This was the day we went to Castletownshend, which was a place I have wanted to visit my whole life. It is the town where the Somervilles, my ancestors you might call them, came from, and the Somerville estate is still there, the place where Edith Somerville lived and wrote (she was a writer back in the day).

The craziest thing happened in the leadup to this visit though. You remember Tony yeh, the servas guy we stayed with? well, not mentioning anything about the whole somerville thing, i had told him we were thinking of going to castletownshend in the next few days and he said he had a pal who lived there, so he gave me his number incase we wanted someone to show us around town. Lo and behold, im on the phone to this guys, Bruce, for five seconds and he tells me he LIVES on the somerville estate! I just could not believe my luck, it was like it was beyond meant to be...So it was magical. We had a funny funny time hitchhiking all the way from glengariff to castletownshend and back ( we managed o do it the whole way!). we got picked up by two lovely aussie guys, what are the chances, who took us to skibereen, where we stopped to visit the library and farmers markets, then a cute old man who we could barely understand took us right to the front gates of the somerville estate, as he knew exactly where it was. After venturing into the grandest of gardens and admiring the giant house and surrounding grounds, we met Jane Somerville who lives in the house now, and her kids and her seriously CUTE dogs. Still not quite sure how I'm related to her, but it was so cool to meet her.

Then we went to meet Bruce and his Italian girlfriend, Paola, who were both so nice and showed us around the entire estate and told me many things about edith somerville, and the rest of the fanmily ,and some history about the area. It was so weird in a good way to be right there, hearing these things and realising wow, i am related to these people, to these places somehow? The beauty of the landscape, of the sea and the cliffs and the green rolling hills dotted with cows and beacons reminiscent of lord of the rings and boats filling the port. Such an amazing place I wish I could have stayed for a week. I soaked it all up in that one day though, I fell in love with everything about it.

After enjoying some wine and chats with Bruce and Paola in their lovely garden, we tok a visit down (literally, it was quite steep) into the village to see the church and the cemetary behins where edith somerville is buried in this cool tomb like thing. the view from the cemetary was quite spectacular too.

So enraptured by this rediscovered heritage , and so happy liv and jess were there to share my excitement, and I am so happy I got to witness such beautiful things.

The hitch home was not so smooth as the way there, as it began to rain and we almost gave up, but then a nice (if a bit crazy) irish man picked us up and drove us straight to the front door of our hostel, where we were staying (free of charge, we befriended the owner patrick at the oub on ouir first night, nothing suss i swear) so it was all good.

I love Ireland!