Two go mad in Dublin

I’m blogging this trip to Ireland so long after the event, that it seems forever ago, although it was only just over a month.

I must admit, I almost skipped writing this up altogether, but Jay and I had such a fantastic time in Dublin, it would be a pity not to record it properly here. I use this blog more as a personal diary than anything else, and I find that I really enjoy going back to re-read old blog posts and re-live the memories. And this was a trip I definitely wouldn’t want to forget.

It all started just before Christmas last year, when the mighty Pearl Jam announced their European tour. It was a given that I’d be getting tickets for at least one gig (I’d do the whole tour if I could! Very very jealous of my pal Leanne who, almost, did just that!) – it was just a case of which one?

There was only one date in England – the Hard Rock Calling festival in London, and I almost went for that one….but….I never really rate festival sets, they are so much shorter than headline gigs and it’s often a struggle to get within a mile of the stage. Festivals are great to see a lot of bands that you like – but for one band that you LOVE, it has to be a headliner.

So – my two most feasible options were Dublin and Belfast….. I was open to either, but plumped for Dublin in the end as the acoustics are a lot better in the O2 than at the Odyssey in Belfast (dedicated music venue vs the Giants’ rink), plus I haven’t been to Dublin in years and miss the place (I used to work there).

I booked the tickets, flights and hotel and then kind of forgot about it a bit until the beginning of June, when I realised 1) I’d better get something arranged in relation to Connor as we weren’t taking him with us and he would need looking after! (HUGE thanks to Michelle and Tracy for stepping up to the plate on that one!) and 2) wooooo hoooooo we’re going to one of the best cities in Europe for TWO WHOLE DAYS without any kiddiwinks in tow :) :) :)

Other than the gig itself, on the Tuesday night, we had nothing planned, so we had all of daytime Tuesday and daytime Wednesday available for sightseeing and geocaching, fab!

So – on the Tuesday morning we were up bright and early – our flight left at 8am from Bristol airport, so we needed to be out of the house by 6am at the very latest – yawn! Darby was all primed to wake Connor at 8 and walk him up to school – I presume that happened as I didn’t have the truant officer on the phone :) Our flight was on time and we were in Dublin city centre by a quarter to 10.

As we got off the airport bus, outside the bus depot on O’Connell street, Jay produced a parcel from his bag, all wrapped up in Christmas paper. I was mildly taken aback, it being the middle of June and everything, but happily opened it anyway (a pressie! yay!) – and it turned out to be a super cool Pearl Jam watch, which he originally bought for me for Christmas last year, but then when the gigs were announced decided to sit on it until we got to Dublin. He even had it engraved with “Pearl Jam Dublin 22.06.10 love Jay xxx” :) :) :) I have the best boyfriend in the world :) :) :)

After a quick brunch in Subway, we jumped straight into sightseeing with gusto. We bought tickets for the hop on hop off open topped double decker bus thingy and started our tour. The commentary was entertaining, and we saw all the main sights – the impressive Millenium Spire (aka the Stiffey by the Liffey) on O’Connell Street, which is new since I was last here (apparently there were so many delays in its construction that the MILLENIUM Spire finally got erected in 2003 lol) – Trinity College – numerous Cathedrals – Grafton Street & Temple Bar – the Guinness Brewery and so on.

The first place we got off the bus was at Dublin Castle, we didn’t go inside but we did gatecrash a guided tour for a while outside. The tour guide told an interesting story about the Justice statue. Apparently the sculptor who designed it thought that it would be cool to give her a working set of scales. The only problem was, that one pan of the scales ended up largely shadowed by her arm, the other was right out in the open. So whenever it rained (which it does a LOT in Ireland :) ), the scales of justice tipped. This was considered to be a fitting analogy for the corrupt British justice system. Eventually, they drilled a drainage hole in the bottom of both pans :)

(you can just see the holes if you click to see this photo montage at full size)

We also explored the gardens nearby, looking for Ireland’s most visited physical geocache, Castle Rock, which was our first find on Irish soil.

After our stop off at the castle, we hopped back on the tour bus and went round to Killmainham Gaol.

Opposite the old prison is this moving monument to those executed by firing squad for their part in the 1916 uprising.

Next we did the prison tour. Which was sooooo interesting! It takes in both the social and political history of the prison, from the early days of prison reform, through to the events of 1916.

