SUNGRL

We arrived into Cork on Tuesday evening after travelling from Galway and stopping off at the stunning Doonbeg Golf Course on the way. From the moment we arrived we liked what we saw – the city is compact, some of the buildings are colourfully painted and the city has a river running through it. Steve says “all cities with rivers are pretty” and I said “yes you’re probably right”. He then goes on to say “Wanganui is probably the exception”. A bit harsh on his hometown – apologies to those Wanagnuiites reading the blog : )

We were staying at The River Lee. Hotel which was right on the river – it is a very nice hotel. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant that night which was very nice.

After playing golf at the Cork Golf Club the next day I went into town to explore the city. Cork has some nice shops. It also has the English Market which is full of fresh produce, meat, cheeses, breads etc… The market is well supported locally and has become a tourist attraction – drawing visitors from throughout the world, including a visit by Queen Elizabeth II during her 2011 state visit. The term English Market was coined in the 19th Century to distinguish the market from the nearby St. Peter’s Market which was known as the Irish Market.

I have also been impressed with the health food and organic shops in Ireland. There was a great one in Galway and I found one in Cork called Quay Co-op which had a whole food and organic market as well as a vegetarian restaurant next door. I have moved on from exploring supermarkets – I am now into exploring health food shops. Getting sadder by the minute according to Steve! I had lunch at the vegetarian restaurant by myself on Thursday and it was awesome. Quay Co-op has been an institution in Cork since 1982.

On the Wednesday night we went to Market Lane for dinner – this restaurant was ranked number one on Trip Advisor and we saw why. The food was fantastic as was the service. Our waitress was from the Ukraine but she had been in Ireland for the past 10 years – she is marrying an Irish lad in the not too distant future “if he keeps behaving himself” she added : ) I had the vegetarian moussaka – it was divine and huge – I couldn’t even eat it all – I think that might be a first for me – I never leave food behind!

I also checked out Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, a cathedral of the Church of Ireland. Construction of this cathedral started in 1863.

I have saved the best bit of Cork until last – we caught up with an old primary and intermediate school friend of mine, David Pomeroy. He has made Cork his home for the past 20 years although he misses NZ every day. David married an Irish girl Olga and has two lovely children – Sophie who is 8 and Darragh who is 6. We worked out we hadn’t seen each other for about 25 years although with Facebook these days you do feel somewhat up to date and connected. Dave picked us up from the hotel and we went back to his place for a good old Kiwi / Irish BBQ. It was great reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ and old friends who remain friends to this day.

A little bit about Cork…
Cork is a city in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and in the province of Munster. With a population of 119,230, it is the second largest city in the state and the third most populous on the island of Ireland.

The city is built on the River Lee which divides into two channels at the western end of the city. The city centre is located on the island created by the channels. At the eastern end of the city centre where the channels re-converge, quays and docks along the river banks lead to Lough Mahon and Cork Harbour, which is one of the world’s largest natural harbours.

Cork City is at the heart of industry in the south of Ireland. Its main area of industry is pharmaceuticals, with Pfizer Inc. and Swiss company Novartis being big employers in the region. The most famous product of the Cork pharmaceutical industry is Viagra. Cork is also the European headquarters of Apple Inc. where over 3,000 staff are involved in manufacturing, R&D and customer support. Logitech and EMC Corporation are also important IT employers in the area.

The city is also home to the Heineken Brewery that brews Murphy’s Irish Stout and the nearby Beamish and Crawford brewery (taken over by Heineken in 2008) which have been in the city for generations. And for many years, Cork was the home to Ford Motor Company, which manufactured cars in the docklands area before the plant was closed in 1984. Henry Ford’s grandfather was from West Cork, which was one of the main reasons for opening up the manufacturing facility in Cork. But technology has replaced the old manufacturing businesses of the 1970s and 1980s, with people now working in the many I.T. centres of the city – such as Amazon.com, the online retailer, which has set up in Cork Airport Business Park.

Cork’s deep harbour allows ships of any size to enter, bringing trade and easy import/export of products. Cork Airport also allows easy access to continental Europe and Cork Kent railway station in the city centre provides good rail links for domestic trade.

