All change

This is going to be a quick one, mostly photos I think, because the Feakle Traditional Music Festival has started and I'm now well into diddly eye mode. It began last night, and we had plenty of tunes in a pub session as well as being on stage at the opening, celebrating the playing of box-player Seamus Bugler - but that's another story.

We went to Grange on Winter Solstice this year. We had planned on Kilglass (see photo above) but the Shannon Rally was in there. The journey to either Grange or Kilglass is simply beautiful. You turn in through a gap in tall reeds that only becomes apparent when facing it straight on. For a while you wind between reeds, fortunately well marked - without the markers you would need a guide or plenty of time in which to get lost and find yourself again. The waters open into small lakes and large pools which provide excellent anchorage. Eventually you find yourself at a point where you can pass through the Carrigeen Cut to Kilglass, or turn right to Grange.

The last time we were in Grange for the peace and quiet a family of water skiiers turned up. We started off a bit annoyed - this river is ours after all! - but they turned out to be charming. And of course they considered this section of the river to be theirs. They'd been coming there for years, had grown up there, but they were very tolerant towards us interlopers.

This time we were looking once again for peace and quiet after a chatty and boaty couple of days. We knew the rally was coming into Grange the following day, but that was tomorrow. However preparations were in hand. There was a digger, a mower, a strimmer. It went on all evening. Eventually we upped and crossed to the other side of the lake and dropped anchor. Joe and Frankie certainly thought it was worth it:




And later we were treated to a fabulous sunset:

We left Winter Solstice back in Richmond Harbour for a few days - until after the festival - then we'll be bringing her south again, back into the home territory of Lough Derg.

Now I have to go and bake an orange and ginger cake and a make a chilli con carne. The van is down in Feakle already so we don't have to worry about drinking and driving. We'll be on festival time - to bed at quarter to or quarter past three (for some reason) and up around eleven. Our musician friend Pete is arriving this afternoon on the ferry from deepest Shropshire. He'll be staying in the house while we come back and forth.

Diddly eye diddly eye.