Happy Halloween! It's the October long weekend here today - sort of mid-term/clocks have just gone back/bank holiday weekend and this year rather conveniently falls on Halloween. Massive pumpkins have been on sale in the supermarkets since we flew in from Dubai 5 weeks ago - a great deal of home-carving must be going on somewhere. There are muffins with eyeballs, fabulous witches costumes to buy for a few euro and spooky decorations galore. No - Ireland isn't ...

It's been a while since we've had a castle jaunt and today, being the first Wednesday of the month, it was the day to finally visit Cahir Castle (that's "Keer" as we found out last time. We visited this part of Co. Tipperary way back near Christmas 2014 and the castle was shut for repairs so it's been on the "to do" list for a while. It was almost a 2 hour drive down to the castle and we were pleased to see there were hardly any thrifty types there at all - '1s...

After our fun three days in Dubai and the trying and tiring day to get here, sleeping in was, without a doubt, our first order of business in Ireland. Then bacon. Yup, 4 months without pork products was no doubt great for our health but woeful for morale. We shopped, collected eggs, caught up with our friends down in the mobile home at Cahore beach (and said hello to all the doggies - on 'holiday' at the beach with their owners for the first week of our stay)....

Days 702-714, 5-16 May '16, Farewell Ireland...It's been a busy but not earthshattering final couple of weeks in Ireland. We've spend a lot of time in Cahore and taking long walks on the beach (sounds like a dating website!) The weather has been improving day by day - even up to 20 scorching degrees... that's shorts and T-shirts weather here in the emerald isle incidentally. When we have been indoors we've been Netflixing and watched multiple series of iZombie....

Days 698-701, 1-4 May '16, Goatwatch continues. As daft as it might sound, we really are in the middle of the Circle of Life here in Ireland. Chicks are being hatched and some make it (some don't). We try to have a Darwinistic/Survival of the fittest viewpoint. Stripey is now thriving. But it's not been an easy run. She was pooping like crazy shortly after she was born and, who'da thunk it, it was baby-s**t yellow. Daisy wasn't cleaning her (understandably)...