Cork is an important educational centre in Ireland. University College Cork (UCC), a constituent university of the National University of Ireland, offers a wide variety of courses in Arts, Commerce, Engineering, Law, Medicine and Science.

Today we travelled about an hour and a half north west of Cork to Killarney. Our destination was the Killarney Golf & Fishing Club which is a private golf club on the shore of Lough Leane just west of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland. The club has three 18-hole golf courses, Killeen, Lackabane and Mahony’s Point.

The Killeen Course measures 7,031 yards and plays to a par of 72. It has been the venue for the European Tour’s Irish Open in 1991, 1992, 2010 and 2011.

Killeen was a pretty course and again the natural beauty surrounding these Irish courses is great. My golf was back on track today so the I hate golf, I hate golf mantra is now back to I love golf much to Steve’s delight!

There were some rather large animal deposits on the course which we were wondering which animal they belonged to. The bunkers on the 14th hole were covered in deer hoof prints so we worked out who the culprits were! The black ravens were also very prevalent on the course and they aren’t too bothered by you or your golf ball. They were busy digging up the fairways with their beaks looking for food. Natural coring machines?

On Wednesday we woke to another lovely day in Ireland. After a bit of an explore around the city we went out to the Cork Golf Club.

Cork Golf Club is located at Little Island close to Cork City, this championship golf course is routed through exceptional golfing terrain, incorporating an old limestone quarry and the inner reaches of Cork Harbour and Lough Mahon. The course was founded in 1888. In 1927 the course was redesigned by the Augusta National designer, Alister MacKenzie.

Seves Ballesteros visited the course in 1983 and hit a 332 metre drive on one of the holes. Steve said that would have been a quite a feat back then given he would have been using wooden clubs not the titanium clubs we use these days. The club planted a Spanish chestnut tree in his honour.

It was a lovely course and after the daunting holes at Doonbeg it looked like a walk in the park – that’s where I went wrong! High expectations were followed by poor play on my part! Not the best day in the office to date but hey I am not complaining – I was out enjoying the Irish sunshine for yet another day.

We left Galway this morning and headed to Doonbeg Golf Club which is out on the coast in County Clare. The weather was overcast and as we got closer to the coast it started to blow and we had a bit of rain. It was spitting as we got our golf clubs ready but I had a word with the weather gods and told them if they knew what was good for them they would stop that behaviour immediately!

Standing up on the first tee is pretty WOW. Out to your left you have the Atlantic Ocean and the first hole is a long par 5 that is framed by hills on both sides – it looks like a sports stadium. It was still pretty windy as we teed off but when you got down into the stadium you were quite sheltered. The next few holes were quite daunting as you couldn’t really see where you were supposed to be hitting. Needless to say the ball stocks were being depleted rather quickly and not by me I might add : )

The first nine holes go out along the coast and the second come back inland. We were just teeing off on the third when this woman walked towards us heading for the 16th. I thought ‘she looks familiar’ but thought no it can’t be. We said hello and she asked if she was going in the right direction for the next hole, all the while we were all looking at each other thinking we were familiar. It turns out it was our Canadian friend Trish who we know through an ex Manukau Golf Club member that Steve met at the World Junior’s in San Diego. Her and James run golf tours all around the world so she was out checking out the lodge and course. It turns out James is also in Ireland with a tour group playing all the great golf courses Ireland has to offer. What a coincidence – if we had been 5 minutes earlier or later we would have missed seeing each other. It was great to see her and catch up on the news.

We carried on our merry way – well actually not so merry as the weather wasn’t playing ball and the ball stocks were still being depleted! My talking to the weather gods was answered about the 8th hole and the sun came out to play. It was still quite windy though – I think that is just a natural state for this coast. The golf on the back nine was much improved with Steve having a couple of birdies and managing to keep his ball stocks in check. I only lost one ball all day : )

It is a stunning course and one that would be good to play again so you knew where you were going. The course was designed by Greg Norman and opened in 2002. The geography was hardly changed as the course was fitted into the natural environment.

