God is handing out the countries: ‘You will have ice-capped mountains, pure water running down the streams and majestic deer roaming the verdant valleys.
‘You will be great explorers, missionaries, inventors, dreamers, poets, entertainers and educationalists.
‘And have the spoils of the land and sea to put on great feasts and the purest whisky to toast.’
The Archangel Michael pipes up: ‘Have you not given these Scots too much?’
The Lord shoots back: ‘Look at the neighbours I gave them.’
The charms of Scotland, my home country which I am reacquainting myself after a 13 years adventure in Ireland, are evident.
But as is often the case there is so much under my nose without me knowing.
It is always a good idea when relocating to another country, or just going on holiday, to check out the country’s tourist board website.
And so while the borders were closed (and some of the best still are) I was checking out where I still haven’t been in my homeland.
Up Helly Aa in Shetland
The Shetland Islands: And I’ve been trying to get up to Scotland’s most northerly islands since making friends with Shetlander Shona at uni in the Eighties.
And when we moved in to a new house in Aberdeen www.visitabdn.com Elizabeth whose parents hail from Shetland, and Scott lived opposite.
And now they have relocated to Shetland I’ve been making not so subtle hints about going up for Up Helly Aa, the January festival when the locals burn a Viking ship.
Yosemite slam: This is Big Country and you’ll want to reveal your hunter-gatherer.
Lake McClure at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is where to pitch tent.
And get out and fish the lake and get your heartpumping at the Exchequer Mountain Bike Park.
Before heading to Yosemite to take in the giant Sequoias.
Camping spaces can be hard to get in Yosemite National Park and that’s where Indian Flat Campground near the gates comes in.
You’ll strike gold too at the Mariposa County Fairgrounds just a mile from the Gold Rush town. See www.mariposa.com.
Norfolk Broads
Let’s cosy up in the tent
Hickling Campsite, Hickling, Norfolk (https://www.hicklingcampsite.co.uk): Of course for many of us there’s nothing better than snuggling up next to your loved one.
And here’s one we prepared earlier from Norfolk in England’s East Anglia.
You’ll get to stay in a self-contained hut.
The Norfolk Broads are one of England’s natural delights while further afield you can explore secluded beach walks and boat trips.
And one I usually passed through instead of stopping when I would drive from Aberdeen to Glasgow reporting on football matches.
Lounging around
Except for a boys’ weekend in Dunkeld, writing poetry for our Edinburgh Fringe Show. Now what rhymes with Glenturret?
New offers include Luxury for Less (from €99 per night), to the indulgent Highland Retreat (£499 for two nights). Rooms at Dunalastair Hotel Suites are from £129 per night.
And I now want to promote the splendours of Conrad Dublin, a hotel I’ve enjoyed on a function level but yet to laid down by head there.
Apart, of course, from when my head would hit the table through too much vino.
Among the goodies on offer in what they are packaging as Dream Away are the Picnic Package, the Literary Tour and Dublin City by Horsedrawn Carriage.
And seeing you’ve been locked away at home for months then why not treat the whole family to a night in the Conrad Family Room.
The interconnecting family room is €350 for the night for two adults and two children. See www.conraddublin.com.
To the lighthouse
Ciara O’Leary is all smiles at the lighthouse
So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were struck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sky – Virginia Woolf
Lighthouses can be by contrast snug or solaces from people.
And Hook Lighthouse in Co. Wexford in the Republic of Ireland on June 29 is reopening its doors with the latter in mind.
Hook Lighthouse, the Lightkeepers Cafe and the outdoor dining option, the Seahorse, will all open seven days per week.
With last access to the grounds at 4pm and dining closes at 5pm.
Pre-book a free pass online at www.hookheritage.ie or take a guided tour by phoning (051) 397 055.
Rather than The King Robert https://www.kingroberthotel.co.uk, named after King Robert the Bruce), just off the battlefield… it looks more like a motel.
If you want a more authentic experience still I dare say that you can find a campsite and imagine yourself pitching tent just like those soldiers of old.
In the presence of greatness: And Robert the Bruce too
Arcari claims to be the birthplace of the 99 with the number that of their address in Portobello High Street.
Where Stephen Arcari broke a chocolate flake in half and put it on the ice cream
Hundreds and thousands please
An alternative explanation is that it comes from slang, 99 meaning excellent and alluding to an elite guard of 99 soldiers who served the King of Italy.
The Pope’s fave
Now I don’t know about the King of Italy but our Popes have been partial to a gelato, or ice cream.
We have the Good Book, the Vatican Cookbook, as our holy scripture here which tells us that Pope Francis loves an Argentine fave dulce de leche and its caramel flavour.
And he knows his flock loves gelati too, being known to hand out 3,000 ice creams to Rome’s poor and homeless.
