Where do you go for the craic - Ireland.
Ireland is mostly known for its lush green landscape, friendly people (even if you can't understand half of what they're saying) and its Guinness. Perhaps I should add its Father Ted-like priests and an abundance of nuns second to Vatican City (it is said that if there is a nun in your family, it will bring good luck).
For Pete and I, Southern Ireland was like being in New Zealand and more especially, as we drove from Rosslare to Cork, the West Coast. We drove from home in Milton Keynes to Fishguard in Wales, caught the Stena ferry to Rosslare and had a perfect sailing across the Irish Sea, which took just over 3 hours. We drove onto the ferry at one end and drove off at the other and nobody asked to see our passports or took the slightest bit of interest in who we were or what we were doing.
Our first night was spent in Kilmore Quay, just half an hours drive from the port, where we had our first encounter with the friendly southern Irish men and women. I don't think the size and population of Kilmore Quay has altered much in the past 150 years despite its prime location to plentiful fishing grounds in the Atlantic - commercial fishermen fish out of the sheltered harbour and seriously recreational anglers come over from the UK en masse to hire out launches from the new marina. Nothing appears to be processed in the village so it retains its small sleepy-fishing-village atmosphere completely unspoiled. After settling into our pre-booked lodgings, part of which were the original Telegraph Office, we prepared to inspect the 3 or 4 restaurants within the tiny village and struck up conversation with an English lady who'd also just checked in with her husband. She thought we were Irish and was amazed at how easy it was to understand us, until she asked us which part of Ireland we were from. After discovering her mistake, her husband finished doing whatever he was doing inside and joined us outside so she asked him what part of Ireland he thought we were from. He replied, "Sounds like South Island to me." They had been to NZ in February.
Anyway, they ate at Kehoe's Pub and had a wonderful evening amongst the locals while we ate at the Silver Fox, which offered more of a fine dining atmosphere to the pub. Their menu obviously favoured fish dishes; we both couldn't resist Fillet of Cod wrapped in Smoked Salmon and stuffed with prawns, served with a light cream and chive sauce. Each fillet was absolutely enormous and I regretted ordering Seafood Chowder as a starter. Pete managed to eat all of his but I certainly couldn't eat all of mine. We had a Hunters Sauvignon Blanc with the meal; don't think we have ever seen Hunters wines in England.
Next morning we decided to take the back roads (more accurately described as pot-holed, narrow lanes) back to the N25 (the main drag to Cork) via a different route to that which we came in on the previous evening, and just on the outskirts of the village is Forlorn Point overlooking the great sweep of Ballyteige Bay, but renamed by the locals as "The Graveyard of a Thousand Ships". They have created a memorial garden in the shape of a mooring bollard containing a 'stone ship' and a Vigil Sculpture of two grieving figures looking out to sea. A plinth is engraved with the names of those lost at sea. A close-knit community who have undoubtedly known more than their share of tragedies through losses at sea.
Waterford is not an overly inspiring town although it is apparently the oldest in Ireland. We parked in a quay-side car park that floods at certain times of the day at certain times of the year, and went off to investigate 'safe' in the knowledge that the car park wasn't going to flood that day. Apart from some intriguing medieval cobbled lanes twisting about in narrow alleyways, the town centre presented in just as an homogenized appearance as town centres throughout England so after a quick latte we carried on to find the Waterford Crystal factory where we spent about an hour choosing a couple of pieces as tokens of our visit to the famous lead crystal works. (See photo attached with Pete's choice.) 
I had acquired a map of the streets of Cork before going to Ireland but when we reached Cork, the map and the physical layout were somewhat disparate! As usual in these sorts of situations, Pete dived into the first car park building he could find until he could recce the place and get an idea of where everything is. I've since heard that the Irish don't take too much heed of the 'No Entry' or 'No Right Hand Turn' notices and this would explain why traffic flow was a total mystery to us; and Pete uses it as his excuse for blatantly driving through a red light, much to the incredulous disbelief of the mad Irish drivers. He told me he was just following the bus in front of him because we were sick of going around in circles over the various bridges linking the city with the mainland (Cork is built on an 'island' where the River Lee splits and joins up again much further downstream).
On our second day, Saturday, in Ireland we decided that we might as well go and kiss the Blarney Stone even though it's a total tourist have but we're glad we did. Blarney Castle is a crumbling ruin but remnants of its former glory and importance in fighting off Viking marauders and Cromwell's slaughter-men are evident in what's left of the main keep and battlements. At a cost of 7 Euros each to get in, you walk through park-like grounds beside a babbling brook to reach the castle, climb the spiral steps to the battlements where the passage becomes so narrow towards the top that we had grave misgivings as to whether the 2 hefty ladies approaching the castle as we were leaving would make it to kiss the stone. When it is your turn to acquire the gift of eloquence, you sit down with your back to the outside wall, grasp the iron bars behind you and lean backwards until completely upside-down. Some 200 feet below is the ground, but you wont crash to your untimely death because they have put in safety bars to prevent such a happening, and there is a jovial Irishman sitting beside you to hold and guide you. Because of a constant line of tourists, the process is over before you've had time to register that you have just dangled upside-down from a great height and, if you really did kiss the stone, have probably just contracted AIDS or some other ghastly disease. It's all great fun.
Our next port of call was exactly that; we drove to Cobh (pronounced Cove). For many years it was the port of Cork and has always had a strong connection with Atlantic crossings. The Titanic made her last stop here before sailing into shipping history all too well known to even us present-day jet-age travellers, but most importantly to Pete (and I), Cobh is from where Patrick and Johanna Coffey sailed to New Zealand, establishing a new dynasty which, in time, produced the amazing Peter Douglas - the rest you know. Patrick and Johanna were mere specks in the epic tale of the Irish Diaspora; the mass emigration of the impoverished working class and Potato Famine victims, and previously, Cromwell's expulsion of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians who were sold into slavery, followed by tens of thousands of convicts transported to Australia and 4000 orphaned girls taken from the workhouses to resolve the problematic lack of mates for the male dominated colony. I read somewhere that this port must be the most tear soaked port in the whole world. Needless to say, our visit to the Heritage Centre was quite moving.
Coming up next is the gorgeous South West Coast in County Kerry - next to New Zealand, perhaps the most scenic part of the universe (mind you, we haven't seen it all yet!).
