This weekend is a long weekend in Ireland which means no work on Monday, hooray! Friends of ours hosted a festival in their holiday home beside the beach in County Wexford.
All the essentials, car packed up and ready to go.
The theme of the festival was "Tedfest" which is a celebration of the tv comedy show Father Ted so we all dressed up as different characters from the program.
Myself and Aileen were "lovely girls" and Sue was a nun...who also was a lovely girl :-)
Here's some more of the great costumes/people in character - as you can see there was great effort made with the costumes and the decorations.
The full group posed for a photo before it got dark.
Note the prop/lecturn in the middle of the photo.
Plus the fabulous view of the sea in the background on the left.
I think these pics capture the great "mini-festival" feel :-)
Teapots??? Tea?? you ask..
Tea plays a big part in Father Ted as well you know so it was only right that it played a part in our festival, but eh ahem, there was something stronger than tea being served in these teapots! :-)
The pineapple in this photo served as a label that there were cocktails in the teapots
As it got dark (and cold!!!!) a fire was lit. We really needed it....it was quite cold even though it had been a nice sunny day. So for the night we all sat around the fire drinking, chatting and listening to music.
One really important thing that I need to mention (and sadly that I have NO photos of!!!!) is the FOOD.
Our host Andy, slowcooked the most amazing, amazing, AMAZING pulled brisket and pulled pork. The texture and flavour of it was incredible. Thank you Andy.
In addition we all threw normal bbq food on the barbie throughout the night so we were well fed.
Next morning!
David and I went for a walk on the beach where David caught found a fish. We brought it back up the house and Andy had a bit of craic with it waking people up in their tents and campervans with a fish in their face. Nice!
We then set about having breakfast -bbq'd food again, nyom.
And then over the morning/early afternoon people started packing up and leaving.
The great thing about this incredible place/house:
As I said above, we were all packing up etc - very slowly.
So we were all making tracks to get on the road back to Dublin - very slowly - when someone mentioned "maybe just checking out the path to the beach" which had been damaged in a storm recently. So a few of us pottered off "to see the path" and sure what would you know, suddenly there we were, way passed the path all down on the lovely beach again.
It's just that kind of place! Time has no meaning.
It's hard to put into words how special Saleen - the house and land is - so I took some photos to try capture it's charm:
It's an old house that has been in the McVey family for three generations - our friends' grandparents bought this house back in the 1950's I believe.
I also took some photos of a very special "document" in the house.
They have a visitors's book which was started in 1961! Isn't that great?
And it's not just me who thinks it's special, so does Pierce Brosnan :-)
And then on the way home I got a huge ice-cream *big happy smug face*
A great night!
Until next year for the next festival :-)
Thank you Richie, Sue and Andy!
