continuing, travels from August 2022 thru May 2023

*Wales

*It seems there is a castle, or ruins of one, near wherever you are.  Faith and Richard were are tour guides in Wales.

Looks like the old castle builders were quite proficient with stainless steel

We took the Snowdon Mountain Railway cog train in Wales.  Snowdon Mountain is the highest peak in Wales.  In the summer it traverses to the summit, but in the off season if goes about 2/3 of the way.  Beautiful views.

Distillery #11: Penderyn

Just had a tasting.  Worthy enough to bring a bottle home

*Ireland*

From Wales we took the ferry over to Dublin and stayed in the small village of Avoca, known for its historic woolen mill.

Not far away is Powerscourt.  When you are ultra rich in the late 1800s, you build an estate with massive gardens, which later becomes to costly to maintain so a trust takes over and converts it to a tourist destination.  It was a little early in the season for some of the gardens, but still quite impressive.

Distillery #12: Powerscourt

No tourist attraction is complete without it's own distillery.  I was underwhelmed with their selection.

Back to Avoca to tour the Woolen Mill.  Absolutely great!  So much manual effort in the production.  Impressive they can sell products at their prices.

The white line is the "cut" thread.  These are blankets that will have tassels.

Sandy's Mothers Day present is an Avoca blanket.  Come to Montana to see it.  It is awesome!

Our last day in Ireland, Faith and Richard drove us to our hotel next to the Dublin airport.  We woke up that morning and saw snow on the hills nearby.  We had time and decided to take the scenic route inland for the drive, and it started to go up in to the snowy hills.

The road continued to go up, and the snow on the road was 2~3 inches deep, which was right at the point that Faith was nervous about driving in it.  As we were looking for a place to turn around and go back down, we crested the summit where the Irish snowplows were.  I never expected to see this in Ireland!!  After the summit, the snow petered out as we headed down.

After Faith and Richard dropped us off and headed to the ferry back to Wales, we took a bus in to Dublin and went to

Distillery #13: Pearse Lyons Distillery

This was definitely the most unusual distillery housed in a restored church in downtown Dublin.

The only distillery we visited that had a graveyard.

I'd say someone is filled with the Holy Spirit

From Dublin we flew to Heathrow, then Seattle, then Kalispell. But there are still more travels to get up to date!!

..... the travels continue in part 5