Apparently there was a big storm in January this year and the area was badly damaged. The course and lodge went into liquidation and in February 2014 they were bought by Donald Trump for an estimated €15m. The Lodge at Doonbeg, which consists of 218 hotel suites, an expansive spa and several restaurants will be managed by the Trump Hotel Collection.

After golf we caught up with Trish again in the carpark before heading to Cork – our home for the next three days. It took about 2.5 hours to get here and as we drove through the city I thought I am going to like this place. It has a completely different look to Galway. We are staying at The River Lee Hotel which is really nice.

Today we played at the Galway Bay Golf Club. This course was designed by former Ryder Cup and World Cup legend Christy O Connor Junior. Set on 300 acres it superbly blends the stunning backdrop of Galway Bay and the rugged curves of the Atlantic Coastline. It was a challenging course and again we were impressed with the natural surrounds.

The greens were super slick so the pars and birdies were not forthcoming today for Stevie : ( On the ball count front Steve was down net 2 (lost 3 and found 1) and I was down 1. Steve went to great lengths to find his ball as you can see from the pictures below – we could see two balls in this prickly mass but only one was reachable much to Steve’s disgust! It is amazing what motivates some people : )

We arrived into Galway on Friday night. We wandered down to the shopping mall and noted that we weren’t staying in the nicest part of Galway. On further exploration of the city we have come to the conclusion that Galway in it’s entirety is not the prettiest city we have ever visited. I just read on Wikipedia that Galway suffered greatly as a result of the potato famines of 1845 to 1852 and did not fully recover until the great economic bubble of the late twentieth century. Personally I think this is probably an accurate assessment – it has the image of a place that has done it tough over time.

The Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. It is sometimes referred to, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine because one-third of the population was then solely reliant on this cheap crop for a number of historical reasons. During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island’s population to fall by between 20% and 25%. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight.

I also just read the following on wikipedia – in 2007, Galway was named as one of the eight “sexiest cities” in the world. A 2008 poll ranked Galway as the 42nd best tourist destination in the world, or 14th in Europe and 2nd in Ireland (behind Dingle). It was ranked ahead of all European capitals except Edinburgh, and many traditional tourist destinations (such as Venice). The New Zealand Herald listed Galway as one of ‘five great cities to visit in 2014’. The others were Istanbul, New Orleans, Dubai and Cabo, Mexico.

Interesting – clearly my definition of sexy differs wildly from whoever carried out the poll in 2007!

We have, however, found a very pleasant local – Tom Sheridan’s. Nice pub with great food. They also had a photo of the legendary Jonah Lomu on their wall.

On Sunday we took a drive to Clifden and drove around Sky Rd which is an 11 km drive along Clifden Bay and Streamstown Bay rising more than 150 m above sea level at Slyne Head, with views of the Atlantic. The landscape is fairly hardy and the houses are all concrete and stone. They also use stone for fences both around the houses and in the pastures – I suppose the stone stands the test of time given the exposure to the oceanic conditions.

After having a walk around Clifden we came back to Galway and checked out Salthill which is the seaside area in the city of Galway. It wasn’t a bad day and there were a few hardy folk swimming in the North Atlantic. As with the city the beach certainly didn’t appeal to me.

I went for a run into the city centre this morning and back and encountered a couple of intoxicated individuals – 7am on a Monday morning! I couldn’t really understand what they were saying – a combination of their accents and the alcohol. Anyway I ignored them and then I heard one of them say – hey woman! I carried on my merry way and then realised I had taken a wrong turn – I could have re traced my steps but encountering the intoxicated ones again didn’t really appeal so had to get directions from a woman I came across. Still directionally challenged no matter what part of the world I am in!

Today we headed south for about an hour to Rosses Point to play County Sligo Golf Club. Another sunny morning as we left Harvey’s Point. It did get a bit darker looking as we drove down the coast but we had faith that the SUNGRL powers would not fail us.

