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Out on the water again. We arrived at Quivvy Marine just outside Belturbet on Friday after spending Thursday night in Carrick-on-Shannon. We hadn't meant to go to Carrick. We were intending, due to indecisiveness, to stay at home, do some gardening perhaps, go to a play at the local Drama Festival then the session in Shortt's in Feakle. Maybe stay in the van in Feakle.

But we were packing up the van on Thursday and the initial plan of the week before kicked in. Once you have the van half packed you simply have to get in it and drive off into the wide blue yonder. Or, in our case, Carrick. Going to Belturbet via Carrick is not our usual route. Not the best way at all in fact. But we hadn't intended to go that far. We began by postulating Shannon Harbour as a stopping place. Then it was Hodson Bay just beyond Athlone. Then it was Lecarrow just beyond Hodson Bay. By this time we were up the wrong side of Lough Ree for Belturbet via the sensible route and it certainly wasn't the best way to Carrick, but we were into the drive and a curry called.

We didn't have a curry either in the end. We stopped off in The Oarsman for a pint of their fine ale, and it was so warm and cosy, and we were chilled through after walking the dogs in the bitter cold. There was a table by the fire and a good menu, so we stopped. Then out to Leitrim Village just up the road to spend the night in the wonderfully quiet harbour.

Next day to Quivvy to unwrap Winter Solstice from her covers. She was all zipped in good and tight and we didn't know whether the engines would start - there was a good chance they wouldn't after months of inactivity and all that freezing weather. And only one of them did. But I won't go into the tedium of it all. Joe, with the help of David Cole whose marina it is, fixed it. And on Saturday morning in bright sunshine off we went around the corner to Galloon, just across the border in Co Fermanagh. A little try-out of everything. Galloon has a very strange and interesting graveyard. It's small, as is Galloon (it's just a townland I think). Very old and battered headstones. Several of which look like this:

It seems that at one time there were four high crosses here, but only the partial shafts of two of them remain. Many of the headstones are 18th and 19th century. We were told a couple of years ago that the images on the headstones related to the Masons.




On a more prosaic, but perhaps more useful note (unless you are dead and need burying) there's also a fine new toilet block in Galloon that replaces an ugly old pre-fab. No showers though. They were good showers too, and free.

After Galloon it was off to Crom Castle for lunch and a walk. I love Crom. Everything about it is wonderful. The jetty, the fact you can enter by the back door and feel like you own the place, the walks, especially to the old castle where Aoife flings herself onto the soft grass and rolls and rolls. Or poses between avenues of trees.

Lunch was great too. A picnic packed in the van. Paté, two good cheeses, tiny tomatoes, bread. And next thing Joe is rummaging around in the bilges and comes out with a bottle of Prosecco. Sigh. So deliciously decadent.

Crom was busy. We were deeply affronted by this. Other people? How dare they. Fishermen on the jetty, two other cruisers with the same idea as us. We could (almost) forgive the boats. But then as we set out on the walk hordes, absolute hordes, appeared from god knows what nooks and crannies and followed us. Back the other way we went in full dudgeon, then veered off to the boat for lunch to quell our rumbling stomachs. Felt much better after that. So mellow, in fact, that we were absolutely civil to the returning walkers. Especially as they were returning, and we were not.

More Crom pics:

Steam boats, bats and butterflies

Enthusiasts being enthusiastic

We were in Crom the night before we came back home along with more than half a dozen steam boats. These shiny shiny things are owned by enthusiasts, much, I imagine, like the people who do things with steam traction engines.

The people we met were mostly (all?) from the Steam Boat Association, formed in 1971 in the UK 'to promote the enjoyment of steamboats and to represent the interests of steamboat owners'. I feel there should be small print saying 'Enjoy steam boats sensibly'.

The shiniest, prettiest of the steam boats.

The varnish on these boats made me want to hide Winter Solstice under a tarpaulin. It was as though they had been French polished. And the engines were on show with not a drop of oil upon them. The Association members were recently on a trip to Lake Windermere in Cumbria, half a milk carton of which was emptied into Lough Erne. A sharing of the waters.

Swallows in the morning mist at Quivvy Marina

I had a mutual guilt experience on the way home. We'd just left Quivvy Marina where there are no rubbish bins - the one downside of staying there. So we stopped in Belturbet and I walked to the bins with my bundle of newspapers and white plastic bin liner. There was a fellow mowing the grass. I thought one of those pathetic wimpy thoughts I have when in the presence of anyone in uniform, albeit only a grass mower - is he going to come and tell me off. And the bugger did. 

'Those bins are only for people on boats to use,' he said.

'But I am!' I exclaimed. 'We're just on our way home but we were here all week and the boat's just up the river and isn't this a fantastic place we had such a great time and we were at the Fleadh in Cavan...'

'Oh I'm really sorry but we get so many people dropping their rubbish and....'

'I know and we have the same and you're doing exactly the right thing...'

He was an incredibly knowledgeable fellow called Brendan. Lots of local history stuff. I left ten minutes later, each apologising to the other. I still feel guilty though.


