Hello again,
Q3 already!
We left off at the end of June after the Isle of Wight Festival and heading to the Emerald Isle. I dropped Carol at the hotel in Whitehall and took the rental car back to Hertz. What I did not know then, was that I would later get a congestion zone fine, which Hertz paid on my behalf and then charged my credit card. ☹ Anyway, we live and learn (very slowly)…
We checked out of the Raffles Hotel and took a cab to Heathrow and checked into the BA flight to Dublin. We picked up the hire car and set off into Dublin for our Irish road trip. The first stop was to Wicklow, about 2-hours drive south of Dublin. I had chosen a nice pub-hotel on the bank of the river Vartry. This would eventually win the award for worst hotel of the trip. We spent quite a long time deciding on a restaurant and then we headed out for an early evening walk around the town which was nice and generated a fine appetite.
Sadly, our selected restaurant, would go on to win the award for the worst restaurant of the trip, it was Irish/Thai cuisine and not to be recommended. Back at the worst hotel, the room was small, as was the bed, and it was above the main bar and Thursday night is live music night at The Bridge Tavern. Carol decided to try to sleep, but the appeal of live music and real Irish Guiness, drew me down to the bar. The singer was great and even played an Amy MacDonald song, who we had just enjoyed at the IoW festival.
Day-2 started with a nice breakfast in the bar looking out over the river and soon we were heading west from Wicklow, towards Waterford. Our destination was the Dunbrody County House Hotel in Arthurstown.
It was a famous old manor house, style hotel, set in beautiful grounds, like most places in Ireland, in the middle of nowhere. We had a long walk along the coastline and returned for a fabulous dinner in their michelin stared restaurant.
From here, the plan was to spend a few days at the Inchydonny Island Lodge & Spa, in West Cork, which sounds nice, but won the award for the worst spa we have ever stayed at! It was a strange place, quite hard to describe. We arrived at the hotel shrouded in a low cloud mist, which continued into the second day. I decided to go for a walk along the beach, which was interesting because you could not see much more than 20-30 yards ahead.
Finally, on the 3rd day the cloudy mist lifted, and we discovered that we were in a beautiful bay, with wonderful golden sandy beaches in both directions.
But by then, Carol had decided that it was time to move on and found us a nice little 5-start hotel in the centre of Cork City, called Hayfield Manor Hotel, if you’re visiting Cork, I fully recommend it.
We enjoyed exploring Cork City, we looked around the ‘London Market’ and I found a very nice puzzle ring for Carol in the small boutique shops. We were sad to leave this hotel, which did win the award for best hotel of the road trip.
We took the main road back to Dublin and after about 3 and a half hours, we were pulling into the Portmarnock Hotel & Jamesons Golf Links, apparently home to quite a famous Irish golf course, I was sad that I was not able to play it. But the Portmarnock beach was beautiful, a very posh part of County Dublin.
But we were there for one main reason, to see one of my all-time favourite bands ‘Mumford and Sons’, who were playing the following day at an open air concert at Malahide Castle. Which I thought was quite brave as Ireland is known for significant rainfall.
We got there early and it did try and rain on us, but happily the clouds moved on and we had a dry evening.
We checked out the VIP area and had a few drinks while we waited for the main event. They were fabulous and they played all the big hits, ‘Little Lion Man’, ‘I Will Wait’, ‘The Cave’, and more.
It was a taxi ride back to the hotel, on the way the taxi driver recommended that we walk to a pub in Malahide village, to wait for the rush to die down, which is what we did. The pub was packed out, but we managed to get to the bar and in no time, Carol had made friends with a young Brazilian woman, now married to Irishman and settled in Portmarnock. The beer was flowing, and the music was loud and they played all the Mumford hits again, so we sang and danced until we were kicked out. Great fun.
The next day, it was a short drive back to Dublin airport and back to London. We checked back into one of our favourite hotels, the Landmark on Marylebone Road. It’s now early July and the weather was very nice, we headed down to Hampton Wick, where one of my best friends Crispen Edgell, has an apartment on the banks of the river Thames and he has a small river boat called Seren, moored outside his apartment. And off we went, cruising down the Thames, through Surbiton and we tied up for a lovely pub lunch, at the Fox in Twickenham, then on up to Richmond. We could go no further because the lock was out of operation.
It was a lovely, relaxing cruise on the river and inspired us to look for an apartment on the Thames.
At the end of the week, we got the train from Euston to Ipswich, where we changed for Woodbridge. Carol has an old friend, Pippa, who was married to a Brazilian guy and they used to live in Sao Paulo, where they met. The marriage failed and she returned to the UK and met Murf. We journeyed down to help celebrate his birthday, with an excellent curry at the Royal Bengal Indian restaurant, in the town. It was a fun, boozy night, we sipped scotch out in their garden until the wee small hours. The next day we watched the Ladies Wimbledon final on TV. I was sad for the poor American, Amanda Anisimova who failed to win a single game. Then back to the Landmark and enjoyed the Men’s Wimbledon final, Sinner gaining revenge on Alcaraz.
I headed back to my apartment in Newmarket, to spend a little time with Tara and to complete a Blue Crest health check-up, like an MOT for humans. All the usual tests, which I am happy to report, all had good results except for my cholesterol, I must work harder on my diet. ☹
Talking of which, the next day, we met with Carol’s son Bobby and his girlfriend Guilia, who arrived to join us at the Landmark and then out to dinner at the new Gordon Ramsey, Lucky Cat restaurant. It’s a Asian Fusion restaurant, on the 44th floor of some building in London and it was lovely clear night, the views were amazing.
