Wednesday saw me returning to Clonakilty model railway village which my family had visited 20 years before with a heap of cousins. Back then aged 12, I didn't really see the appeal. This time with a 2 year old in tow, the place was magical -
She loved it and it was so lovely to see her little blonde curls bobbing up and down between the miniature houses. It then dawned on me, that in 1995, there were 10 cousins that day and 5 of them were under 5 so no wonder we were there! We had a great few hours there including a rickety train ride on a public road (including near misses with trucks) down to inchydoney beach which was beautiful.

On the drive home we decided to go 'off piste' and see where it took us ...

Road number 1 turned our not to be a road in any real sense, unless you define a road as a narrow track with grass growing in the middle of the 'road'!! We should have known when we drove past a farmhouse early on and he laughed at us that maybe it was a mistake. Even worse, it just led us back into the main road, so poor Ed spent 20 minutes praying that we didn't meet another car coming towards us whilst involuntarily driving off road for no reason whatsoever!

Road number 2 had signposts to a beach - result! We arrived to discover that it was a pebble beach. Why are they defined as beaches? They aren't beaches in my book!! We bought Betsy her promised ice-cream and looked at the skies ... The pleasant late afternoon sun had been replaced with a big black cloud! We ate our ice-creams in the car!

Road number 3 bought us to a tiny secluded and empty beach (a sandy one!) The sun had returned and we had an hour where Ed lay down and read the paper, I went in for a paddle, Betsy built sandcastles and Patrick smiled! Perfect!