And some raspberry sauce
All of which kept my mind occupied as I stood socially distanced in my queue.
All joking aside about Zlatan ‘The Ego’ Ibramovich being cut down to size.
But is it right that the Sweden soccer superstar should befall the same fate as Edward Colston in Bristol, Lord Nelson in Dublin and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad?
A little big woman: Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi
Sometimes it’s the design that catches you and stops you in your tracks.
And so it is with this remarkable little woman,
The President of the USA, Lydon Baines, Johnson took extraordinary measures in stopping her saying her piece at the Democratic Convention by having television change its schedule.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s life was extraordinary, born into a sharecropping family and picking cotton from the age of six, she was later forced out of her home, threatened with her very life and beaten.
All because she wanted to sign on on the voting register.
She summed up her struggle in the Civil Rights Movement thus, and of course nobody could say it better: ‘I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.’
Us journalists like to think of ourselves as hard-bitten but I had to choke back the tears walking through the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam…. http://www.annefrank.org.
The audio narrative dwelt on a passage in her diary where she mentions that she wants to become a journalist when she’s older.
And what a journalist she would have been… ethical (yes, some of us are), prying and fearless.
Amsterdam is one of the world’s great cities and Anne one of history’s greatest figures… http://www.iamsterdam.com.
Statues should be provocative and the Czechs have this one down to a T.
‘Piss’ is the good people of Prague’s commentary on the politicians who have urinated all over their country.
You’ll not see it here but once the water gets flowing they pee all over the map of the country.
The Czechs as well as being the world’s biggest lager drinkers, per population, with some of the world’s best beers, are wonderfully anti-establishmentarian.
The boys are back in town: With my old pal Paul in Dublin
There are statues to musical giants all over the world but while former Thin Lizzy lead singer Phil Lynott isn’t the best or most famous singer of them all, try telling that to Dubliners.
It is a tradition now for visitors to Dublin to have their photo taken outside Philo’s statue off the main Grafton Street shopping thoroughfare.
That other statue, the Tart with the Cart, Molly Malone? Well you can leave that to the uninitiated.
He’s obviously not the only Horatio or the biggest, and as I’ve alluded to already some not too far from here even blew him up.
But he was a survivor, except when he was killed obvs, and he lost an eye and an arm.
Death might even have been a better gig too as he was transported home in a vat of rum… a good way to go and one that the Bajans would have approved of.
Until, of course, his old shipmates drilled a hole in the vat and drunk the rum!
Statues are a controversial subject but my Bajan hosts were keen to tell me that Nelson was part of their story too.
And so ignore the white liberals who like to speak for black people, they’re glad to have him keeping his one eye open on what’s going on in Bim.
Martin Luther stood as a defiant symbol of Dresdeners refusal to see their city disappear after the Allies’ firebombing at the end of the Second World War.
The Dresdeners rebuilt the obliterated Frauenkirche sixty years later, after they had got rid of the Communists.
Using as the plans photographs they had asked the public to send in from their weddings.
Dresden was known as the Florence of the Elbe and it is one of the great architectural stories of our age, or any age, to see how the Dresdeners have rebuilt their city to the same grandeur of its renaissance days.
Yes, the Little Mermaid is more visited, but personally I prefer the top-hatted Hans in the heart of Copenhagen.
Hans was an eccentric all right and once decamped on Charles Dickens, walked around the house in the starkers, and made it difficult for Charlie to show him the door.
Nelson Mandela Voting Line, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
March to Freedom: In Port Elizabeth
Statues shouldn’t just stand there. No, really. And this is a moving symbolic Voting Line which sums up South African democracy.
This is our host Sisseko and beside him a kid as he would have been back in 1995 when South Africa had its historic vote.
It is also immersive and you don’t have to climb up a plinth to get next to it as they do in Glasgow when they put police cones on the Duke of Wellington.
It is the way I should imagine that Nelson, a native of the Eastern Cape, would have wanted it.
All of which meanderings brings me back to Hotel Westport’s plans for the revived summer season.
Estate of the nation
Fill up my bowl
Westport Estate stretches to 400 acres – plenty of room for social distancing there. And it is also at the heart of the Wild Atlantic Way https://www.wildatlanticway.com/home.
And it is overlooked by St Patrick’s mountain Croagh Patrick.Which that very same Mum never tired of telling us she walked up barefooted and without a good breakfast when she was pregnant.
I let her off because it was my brother she had on board.
Westport is an ideal set-up to showcase what I believe will be a new direction in how we take our holidays… slow travel.
Carry on camping
Round the campfire
Take their Family Bush Camp which will give families the chance to reconnect with nature through bush crafting and survival activities.
