, covered with a mouthwatering freeze-dry strawberry crumble thing, filled with crème patissière and fresh strawberries, and topped with a chocolate button branded with the name of the confiserie. A delight and a definite winner!

When we got back to Vernon station, things didn't go quite according to plan. The girl at the station had sold us tickets and bike reservations for a train which turned out to be a bus: a bus which would take us twice as long to get to Mantes-la-Jolie, and which wouldn't accept bikes. The girl at the ticket office assured us we could take the next train, which would give us about 4 minutes to change to the Poissy train. While we were on the train to Mantes-la-Jolie, it started to rain; when we got off the train to change platform we got soaked, couldn't work the lift and had to haul our three bikes and luggage up and over the station bridge, across three platforms, the train sitting waiting below.

The end destination of the train to Poissy was Paris St Lazare. A guilty look at the map told us that this was significantly closer to where we wanted to be than Poissy. The pleasant countryside and rolling hills of Normandy were gradually being replaced with the less salubrious tower blocks and graffitied walls of the banlieux, and strange people were wandering back and forth down the train, evidently not looking for a seat (the carriages were nearly empty). The rain we had hit at Mantes-la-Jolie seemed to be following us, and we didn't have much of an idea of a route from Poissy to Paris, apart from a very vague map which suggested the Avenue Verte might be somewhere around there. To be honest, everything was pointing towards us staying on that train, but it was only as we were passing through Poissy and none of us got up to get off the train that I conceded: you have to know your limits!

We cycled and walked the final few miles through Paris. A prophetic sun came out from behind heady rainclouds just as we reached the base of the Eiffel Tower: with blood, sweat, and a healthy dose of adventure, we had made it!




We cycled onwards to our apartment, to hot showers, homemade meals, and free wifi. A few nights in Paris to balance our cycle, wine by the Seine or by the Sacré-Cœur: the rest, chers lecteurs, is a story for another time.

A Temwa Odyssey: Cycle Pain-Blog

When you do a sponsored run, cycle, swim, bungee-jump, or you-name-it other activity, I always feel there should be a pain-blog. A blog which proves that the challenge you undertook was, well, challenging.
So to prove that our Odyssey from Bristol to Devizes and back was every bit worth your donation to Temwa, I've copied and pasted the first few books of Homer's finest below and done a global find and replace on Odysseus ('me and Leah') and other pesky terms like Ithaca ('Devizes') and Cyclop's cave ('the tent').




With the wind in our sails, and thinking of sweet Penelope, me and Leah set off from Bristol at 10am as part of a group of 23 Temwa cyclists. Lots of us knew the 16 mile stretch from Bristol to Bath along the converted railway path which goes up a gradual incline for half of the way, then pretty much levels out. It's nicely tarmacked and the only real obstacle is the number of people frolicking around in the pathway teaching their kids - wobbling precariously - how to cycle.

By the time we were through Bath, heading in the direction of Bradford-on-Avon along the Kennet and Avon canal, it was a wearying level of balmy heat. It felt like a long way, on such a hot day, and we were seduced by ice cream, cold drinks and dappled shade on offer at the Crossed Guns in the idyllic hamlet of Avoncliffe. All a little too close to napping, we struggled against the fetters of fatigue and advanced before we were all turned into pigs.

From Bradford-on-Avon, the even towpath becomes a rough, narrow gravel track, which covered us and our bikes with a good glaze of dust. I have never been so covered in dust. On the plus side, peering through the layer of towpath on our faces, we could see lots of attractive, well-kept narrowboats, bedecked with plants and dogs and solar panels. There's an odd sense of satisfaction when you overtake boat after boat as they pootle along at 5mph, navigating the succession of locks along the canal.

Soon, wearied and a fraction sun-kissed, we arrived at the Three Magpies in Seend, a village near Devizes, where we set up camp. We were fed and watered by the somewhat nervy proprietors, had an evening stroll, and hit the sleeping bag before 11, tired from the day's exertion.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast of toast, egg, beans, mushrooms, and hash browns, we set off on our sure-to-be arduous journey back to Bristol. Actually, we flew along, and clocked a pretty satisfying 10.2mph average speed as a group. Psychologically, going back was a lot easier. We recognised the terrain, the distance to the next stop was quantifiable, we weren't left thinking 'agh, when will the pain end?!', and it wasn't a massive shock to the ole' leg muscles by then.

We steamed along to our lunch stop of the Jolly Sailor in Saltford (we had goats cheese tarts, for the nones), then arrived back in Bristol in record time, able to pick our camping gear up from the Temwa drop-off point, and hot-footed our separate ways (me to catch a train, sticky and dust-covered; Leah to make fiction happen).




Thanks to everyone who sponsored me and or Leah in this our latest daring cycling adventure. I'm sure the above trials, tribulations, pain, sweat and dust-covering are proof that every penny was worth it. Not to mention, of course, the actual useful stuff Temwa will be able to do with your donation, like sending kids to school, HIV education, and running sustainable development programmes. So thanks again, all, and watch this space!

