Friday – 30 June – 70th birthday

In the morning we walked up to Clifden to the farmer’s market and then to the Station House Museum, where they have displays relating to the Connemara pony. They are 13-14 hand ponies, similar to our Rind Aske, the Norwegian fjord many years ago, we had to head back to the house at this point to get ready for high tea. We missed the displays on the Marconi station (first wireless transmission from Clifden to Nova Scotia), and Alcock and Brown (first transatlantic flight from Clifden to Newfoundland) and will try to go back for that while we are here. We cam back to the house and got dressed up to head to high tea.

We drove to Cong in County Mayo. Good old Google maps got us close but actually a bit lost, but we recovered and arrived on time. Interestingly, when Google said “turn right and then do a U turn” we had to dodge a car, which ended up following us, since I suspect they used Google also. We arrived on time, and were allowed into Ashford Castle, since I had made an Open Table reservation. It is a glorious hotel and the high tea was marvelous. We started with champagne and tea sandwiches. After that was the scone course, with jam, lemom curd and potted cream. Finally came the eight different small desserts. We were able to take what we didn’t finish and it is safely in our fridge here. Quite an amazing experience.

We had already had plenty to eat, so we had wine and stout at the house and around 9:15, went on a ride around the Sky Loop and saw magnificent views of the Atlantic.