On the Saturday, we had planned to celebrate Rosie’s 21st birthday. My 4 kids, Sarah, Charlie, Tara, Rosie, along with her boyfriend Verdant, Bobby, Carol and I all met up and the O2 Area in docklands, to a place called “Activate”. We divided urselves into two teams of 4, then working our way through a series of rooms, each of which has a different challenge. One is throwing basketballs into hoops, another is having to dance and jump over coloured lights on the floor. In another, you have to act like a cat-burglar, dodging laser beams. Each challenge only takes 1 or 2 minutes, it is fast and great fun, we all really enjoyed it and Rosie's team won.
In the evening, we gathered again at the Landmark for cocktails, my nephew Tom, who lives in Kensington, joined us as well. Then on to Carol’s favourite London Asian fusion restaurant, the Bugis Singapore, in Kensington. Fab food and everyone had a lovely time.
We do visit a lot of restaurants and just before covid, back in 2019, I set myself a challenge to write a phone app. I taught myself to program in Java and did eventually manage to get the app to work only Android phones. When I published the app, called RestiView, I did set up this very basic website, to support the app. I’ve mentioned it before, the app allows you to capture your own restaurant reviews, and the idea is to be able to share them with friends. Carol really liked the idea, and we did have a company spend some time redesigning the look and feel of the app. They were going to develop it professionally for both Android and Apple IoS, but it didn’t happen. However, I recently decided that with the help of my copilot (ChatGPT, in deep thinking mode), I would do it myself. So, I have rewritten it in a language called ‘dart’ and developed it on a platform called ‘flutter’. The benefit of that is it allows you create the Android version first and then later, generate the Apple IoS version. The reason I am giving this update, is that I have now published the test version on the Play Store and I need volunteers to help to test it. So, if you have an Android phone (or know of someone who has), let me know and I will send you the link to get the app.
Our next trip was to spend a week in deepest Essex, at the Glass House Spa, near Upminster. Quite a nice place, but when you are not used to the Essex accent, it does seem very strange! Carol was most amused. Lots of long walks in the Essex countryside, the food was OK, and we did lose a few pounds. One of the highlights was the cryo-tank, spending 3-minutes in basically what looks like a walk-in fridge, with glass doors. It goes down to -138C !! I was very impressed that Carol managed the full 3-minutes as well. She does not usually like anything to do with the cold.
After the spa I took Carol to Heathrow and sent her off, back to Brazil. I returned to Newmarket, as there were a few things I had to sort out, before our annual trip to the Kia Oval, in Kennington. My old Sussex University friends always get a dozen tickets for the Friday session of whoever England are playing. This year, it was the world number 1 test team, India visiting. England were 2-1 up in the 5 match test series, and we gathered with great optimism to cheer England to victory. We failed - as they would eventually lose this nail-biting test on the 5th day. It was great fun to see everyone and my son Charlie and his gf Lilly joined us too.
The test match starts at 11AM and we managed to hold out until 12-noon, before the first pint of beer was consumed. The day's play ended at 7pm and we went on to our usual post-Ovel pub the Derby, where we continued until midnight! Quite a session!
A week later I got the flight back to Sao Paulo, and the second round of Carol’s surgery. Mostly cosmetic, but still a pretty major operation. Happily, everything went to plan, but Carol was again, confined to bed rest for 2-3 weeks and again, a very slow recovery. We had to be very patient. Towards the end of August Carol was up and about again, just in time for the visit of my daughter, Sarah and her friend Nat.
We put them in the Tangara Palace hotel for the first few days, which they loved. It is easily one of the best hotels in Sao Paulo.
Then we spent a long time warning them of all the dangers they might encounter in Rio de Janeiro and then we packed them off to Rio de Janeiro. We selected a very nice hotel on the beach at Ipanema, and they had a great time.
When they returned, we collected them and I drove us all down to the Sao Paulo beach. We chose a beach hotel in Juquei, its about a 3-hour drive southeast of the city. We left a sunny Sao Paulo city, to go to a drizzly beach hotel.
Here is Nat, Carol, Carol's friend Ana and Sarah. It was winter in Brazil, which is usually low 20s C and warm, but by the sea, it was a continuous fine drizzle. It did not stop us though, we explored the area and swam in the sea, as is our unstoppable British nature. The hotel staff lined up to watch the crazy English people swimming in the rain!
The girls went home and we rolled into September. For a changed we just stayed at home, in the apartment in Sao Paulo, while Carol continued her recovery. One highlight for me was the 2025 Ryder Cup from New York. It is an event that I truly love watching and I managed to pretty much watch all 3-days, from 8AM to 6PM each day. Carol could not believe it! Europe opened what seemed to be an unassailable lead at the end of day-2, but as always happens in the Ryder Cup, it got closer and closer as the final day progressed. But Europe were able to hold on for a rare overseas victory. Wahoo!
On the first of October, we headed to the airport bound for Ibiza, via London, for the Wedding of Cesca’s husband Victor’s brother, Diego. But that takes us into Q4, so you’ll have to wait for the next quarter blog-news update.
Take care and stay healthy!
Love from Peter
