A day off

Posted on March 23, 2011 by ericagott

Today was my first full day off since I arrived at Corcreggan Mill two weeks ago. That’s not because Brendan is working me too much, but because I just didn’t feel like getting out in the cold to walk to Dunfanaghy. Little did I know, I didn’t actually have to walk the hour to town. Markus, last night’s guest, gave me a ride to town with him around 10:30am.

Markus dropped me at Molly’s Bar, and I walked across the street to the strand, which was full of water. Every other time I’d been in town, it was just sand, so it was great to see the tide in. Next, I walked up to the golf course road, which took me to Killyhoey Beach. Once at the sand, I took off my flip-flops and headed for the surf. Yes, I wore flip-flops and my cargo capris today. The temperature got to about 58F/14C, with very little wind, so it was warm (OK, I was also wearing a fleece jacket, lol).

Look at these pictures from the bottom up, as I got the order wrong and haven’t figured out how to reverse it.

On my way off the beach, I met a local woman who’d been for a walk as well. Kathleen and I had a great conversation about the area, my travels, and such, and then she gave me a lift back to the main road. I put my sandals back on as I got out of the car, then walked back to the town center. Took lots of great pics along the way, then stopped into the Starfish Cafe for lunch.

Lunch (9 euros) was a quiche with bacon, mushroom, and sunblush tomato, a green salad with oil and vinegar, and cole slaw. For drink I got a pot of tea, of course. This is the drink of choice where it’s never very warm. In Texas, you only get iced tea; in Ireland and Scotland, you get hot tea.

Next I went next door to Centra, the local grocery, which is not much larger than a 7-11 or QuikTrip in Texas. I picked up some ‘mild-cured’ bacon (fewer nitrites), mince (that’s ground beef to Americans), custard (read: vanilla pudding), onions, cream, and a couple of bags of salt & vinegar crisps (read: potato chips), cinnamon, and butter. All that cost me 17 euros and change.

Now I could go to the Green Man, the ‘wholefoods’ shop, for the good stuff. Eileen greeted me and we chatted all about websites and Facebook, local cheeses and breads, while I picked out a couple of local yogurts with rhubarb sauce on the bottom, a round of fresh-made wholemeal Irish soda bread, Irish black pudding (this is a blood sausage), and a goat cheese called Cooneen, from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It’s a brie type, sold in wedges. Eileen says it’s a milder goat cheese. I’ll let you know after I have some later. This food cost 9.33 euros.

On the way home, I managed to hitch a ride with a local woman and her daughter. I was getting tired and didn’t want to walk the 2km back to the Mill. A fog rolled in, which I’d not seen before, and everything got very misty. After downloading some of my pictures, I went up to the ship to take photos of the misty landscape. Found the neighbor’s sheep and freaked them out by standing by the rock fence. They ran to the next paddock, bleating and carrying on, herding their lambs ahead of them. You’d have thought I was the big bad wolf!

Yesterday I got into the stored apples and made fried apples with butter and evaporated cane juice. There was almost no cinnamon, but I put what was there on them along with some nutmeg I found. Shared this with Brendan and Marina, who had fresh apple cake. Yum! Tonight I’m going to have Brussels sprouts and turnip from the garden, along with either hamburger or black pudding and fried eggs and a slice of my soda bread.

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