Packages start at €79 pps for Bed & Breakfast and bookings can be secured at www.hotelwestport.ie.
The upside of our clamour for more space in our post-lockdown holiday is that we will reacquaint ourselves with all those great country houses.
Where families can run around the corridors to their hearts’ content.
Westport House is an 18th-century manor house also on Westport Estate and just a stone’s throw away from the hotel.
Visitors can stroll through the grounds and enjoy the gardens and take in the 3.5k looped Lakeland and woodland walk.
House about that?
Caravan of love
The house itself is open to day-visitors and they will be able to immerse themselves in 300 years of Irish heritage.
Camping and caravan breaks will be in vogue when we all get out on the road again.And you can take advantage too in the onsite 3* park on the Westport House Estate? Visit www.westporthouse.ie.
For those for whom gastronomy is central to their holiday experience.And the Irish food experience is rightly celebrated around the world then here’s some more good news.
The owner and head chef of Cian’s on Bridge Street, Cian Hayes, will be opening a pop-up restaurant experience in Hotel Westport this summer.
If you have been keen to stretch your legs, and you will be fitter than you think with all those laps around your neighbourhood.Then you will be eager to get out on the Wild Atlantic Way.
Ride on!
Can I cycle for ever?
And for cyclists then Clew Bay Bike Hire have a fleet of two-wheelers with your name on them.
Guests at Hotel Westport can truly experience the wild Atlantic west by hiring bikes on site.And then cycling an exclusive and accessible 10km loop through the estate, the harbour, and the town.
And if you’re feeling ambitious, why not take on the breathtaking Great Western Greenway?
And meanwhile in the Disunited Kingdom
I’ll let the pictures from Bank Holiday Weekend in the United Kingdom.Where England has different rules to lockdown than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland speak for themselves.
When we sidled off from the rest of the group to go stone skimming on an Alpine lake above Interlaken.
There’s something about the Alps and I was back skimming in Austria and Germany on my Topflightforschools www.topflightforschools.ie. walking trip around the Tyrol www.visittyrol.cim.
Stony, stony banks
Stone skimming is a game we all learn as children, easy to pick up with simple rules which translate across oceans.
I worked on my throw, angle and trajectory (it’s all in the crouch) as I travelled through life finding new worlds as I went.
And a new pal to play with, the Son and Heir.
Being the competitive sod I am I needed to hold back the inevitable passing of tbs baton, or skimming stone.
Wicklow throwers
How sweet is the valley: Avoca
I would tale him on around the pools, streams and waters of our adopted county Wicklow www.visitwicklow.ie.
On one occasion I took it too far, at one of our favourite stretches, the poet Thomas Moore’s Meeting of the Waters in picturesque Avova http://www.themeetings.ie.
When I skimmed a ten and it bounced up onto the opposite bank.
Duck!
Luckily for me the boy in the other side ducked at the right moment and it jumped over his shoulder.
Of course there are. times when skimming a stone can be a solitary, reflective pastime when you want to get things off your chest…
Or out of your hand.
French farce
Off to go skimming on the Fresh Riviera
Such as when I found it the only way to get rid of my frustrations after I was denied the chance of driving a Fist 500 around the cliffs of the French Riviera.
I had stalled the classic car three times in the car park before we took off.
The IrishWhiskey360° initiative which aims to make this country the world’s No.1 tourist destination for our favourite drink has got me thinking…
And drinking.
Now there are those for whom putting anything in their whisky is anathema (and that’s not a brand).
My esteemed Travel colleague and fellow Scottishy fellow Tom Sweeney www.tomsweeneytrabels.blogspot.com said he was apoplectic at a particular cultural difference when he lived in Spain.
A touch of Irish
That they took coke in their J&B. Which they still do, particularly as a gateway drink for youngsters.
I’m indebted to my old pal Tony Flynn for this lockdown game… use the initials of your Christian name for what you need when you’re holed up at home.
But Tony, I know you better than that… Tea, Onions, Noodles, Yogurt?
And you know me better too… and that’s why I went for Johnnie Walker, Ardbeg, Mossburn, Elements of Islay, Springbank.
You must have known I’d have used my full Christian name… more whisky, you see.
It’ll put a smile on your face
And in this regular feature, ‘Hungry and Thursday’ that’s what it’s all about, and being in lockdown my whisky is my best friend.
And while punters snap up the cheap lager from the supermarket shelves I’m happy to report that there’s still plenty of uisce beatha, or water of life, to be had.
So here’s a trawl of whiskies around the world…
Smoky Scotch
For peat’s sake
Scotland: The original and the best, Scotland is the home of whisky.
It has five clearly defined regions, of which the smoky and peaty whisky from the isle of Islay is the best. Think an ashtray of water… no, seriously, it will grow on you.