It did take ages though, so by the time we emerged, we needed to hot foot it to our hotel.

We hopped off the tour bus one last time to log the virtual geocache at the spire:

and then we took it round to Merrion Square, which was the closest drop off point to where we were headed (near the Lansdowne Road rugby stadium), and walked the rest of the way.

And some!

Turns out the hotel wasn’t where I thought it was :| So I checked a map online, and walked what felt like forever further on to where the map said it was. It wasn’t there either. We asked a few people for directions, nobody had even heard of our hotel! I was starting to panic big time by this point!

Eventually we went into an estate agent and asked him, he sent us back to the first place I had thought the hotel was at. Turns out it was there after all!  We had probably wandered around for at least an extra hour, all tired and sweaty and hungry. Rather silly.

As we walked into the (very posh!) hotel lobby, I was panicking about the time, we hadn’t eaten since our early brunch, and hadn’t had a single alcoholic drink yet (what’s the point of coming to Ireland and not having a beer? :) ). Our original plan had been to get back to the hotel about 4, shower, change, get ready for the gig, and then have a drink and a bite to eat in the hotel bar, before walking up to the gig for about 6:30pm.

Given it was already 6pm, that clearly wasn’t going to happen! And then the next set back – the hotel had no record of our booking! And they were full! While they looked (for a seemingly interminable amount of time) for the booking I had made months before, they turned a couple of people away who had walked in looking for a room, and I was convinced at that point we were going to be sleeping on the streets. But hallelujah, they eventually got their systems sorted out and miraculously produced a room key….and the room was really really nice (and a bargain too – rate on their website 189 euros a night, I got it for 65 euros, which was about £58)

There was no time for food, I straightened my hair at lightning speed, we took a quick pic of us and the room (using my gorillapod which I haven't seen since - I wonder if I left it there?) and we just managed to catch a bus heading to the gig which left our hotel at ¼ to 7 or so. The hotel had a little convenience store next door, and I had managed to grab a pack of cakey things in there just before the bus came, so that was our dinner :) To be fair, they were lush!

So - onto the gig.  It was awwwweeesoooommmmeee!!!!! :) :) :)

We got there just after 7pm, by which time they had taken down the big 10 Club banner and so we didn’t really know where to go. I approached a security guard, and as soon as I mentioned we were 10 Club he whisked us past the long queue outside to a side entrance where we were handed our special wristbands and all that jazz – we felt like guest list VIPs :) very cool :)

Once inside, I had a good look around for Leanne but couldn’t spot her straight away, so I texted her. She said she was down at the front on Mike’s side so I wandered down to have a look. I saw one girl who did look a bit like her, same frames on her specs, similar hair, etc, standing in the right spot. She wasn’t wearing Leanne’s trademarked triple-heart necklace though, but I thought it was worth a try. “Leanne??” “me?” “yes” “no, I’m Sandy, nice to meet you :)”. Oh well, at least I made a new friend :) A few minutes later I spotted the real Leanne, looking unmistakeably and exactly like Leanne, 3 hearts proudly on show :) Doh.

Here we are, I am sporting my usual care-in-the-community smile that means “I am very happy and excited! yay!” You might have spotted it earlier on the tour bus also :)

I gave her the necklace I made her, I hope she liked it, it’s hard to tell in the hustle bustle of a busy gig. And she gave me a very cool custom-made-just-for-this-tour PJ sticker and a PJ Europe badge. Hooray for pressies!

We were in plenty of time for the actual music, despite our flustered rushing about – the excellent support, Ben Harper and Relentless7, came on about half an hour after we arrived – so we had time to get a drink in. Well, we could have had we taken out second mortgages before the trip. SEVEN EUROS (that’s over a fiver) for one little bottle of Smirnoff Ice! Pints of lager were similarly horrendously expensive. There was no cider at all. Sob. In the end, Jay drank coke, and I had some little teeny bottles of white wine at 6 euro a pop, as I figured that was the best alcohol to price ratio available.

