This blog is about life in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland.
It will also feature poems and my general observations and comments about history, politics, religion, world events – whatever I feel moved to write on.
<< Return to clarewebs.ie website
<< Return to clarewebs.com website
I moved to Lisdoonvarna, the only spa town in Ireland, in early October 2017, and have been settling in with my wife Jane; and with Roxy, our 6 year old Border Terrier.
Lisdoonvarna is just 6 miles from the North Atlantic Ocean in North West Clare; a lovely little town that hosts an annual Matchmaking Festival. Lisdoonvarna is also the gateway to the Burren, an area with many prehistoric sites, Celtic high crosses, rare wild flowers, limestone pavements, and enormous skies…
Doolin Harbour at four o’clock in late November
A warm sea mist lies low on the surge
Like a mother cat feeding her white-tipped young
Grey roiling tide licks and curl and spits
Against black rocks born in ancient seas
Now scattered by a giant paw on Doolin’s shores.
It’s early days in our Irish cottage, and there is quite a lot of work needs doing to it, mainly to sort out the heating and a bit of damp, probably mostly caused by condensation. There is no mains gas in this rural part of Ireland; the cottage has in an out-house a very old, rusty, oil-fired central heating boiler that keeps switching off for no reason – we have a man coming on Wednesday to service it and see whether it needs a new pump. If it can’t be fixed, we will have to get a new boiler fitted. We always seem to get caught – we have had to put a new central heating boiler into every house we have ever bought.
We are also installing a little Henley Thames multi-fuel stove in the living room, on which logs or peat can be burned.
It turns out the oil-fired central heating boiler had been wired up wrong, which is why it kept switching off. The radiators are now red-hot and keeping all the rooms warm, and we have the new multi-fuel stove burning logs in the living room – lovely and homely!
I have found loads more on the Internet about my Irish ancestry at ancestry.co.uk which will help with my family history research.
I have started a separate post about this: My Irish Ancestry.
Also I will be posting separately about my ancestry from the East End of London, including Whitechapel: My East End of London Ancestry.
Lisdoonvarna Town Square
Road to Fanore Beach on the Wild Atlantic Way