County Sligo Golf Club started out with a nine-hole course, designed by George Combe (contriver in 1896 of the world’s first handicap system), and opened for play in 1894. At the turn of the 20th century, Willie Campbell extended the course to 18 holes. The famous Colt and Alison partnership remodelled the course in 1927. County Sligo is the home of the West of Ireland Amateur Championship and host to other important amateur events.

It is a typical west coast links course and has views of the Darty Mountains and Benbulben, Sligo’s limestone “Table Mountain” as well as the Ox Mountains where Knockalong is the highest peak. Drumcliffe Bay sweeps around the golf course which has long sandy beaches.

We armed ourselves with more golf balls and off we went. We were joined on the fourth hole by a couple of members – William and Ivor. They were actually from Enniskillen which is in the south of Northern Ireland. They prefer the links course rather than the park courses closer to home so travel about an hour to play at County Sligo.

They were great fun and happy to give us tips as to where to and where not to hit the ball. This is of course is all in vain sometimes as my clubs and ball have a mind of their own. I managed not to lose a ball until the 14th hole and kept my second ball all the way until the end. Ivor was a bit of an eagle eye in respect of finding balls in the rough. Steve was on fire on the back nine having a couple of birdies and lots of pars – the locals were impressed.

I had checked the local weather forecast that morning and it said 24 degrees, 0.2 mm of rain and 100% humidity. I think that was pretty accurate – it was extremely humid. We were joking with William and Ivor saying we don’t know what everyone is going on about complaining about the weather in Ireland – it has been great since we arrived. They said that they get the sort of day we had yesterday – warm and no wind with the sun eventually burning through – maybe 5 days a year!

We had a drink in the bar afterwards and were talking about the conflict in Northern Ireland. Ivor who is 69 said he grew up with it and didn’t know any different as have his daughters who are 28 and 32 – they have never known life without trouble. He told us the story of having to go to Marks & Spencer in Belfast to pick up a suit jacket he had ordered for a wedding he was attending the next day. Just as he got to the door of Marks and Spencer the place blew up. He said he dusted himself off, went to the back of the store and rang the bell. This girl answered, the shop was a mess but she promptly went off and found his suit jacket. Ivor paid for the jacket and then drove home thinking nothing of it – that was life.

We are actually going to Enniskillen where both Ivor and William live to play golf on Thursday. They said there was probably not one building there that hasn’t been bombed at one time or another. They also said there would be quite a few people from Belfast that would never have crossed the border into Southern Ireland.

Ivor recommended taking a drive back along the coast and stopping in at Smugglers Creek Inn for a drink so we did. Smuggler’s Creek Inn, nestling on the cliffs overlooking Donegal Bay and the Blue Stack Mountains in South Donegal, dates back to the early 1900’s. We drove through Ballyshannon to get there which is one of the oldest settlements in Ireland.

The Inn overlooks Rossnowlagh Beach. Rossnowlagh in the Irish language is Ros Neamhlach, meaning “heavenly headland. It was an absolute millpond with the odd wave and there were many people out swimming and surfing – admittedly a lot of them were in wetsuits but wow they breed them tough up here. I doubt the North Atlantic Ocean would be particularly tropical.

After a satisfying snack and drink we headed back to Harvey’s Point. The Lough Eske Castle sits on the property next door to where we are staying – there is a 5 star hotel there so we decided to call in and check that out. Two glasses of prosecco and one free cocktail later we left there! The castle dates back to 1861. Until it was saved by it’s present owners, it rose through the surrounding forest in ruined grandeur, a tranquil reminder of an Ireland long passed. Only the outer walls remained when the current owners started rebuilding it along with the hotel – the total project cost about 50 million euros and took about two years. The hotel opened in 2007.

We arrived back to our hotel about 8pm after having left it at 8am that morning – a very enjoyably day out : )

We are currently staying at Harvey’s Point Country Hotel in County Donegal. It is a four star hotel that has won Trip Advisor’s number one hotel in Ireland this year and is one of the top 25 hotels in the world.

It is in the countryside and sits on Lough (Lake) Eske. The rooms are amazingly large, the setting beautiful and the food delicious. The staff are also super friendly which is a common trait in this country : )