I’d downed 2 or 3 of these by the time Pearl Jam came on, not enough to fall over and forget things, just enough to have a nice warm glow and an even bigger grin than usual :)

The band were fantastic – it was the opening night of the tour and I was worried they might be jetlagged, but apparently they had been in Europe for a few days and they seemed lively enough to me :) It was a good set list, Backspacer heavy – but then this was the Backspacer tour – and a few people complained that some of the big classics were left out – but personally I prefer hearing the more obscure stuff anyway. We even got a brand new song never played before anywhere, because we is speshal :D

• Long Road – great opener – sound was fantastic too
• Once – got everyone singing and jumping about
• The Fixer – sped up the jumping about :)
• Why Go – emotional
• Corduroy – ditto “absolutely nothing’s changed, take my hand, not my picture…” – singalong heaven
• Severed Hand – one of my favourites from Avocado, good live for getting everyone bouncing again
• Amongst The waves – great to hear this live, my standout fave from Backspacer and a song that means a lot to me at a personal level
• Even Flow – claaaasssssicccc
• Unthought Known – gorgeous
• Nothingman – more singalongaDublin :)
• Lukin into Not For You – singalong becomes shoutalong

• Down – always good to hear a Lost Dog
• Got Some – nice feel good number, good for a smile and a boogie :)
• Comatose – great start to this one, gets everyone going
• Arms Aloft – this is a Joe strummer cover, and it had a nice long spoken intro from Eddie. It went down really well.
• Do The Evolution – Connor will be upset he missed this one, it’s his favourite – another good shoutalong number
• Just Breathe – first song of the first encore - just Eddie and an acoustic guitar, just beautiful
• Given To Fly – another emotional one
• Of The Earth – the brand new song – or at least that’s how it was introduced – it turns out it was very likely an Avocado outtake. Liked this one a lot. It had a kind of prog rock vibe to it almost.
• Porch – always great live
• Elderly Woman…. – this kicked off the second encore, excellent
• Better Man – the O2 sang this one on its own, the band might as well have gone for a comfort break :) brilliant
• Kick Out The Jams – fantastic energy and one of my favourite covers
• Alive – last song of the night, everyone in the building had their arms in the air and was singing their hearts out. A great end to an amazing set.

I can thoroughly recommend the O2 as a gig venue – great acoustics, not a bad seat in the house in terms of line of sight – just have a drink before you get there, or take lots of money!

So, that was the Tuesday.

The next morning, we woke up fairly early, checked out of the hotel, grabbed some brekkie, and wandered down to the DART (train) station to catch a train out to Bray – a seaside resort about ten miles outside of Dublin. The train journey was a treat in itself, it went all along the coast, right up alongside the sea, passing through some lovely resort towns and also the hustle bustle of Dun Laoghaire ferry port.


When we got to Bray, we thought it wise to locate the bus stop where our airport transfer coach was due to pick us up later in the day, before we went off exploring. So we asked an old lady walking past, who, to my delight, said “to be sure to be sure” as part of her answer to us. In all my years of working in Dublin I had never heard anyone actually say that :) Made my day :)

Bus stop duly tracked down, we set off along the sea front and up onto Bray Head, in search of a very special geocache – the oldest surviving cache in the whole of Europe – “Europe’s First”.

There was a fab view from up on the Head:

apologies for my bad photo-stitching

We duly found the cache (more details on an upcoming geocaching specific post) and walked back down to town, by which time the sun was shining strong.

A few more piccies from while we were up there:

aha - I can't have left my gorillapod in the hotel....as we used it for that pic of us together too...hopefully it will turn up

We had a bit of time to kill after finding the cache, so we went looking for another, then had some (very delicious) smoothies down on the sea front, and then took a slow wander to the bus stop. To be sure to be sure :)

We looked in a few shops along the way, bought some postcards for Postcrossing, and stopped to take some pics of the gorgeous river that runs through the town. But eventually we could put off going home no longer, and we got on the aircoach and headed back to the airport (sob).

Like any good Pearl Jam fan would who comes from a country that doesn’t have “yield” signs (we have “give way” instead), I got all excited to see this from the bus window:

And that just about wraps up my Dublin diary. I’d love to go back again someday. I’m sure I will.

I’ll leave you with a purty picture of clouds from the journey home…..

a Postcrossing update.... vol. 2

This is the second of my Postcrossing books.