Ireland: Galway

(More) Trains
After an enjoyable but hectic few days in Dublin, we headed across Ireland by train to Galway. The train was amazing, comparable with East Coast or DB. I'm still overawed by the fact that the passenger names were on little electronic tabs above the seats, complete with whatever jesting epithets I'd included when I'd entered the passenger details online.




Weather
Ireland is certainly not the place to go for Sun, Sea and Sand. OK, Sea and Sand maybe, but Sun not so much. So, as if making up for the uncharacteristically good weather we had in Dublin, in Galway we suffered the worst of what Ireland has to offer: a month's worth of rain in 48 hours. I had scrimped on packing and deemed waterproof trousers unnecessary, so was soaked to the bone on our first day in Galway.




Nightlife
Guidebooks on Galway wooed us with the promise of a vibrant and bohemian city of culture - Ireland's Bratislava, effectively - and the reality did not disappoint. Galway's main street leading down towards the harbour is lined with pubs and eating places, the former all having great selections of real ales and live music. Galway has much the same to offer as Dublin, but in comparison to Dublin, Galway feels a lot more genuine, perhaps because it caters more for its student population than the transient tourists.





Sights
Of the cultural delights Galway has to offer, by far the most pleasantly surprising was the Cathedral. A beast of modern architecture which combines bold lines with vivid frescoes, the interior is likely to fascinate any visitor.




Hidden Connemara, a Promo
The best part of our stay in Galway, however, has to be our day-trip out in the wilds of Connemara with Shane from Hidden Connemara (http://www.hiddenconnemara.com/Hidden_Connemara_Tours/Homepage.html). Given the month's worth of rain which had fallen the previous 2 days, Shane kindly gave us the option to pull out, but we said we would persevere however boggy the bogs would be. Driving to the ancient monastic settlement of Cong, we started with a low-level woodland walk..







.. but after a bit of a drive around and some lunch in the valley, it had brightened up, and we set out to climb Diamond Hill. This afforded some awesome views over the West coast..




.. as well as teaching us that Bog Venus Fly Traps are actually a thing.




Without wanting to sound too sucky, Shane was the perfect guide - full of random facts and tales, and his maximum group size of 8 meant that the trip was far from impersonal. For the ability to get around an otherwise impenetrable area and experience it from an insider's perspective, Hidden Connemara was was definitely the best €20 I've spent on a day out.

Ireland: When in Dublin...

... do as The Dubliners do!



or, Three Dublin Sights.

Temple Bar
Both the name of a particular bar and an area in central Dublin, Temple Bar is the place to go if you're in search of genuine Guinness and live Irish music - and it certainly flows a-plenty. Of course, Temple Bar is not so good if you're the sort of tourist who wants to go where no tourist has been before. The nightlife in Temple Bar is nearly completely touristocentric, with the result that it can feel a bit more like how you expect Ireland to be than how it really is: if I had a Guinness for every time I'd heard Whiskey in the Jar, I'd be a very happy man. Warning over, I'd still recommend Temple Bar to anyone wanting a great pub atmosphere with live music thrown in.




Trinity College Dublin
Trinity College Dublin is not only home to a large student population, but also houses the Book of Kells, a beautifully-preserved early Irish Bible manuscript. The Book of Kells exhibition was, in my opinion, fascinating. And even if I might be biased because of my fairly atypical interest in manuscripts, the venerable Trinity College library, which you walk through as part of the Book of Kells visit, is sure to leave anyone watery-mouthed with almost Dickensian piles of leather-bound books. On the downside, however, we got talked into joining a walking tour for only €1 more (it already cost about €9 to see the Book of Kells, so seemed worth it). Whilst not without value (we saw parts of Trinity College we would not otherwise have seen, and learnt about the university's historical quirks) the line between quirks and the sort of patronising fictions tour guides tell tourists because they're gullible was a little too frequently overstepped.. and our tour guide, a student at Trinity, kept making nauseating pleas for richer members of the tour group to subsidise her student lifestyle through tips, which some elderly gents indeed did. You've been warned.




Dublin Castle
This is a must-see for anyone who's a great believer in the Sacred Trinity of Tourism: Castle, Cathedral, Museum (..OK, only me then..). Stately from the outside, the Castle is more a 19th century palace-cum-parliament than a medieval motte-and-bailey construction, and showcases corridors full of portraits of figures from its rich and not entirely peaceful history. Perhaps the most surprising thing was the amount of British guilt the Castle's history made me feel. Bearing in mind that my knowledge of Irish history is limited to the Potato Famine, I wasn't expecting that the cultural narrative of being Irish would be quite so closely linked with not being British (whatever that means). Unlike in Germany, where no one is ignorant of the wrongs of the Nazi past, there's definitely a blind spot in the canon of British history, and visiting Dublin Castle (and Ireland in general) certainly fills in some of those worryingly fuzzy patches.