Sue and Paul Connolly: You are either married or living in Kinsale

Another K town

We had been told by family and friends who had been to Kinsale how nice this place is. Paul and I would have to agree with them. Narrow winding streets with brightly painted houses and yachts in the harbour. Lots of tourists when we called in for a few days however it suited the place. Trac had worked in Kinsale back in the 80’s at the Blue Haven so we thought we would book a room there. Paul taking the initiative rang and mentioned that his sister Mary –Attracta used to work there but it was a while ago. Maureen the manager had met Trac in Australia so small world. The Blue Haven was booked out however we moved into the Old Bank which was also managed by BH. Nice old Georgian Building.

We did a historical walk of the town with our guide Dermott who mentioned that the Irish always backs the losers and one of the examples of this was when the Spanish came to help them against the English. Both the Spanish and Irish were defeated and all the Catholics booted out of the place. Lots of fun and lots of history to this town. We also did a harbour cruise and a ghost walk/tour. With the ghost tour we had to turn up to the Tap an old hotel owned by a Mary O’Neill. Her son Bryan did the tours with the assistance of his mate Sebastian. Talk about laugh and being scared at the same time. Sebastian would dress up and pop up somewhere in the graveyard, out of a wheelie bin and other places you weren’t expecting a ghost to be. One child of about 10 was really peed off and was wanting to know when we were going to see the real ghosts! The best story is the one of the “White Lady” where on the eve of her wedding night the Commander’s daughter asked her husband to go and pick her some flowers growing down by the water. The groom not wanting to get wet asked a soldier to do it and the groom took over the soldier’s sentry duty. Unfortunately for the groom he fell asleep and the commander doing his rounds noticed that the soldier was sleeping instead of guarding the fort. To teach the soldier a lesson he shot him not knowing that this was his son in law. The daughter discovering what has occurred flings herself from the cliffs killing herself on the rocks below. The father not being able to live with what he had done also shoots himself. The ghost of the white lady is often sighted around Charles fort.

Another place we visited was Cobh (pronounced Cove) Cobh is a port from where 2.5 million people immigrated to escape starvation in the 1800’s. For many years Cobh was the port of Cork with a strong connection to Atlantic crossings being Titanic’s last stop in 1912. I would say more like the second last stop before it parked up into an iceberg. Another event which involved the Lusitania was when this ship was torpedoed off the coast of Kinsale in1915 and it was here at Cobh that many of the survivors were brought and the dead buried. It was also home to the world’s first yacht club founded in 1720 but now operates from a new site at Crosshaven. We visited the Cobh Heritage Centre housed in the old Railway Station which demonstrated the plight of the immigrants leaving Ireland.

We booked another night in Kinsale on our return from Portugal. Portugal was going to be our holiday from our holiday.