In total I’ve now sent 52 postcards out into the wide wide world, and have received 46

Here’s my sent and received map so far:

It’s so much fun to see where my little friendly messages have gone, and where my own equally lovely missives originated. Both Connor and I get so excited when we get home in the evening to find a new postcard sitting on the mat. My postman must think I am everso popular! :)

My favourite received cards since my last update (click to see them better):

You can see this one at the front of the book above – it’s a vintage oversized card showing B&W scenes of old (pre the fall of the wall) East Berlin – fascinating!

This card from China is just beautiful – it had gorgeous stamps too

This Postcrosser from the Netherlands tried hard to find an ice hockey card for me, but this fab image is close enough :)

This image made me smile :)

This German card was totally handmade – very cute!

This graffiti card is huge! And depicts some of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall c 1988 (since demolished). Tying in neatly with that first card I mentioned.

And finally, this card form the Czech Republic features the artwork of Alfons Mucha – which I like very much







Until next time, Happy Postcrossing!

A to Z Year : June 4th – July 15th : the letters L, M and N

A bumper A-Z Year blog post this time around, as I have three letters to do at once....
As you will discover, one of these letters was a big fat FAIL, but we did enough in the other two, I think, to take up the slack. 

To kickstart L fortnight, we paid a visit to Lacock Abbey, near Calne, Wilts.  This is a wonderful place to visit, and to photograph, and in fact it is of particular interest to photographers, being the location of the first ever print to be taken from a photographic negative. 

This little piece of history was both taken and developed in Lacock Village, and it is on display there in a small photography museum.  Aptly it is called "latticed window":

Harry Potter fanatics will recognise some of the scenes in the photo-montage below, as Lacock was extensively used as a location in the first two Potter movies: 

We were a little bemused by the lump of sugar on the nose of the scapegoat statue in the great hall.  I googled it when I got home - apparently a mischievous student placed the original sugarlump there back in 1919, and the tradition has been observed ever since - nice touch :)

The following day, we went Letterboxing. Or, at least, hybrid-letterboxing.

Letterboxes are very much like geocaches, in as much as they are waterproof containers hidden in remote locations for people to find, but they are found with maps and clues, not with a GPSr, and as such they pre-date geocaching by over a century.

As well as the standard log book, they also contain a rubber stamp, with which letterboxers can stamp their personal journal as a record of their visit.

Being a keen rubber stamper, then, you can imagine I have a particular interest in letterboxes – and their geocaching equivalent, the letterbox-hybrid geocache, which is found via GPS co-ordinates or a combination of co-ordinates and clues, but does contain the required rubber stamp. And L-fortnight seemed like a perfect excuse to go out and look for one.

Connor was at his dad’s, and I didn’t know when he would want picking up, so we couldn’t go too far afield - that made our decision for us, as there are only two letterbox-hybrids within 10 miles of Swindon, and they are both up on the Marlborough Downs. So the Downs it was (never sure why they are called Downs when they are high Up?)

It was a gorgeous day, and we had fun wading through the flowers to get up to the cache location (don't worry, we were on a public footpath, not that you can see it that clearly on the pictures, we weren't just randomly barging through some poor farmer's crops)

can you even spot Reece? :)

Gorgeous view from up top:

not sure who that posh house belongs to...

Sadly, when we found the cache, its stamp and inkpad had gone missing :( I was especially miffed about this as it was apparently a First Nations style one, and as most of you can probably tell from my blog header (and my back), I’m very fond of First Nations artwork. So – all in – although we got the Letterbox icon for our profile – this was just like finding a normal geocache. Boo. Luckily the log book was still there, and a very cute Canadian Cacher book it was too:

Even more sadly, when the owner of the cache went up to replace the stamp and inkpad a couple of days later, the entire cache had gone – along with another 8 or 9 from the same series - there is no way that non geocachers could have innocently stumbled across so many of the caches over just a few days, so it looks like this series was deliberately sabotaged by a fellow cacher – or at least somebody using the website to obtain co-ordinates – and that’s just rotten :(

Now that our local letterbox-hybrid geocache count was down to one (and that one was proving very hard to reach as there are currently road works being carried out in the layby which is the only sensible nearby parking spot – we’ll get it one day though) – I decided we should do our bit and hide our own. And that’s exactly what we did a little later in the L fortnight. It’s here, should you wish to find it, it’s had some really positive logs so far :)

During this fortnight I also made a necklace for my pal Leanne as I was due to see her the following week in Dublin. She lives down in Cornwall, which of course is surfing country, and is a biiiiiig Peal Jam fan, so I thought that this line of lyrics from Amongst The Waves was appropriate.