The garden is full of butterflies. There's a few varieties, but this afternoon Small Tortoiseshells are everywhere. This must be the hatching from the little black caterpillars that colonised a bunch of nettles in the garden.

There was also a bat in the house. Just before we went away the last time, every evening at dusk a bat appeared in the glasshouse that the sitting room/study door opens onto. This door was open, so we never knew if the bat was getting into the glasshouse or into the sitting room. Today it appeared in the sitting room. Flew into the spare room and round and round. Eventually back into the sitting room, into the glasshouse and out. Ho hum. Not sure where it's getting in. They're tiny and climb into little cracks to get into the roof space. It's getting in from outside but for some reason has taken to a morning exit into the house.

The difficulty is that Joe doesn't like bats. At all. This was after a nasty experience in a belfry. And I'm going away to Blighty for a few days tomorrow. Further posts will be from Nantwich where I'm visiting the parents.

Getting (very) wet

So here we are back in Enniskillen. We had a great day yesterday. Began at Quivvy Marina where we'd arrived on Monday mid-afternoon. On Tuesday morning we returned to Crom Castle in glorious hot sunshine. First a walk with the dogs to the old castle. This is Aoife's favourite walk at the moment. The gravelly path changes to short soft grass where she can do her diving roll. Both dogs rolled and ran and rolled again. After a decadent lunch (glass of chilled white) we took the bikes around the Crom estate. The new castle is very imposing. You can rent the west wing of it. Not for those of us on ordinary incomes I don't suppose. Wonder whether it comes complete with ghost.

Last night we went to Carrybridge - there we are tucked in the bottom right hand corner of the photo with the dinghy attached. Our friend Helen Elliott was to pick us up and bring us to Enniskillen for dinner. First we needed to walk the hounds. Carrybridge isn't great for this, so we headed along the road and down to the marina that straggles along the shore. At the furthest point we turned and saw the weather approaching. Black, with curtains of rain. The boat hatches were open, as was the canopy. We were ten minutes away. Before we'd even left the marina the rain began. Big heavy torrents of it.

I arrived back first with Frankie who can move faster than Aoife who is contrary and refuses to move if you try to make her do something she doesn't like. There was a broad puddle on the seat in the cockpit. The floor was in flood. Inside the table had caught most of the water. I had the hatches closed when Joe arrived with Aoife under his arm. We were both drenched. Halfway through the mopping up Joe noticed another torrent pouring onto my bed. A pair of trousers had caught a lot of that. Jesus the rain that came down. It was plastic covers and duck tape and newspapers strewn and towels mopping.

Next time check the approaching clouds before leaving the boat unhatched.

Hope to get in some sailing this afternoon. Going up to Wetherspoons in a minute to upload this and check the emails. Free WiFi there. I won't drink the coffee this time though.

Ha. And here we are in Wetherspoons. Or here I am. Joe's gone off in search of chutney. He's gone to the deli so will probably come back with handfuls of cheese and salami and who knows what else. Looks like a decadent lunch again.

Crom Castle and Russians

The trip back down Upper Lough Erne on Tuesday was fabulous. We didn't leave Enniskillen until nearly four - too much to do. There was beer to be bought (Joe has a passion for English bitter, and Asda had a great supply) and a whole series of other jobs. There was hardly a boat on the water and it was perfectly still. No mishaps at Carrybridge either, where I was extra vigilant. When the water is so calm and oily Winter Solstice leaves a beautiful pattern on the lake behind her. That's our dinghy in the photo, not someone tailgaiting.

We were headed for Crom Castle. This is a National Trust place that is still lived in by the Earl of Erne. The 1,900 acre estate is an important nature conservation site with the largest surviving area of oak woodland in Northern Ireland. The old castle (in the photo) looks out over the water towards a tower on an island. This is one of those follies wealthy people used to build (and probably still do) because they enhanced the view.

It was seven by the time we turned the corner to see the jetty ahead of us, but that's one of the delights of boating in June. Plenty of time to have a shower (we have hot water after the engine has been running), light the barbecue and feel smug because we were the only cruiser on the jetty (there's Joe in the photo below looking smug). There was another boat tied up though - a gorgeous sailing boat that we both recognised as an Ian Oughtred design. This is not to show off. Joe was a keen reader of Wooden Boat magazine for a while, and he'd toyed with the idea of building a day boat himself. Ian Oughtred provides plans and so on, and his designs are stunning, all shiny timber and sweet lines. By coincidence Joe had bought a copy of Wooden Boat in Enniskillen (the photos are pure boat porn), and there was a photo of a craft very like the sailing boat across from us. It turned out it was a Ness Yawl, and the family who owned it were staying in one of the Crom Castle cottages.

We were waiting for the barbecue to be ready when the inevitable happened. Another cruiser appeared at the turn of the waterway. A hire boat. With, it turned out, a Russian couple on board. They had very little English but said they were from Moscow. How exotic! In Ireland! The woman of the boat fell in love with Frankie and every time she passed spent five minutes whispering sweet nothings and petting and fussing her. Frankie was in heaven. She wants to be spoken to in Russian all the time.