Tower on a blustery hill

Yesterday morning most of Northern Ireland was battered by gale force winds. We sat in our room at the Strangford Arms Hotel wondering what to make of it.  Kite Surfing was one idea, they were doing that from a zip line looking device down at the Titanic docks the other day, but we both concluded that neither of us was in physical shape for it so we went for a nice run in the car instead.

This is Stephani showing me what that might have looked like as she stopped to take photographs of some befuddled sheep.

We had stopped into Tesco's for some supplies and I had asked what the tower up on the hill was.  Turns out we were observing no ordinary tower, this was Scrabo Tower. 

So we decided to go and try to find it.   Unfortunately for us though, during the off season, the tower is open by appointment only, otherwise we would offer you splendid photographs and a description of what is inside. The above image came from Wikipedia along with t he following description of the tower's origin.  

  

The landmark, which is visible from most of north Down, was built above the town in 1857 as a memorial to Charles Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry who was one of the Duke of Wellington's generals during the Napoleonic Wars.   

So, this tower is from roughly the same era when my hometown of Aldershot in Hampshire, England was being established by the Duke of Wellington.

After we went for our drive we walked into Newtonards (new-ton-ards) because we hadn't quite had enough of that wind, and were going for a sort of blown back look in our hairstyles. 

We found a cute little upstairs coffee shop on Regent Street where we dined on semi-crisp sausage rolls and semi-crisp onion rings and tea.  On Regent Street there a lots of little shops and the thing you notice right away is where they are situated next to each other. On several blocks you could see a produce shop next door to a bakery and a butcher next to the news agents.  

This is typical main street Ireland style, where the locals shop local, but can drive out to the larger retailers like Sainsbury's and Tesco's.  I'm currently enjoying a coffee in our room with a delicious apple tart from ORR's Bakery, which had a constant line out the door the entire time we ate lunch.  If you make great baked goods, have fresh cuts of meat, the area has enough footfall to support you.  

But you have to be good to survive in a tough Irish economy.  Last night we went for dinner in Bangor, which is a much larger town, and we were amazed to find many of the restaurants and pubs empty at 6:00 on a Friday.  The establishment we ate at was empty the entire time. When we arrived, our visibly cold hostess had two space heaters running trying to get the place warmed up. They had decorated their restaurant beautifully, the background music was cool, each place setting was immaculate, but you could hear creaking doors blowing open.  The little things are important.   The menu, for example, mentioned the main component of the entre', in my case chicken wrapped in prosciutto, but failed to mention that all you got with it was that, and a few veggies under it for thirteen pound fifty. Stephani fared much better, choosing the special, wrapped pork, which came with all the trimmings and a glass of wine for nine pounds. She felt sorry for me and gave me some of her mashed champ (mashed potato with spring onion), and when the waiter saw this he asked me if I would like an order of mash.  Why was the place empty at 6 p.m. on a Friday?  You would wonder if little inconsistencies like this over time have an effect on your traffic.  It may well have been due to timing though, we are only a few days after the new year and perhaps the locals are just too pooped out to party.

We enjoyed another nice visit with Mum yesterday too, who had received a house call from her doctor who decided to offer her some additional in-home care. I was very pleased to hear this. She loves her iPad, and as you can see from our video, she is starting to familiarize herself with how we all communicate these days. 

Well that's about all for now, yesterday was a bit of a blow out due to the wind and today we will be doing laundry and sourcing our train logistics for Dublin,  the next phase of our journey, stay tuned.