Gratuitous Pearl Jam video:

the boys walking up onto Red Down

The following Saturday, we tackled our longest caching streak in a single day – finding 12 in an afternoon, on a 4.5 mile walk on the Red Down near Highworth. It was another lovely day.












And then on the Sunday, we went all out on the L front, and took a trip to see the Lions of Longleat.  I have to admit, I love Longleat, I wish we could go there more often, but it's not cheap!  I got our tickets this time using Tesco tokens, but had we paid cash it would have cost us £82 to get in - ouch!

We took way too many pictures, but here's a flavour of the day:

Plus, of course, we got lost in the maze:

And here is another shot of the headlining lions  (we also saw sea lions and an African lowland gorilla):

After Longleat, we took a short detour on the way home to do one nearby geocache that sounded really interesting, plus it was at an L word :)  St Leonards Old Church, to be precise.

I do love me some pretty ruins, and this gorgeous old church didn't disappoint.  Connor was pretty chuffed with the huuuuge ammo can cache too :)  Especially as it contained some CDs amongst the swag, one of which was by one of his favourite bands - McFly - so he snapped that up!


And last but not least for L are two things that I have managed to lose the photos of, because I am a twit :) (they were on my old phone, which I gave to my middle son when I got a new phone, and forgot to take the photos off it first, and he promptly deleted them all, doh!)

First of all, Connor and Reece spent all morning making the most amazing spaceships out of Lego.  They really were cool, but you will have to use your imagination.

And lastly, I went on one of my lunchtime lone geocaching expeditions, to find a cache placed exactly upon the second line of longitude, by local cachers the Lydford Locators.   Phew!  That's a lot of Ls :)

And that just about wraps up the letter L, on to M fortnight.....

On our first M Saturday, we went on a trek to mysterious Woodchester Mansion, utilising our freshly purchased National Trust family membership. This place is truly amazing, you have to walk through the woods for just over a mile to get to the house itself, but there are all sorts of interesting ruins and things to see in the grounds too. Plus the valley that the mansion is set in, has THE BEST echo. One of those proper ones where you can have a conversation with yourself. Brilliant :)

The whole area is supposed to be haunted, not least with the spirits of the American servicemen who tragically drowned in one of the property’s large lakes when the bridge they were driving a tank over (during some sort of practice manoeuvres) collapsed – and also many have claimed to see the manifestation of an angel who apparently tried to warn of this tragedy before it happened. Others say that the whole angel story was simply made up by a local author who was trying to drum up interest in his book about the mansion in order to sell the movie rights. We certainly didn’t see any ghosts or angels – but the whole place does have a very spooky feel to it.

The house itself was never finished, it looks mainly done from the outside, but inside it has no floors/ceilings, so it is one big empty shell.  The information board outside hams it up by asking “In 1870, why did a group of the finest craftsmen in Europe suddenly and mysteriously abandon one of the most ambitious building projects in Victorian England?”

The answer isn’t really all that mysterious – the money ran out – and you don’t tend to find that “the finest craftsmen” hang around for long when they’re not getting paid :)  It all adds to the mystique though.

As do the truly monstrous gargoyles around the building, very very cool:

It was just by the mansion that I got all excited and thought I had found a millipede, but apparently it isn't one (not enough legs, bah):



The following day, we decided to use our NT membership once more and go to see some Roman mosaics at Chedworth Roman Villa:

This place is so cool!  And without the push from the A-Z Year we might not have gone, so once again, thank you Nicole!  The year has been SO MUCH FUN becuase of A-Z, and we have discovered so many things we might never otherwise have found.


We thought we were just going to go there, see the mosaics, leave.  But there was so much else there to see and do.  There were gladiators re-enacting their battles, displays of weaponry and armour, and sword and spear training for the kids, a Roman surgeon demonstrating his medical techniques (all I can say is ouch!), arts and crafts, all sorts of stuff going on.

There was also a Victorian museum displaying Roman artefacts found at the site prior to the main excavation in more recent times, and their often amusing guesses at what some of the finds were, compared to what the current archaeologists think (which might be just as amusing to future experts I guess!)

