Irish Tours: Ireland & Scotland
Our Ireland & Scotland tour is well on its way and everything is going wonderfully. We are having perfect, sunny, blue sky weather – perfect to tour Ireland – and meeting wonderful people. The other day one of the friendly women who works at the Hotel Eccles brought us to her sheep farm, where her husband Gerard showed us around. We got to meet his two awesome sheep dogs, who kept begging to be petted. Then they put on a spectacular show, herding all the sheep into a little coral. We begged the farmer to let us pet a sheep, so he grabbed one of the rams, flipped him over on his rear end, so he was sitting calmly, and then we got to go right up and hold him! It was great! I’ve always wanted to hug a sheep! You’ve gotta love Irish tours!
The regular scenery on Irish tours is quite spectacular. The hills and mountains are all as green as you see in pictures, with sheep everywhere. We love sheep! Before dinner we all went for a walk, and I got a picture of Linda and David on top of a grassy hill, with the peak of a tiny house on the crest of the hill, and it looked just like an Andrew Wyeth painting.
The other day I wrote down some reflections in the cutest tiny pub, which is part of our Irish tours’ beautiful hotel, on a hill overlooking the ocean, with a 14th century castle in the back yard. We all got up from the middle of our gastronomic dinner to watch the sun set over the ocean.
We drove ten minutes down the coast to see the Cliffs of Moher. Then our driver, David, showed us all around the Burren and explained this unusual geological rocky land. At night we went into Doolin to a singing pub – a must have on all Irish tours!
Early in our Scottish portion of the trip is a ride through some of the most gorgeous scenery on the planet: the Scottish Highlands.
I was so excited to see the Harry Potter bridge! This is in Glenfinnan, where the movies show the train riding on a bridge over a spectacular gorge — it doesn’t even seem real!
We took several little walks through the most beautiful spots in the “glens”– now I know this comes from a Gaelic word that means valleys in between mountains. Our Scottish guide — Greg McBride — is awesome!
Now we are heading for the Isle of Skye…