And we bought some real (or at least a convincing replica of) Roman money in the shop.

All in all a great day out. We also went on the hunt afterwards for giant Roman molluscs (snails to you and me), as apparently they had them shipped over in the olden days from Rome as they were a delicacy, and their descendants still live in the woods around the villa. But we didn’t find any, probably as it was such a sunny day. We did find a geocache though :)


A couple of days later, Jay and I managed to escape from the kids for a couple of days (thank you to Michelle and Tracy for babysitting, we owe you one! or several!), and followed the music to Dublin. My favourite band, Pearl Jam, was playing there, and we based a 2-day city break around the gig. It was great! I love Dublin, I worked there 4 days a week, for 18 months back in the 90s, and I’ve been hankering to go back ever since.

The gig itself was ace:

And I got to meet my online mate Leanne IRL for the first time, which was fab :)  I gave her her necklace, I hope she liked it!

For the rest of our time in Dublin, we mainly did geocaching and sightseeing. 

Of particular interest re the letter M we did a tour of Kilmainham Gaol museum, which was fascinating. I intend to do a proper blog post on our Dublin trip at some point, there will be more piccies to see then.

We also made the pilgrimage out to Bray on the train, to find a geocache of monumental importance – the very first cache ever hidden in Europe. It has been there since June 2000, just a couple of months after geocaching was born.  I don't think this is the original log book, though :)  It looks far too new and clean.

We had made sure that we were up to 99 finds before finding this one, so that this historically significant cache could mark our 100 finds milestone.

Sadly our trip to Ireland was soon over, and the next day I was back at work. Boo. One thing I really look forward to though during the working week is “dress down Friday”, as that’s the day I can wear jeans and trainers, and nip out during my lunchbreak and do a bit of geocaching.

On this particular Friday I looked for caches to do with the letter M (I sound like a Sesame Street puppet :) ) – and found two churchyard locations very close to my place of work – St. Margaret’s in Bagendon and St. Mary Magdalene in Baunton. Both churches were lovely, and it was a gorgeous sunny day to go exploring them, but the one in Baunton was my favourite of the two. It’s a Norman era church, and inside there was a stunning 14th century painting of St Christopher. It really was quite magnificent, and I’m not only saying that to get another M in :) My photo, taken on my phone, really doesn’t do it justice at all, or convey the scale of the painting, which was a good 15 feet tall.   More pics to come in a dedicated geocaching post....

For the second weekend in M, we didn’t do an awful lot to be honest. We were pretty tired after Dublin and a few heavy weekends in a row, so we just took it easy, visited relatives, did some geocaching. We did make at an effort at least to find some caches that were M related – one was called “Moo” , one was called “Barking Mad” and another was in Matson Park. Connor made a card for his dad too, with a cool pop up monster on it – it was brilliant and I’d love to show it to you, but the photo of it went the way of the pics of the lego spaceships, sadly :(  

During the following week, I put my car through its MOT, which cost a lot of money.  And I completed my Danse Macabre CJ layout.

And then we cheated slightly – we had wanted to go to a Medieval Fayre during M-fortnight, but the only one we could find anywhere in the South of England was on July 3rd – 2 days too late. So we took an executive decision and extended M-fortnight for an extra two days so that we could go. I hope that doesn’t get me kicked out of the A-Z club :)

The Medieval Fayre was a lot of fun! And close to Jay’s Mum’s too, so we stayed there the night, and picked up an extra M :)

We also went geocaching after the fayre and found some ancient burial mounds (that's us on top of one of them):

And we went for a walk on a military firing range (on the army's day off, thankfully)

It was a jolly good job that we squeezed in some extra Ms, as in N fortnight we did nada, nothing, nowt!  Well, nothing starting with N anyway.

It wasn’t for lack of trying, but we were so booked up with visits, Connor’s birthday party, and all sorts of other prior engagements, that we just didn’t have space to squeeze in any extra N related activities.

We did go to lunch one day in a pub called the Jolly Sailor, and Connor’s party was pirate themed, so I could maybe get a point for being nautical??? :) no? you’re a harsh audience :)


Don’t worry though – we’ve got right back on the wagon with the letter O, lots to tell you about next time….