A Renovator’s Dream

Hanlon House, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

FOR SALE:

This Cheekpoint cottage positively oozes character and charm. As you navigate your way through the designer blackberry, up the path towards the door, you get a real feel for life in the Olde Country. Imagine yourself sitting by the dim glow of a peat fire, drinking your whiskey while your wife attends to your eleven children.

The modest garden offers space for one potato plant, and the soil is now certified to be 93% blight free. The 100 square meter section provides a very generous 8 square meters per child!

This west facing beauty is perfectly sited for catching the 86 minutes of sun you can expect every day in the winter.

Inside, you have a blank slate to work with. Downstairs are two rooms, each 9 m2, and upstairs the master bedroom (and everyone else’s bedroom) offers almost enough sleeping space for half of the family, at a pinch.

All rooms come complete with walls and a floor, and the upstairs room is covered by a proper roof to keep the famine out.

Solidly constructed of old rocks and mud, sourced in the field out the back, this cottage is a real survivor. Built many decades before location counted, this piece of Irish family history could be yours!!!

Offers above € 250, 000 (NZ$ 530,000)

Price breakdown:

Materials: (Rocks, Mud) € Zero
Additions: (1 x door, 2 x windows) € 850
Rip-Off Factor: € 249,150
Free Blackberry Cuts: Priceless

Contact Mr J. Hanlon,
On behalf of Mr and Mrs Martin and Margaret Hanlon, (Original owners)

Cheekpoint, County Waterford, Ireland

Ireland, again!

 

Hook Head, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

Phew! Got back to Ireland a few days ago, this time I am making my way from Waterford in the southeast, up to Belfast via Dublin. I dont have an awful lot of time because I have to go and eat an enormous roast dinner with my second cousin Kay. Anyway, I have spent the last few days investigating the family and history that belongs in this part of the world. Most of the Hanlon family are still in the Waterford area… Last night I met yet another batch of 4th cousins!

Dunmore East is probably the best looking village in the world. If you won the lottery, I would suggest you buy a cottage here. No need to visit first, take my word for it its pretty pretty!

The weather cleared today and I have been out and about exploring and taking photos like a tourist… Here is the lighthouse on the other side of the harbour… Many fishermen have come to grief on the coast around here, it can be trecherous. The photo doesn’t really do it justice but the sea is pretty rough here.

I’ll write a decent post soon but for now, I smell a roast!!!

Road Safety Hazard

 

Road Safety Hazard, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

Another very quick post, this shall be. Here is a gaggle of geese on the road in Burry, South Wales. Eve and Helene and Min and I hired a VW Kombi and went on a wee roadtrip through the Gower Peninsular in South Wales… Driving through Wales presents a number of hazards, not the least of which are the avian pedestrians!

I am back in Bristol for just a day before I head back to Wales and then over the Irish Sea to Waterford, Cheekpoint, Dublin and Belfast before heading over to Scotland for a ramble through the highlands.

To be honest, I have little energy for writing and nothing terribly witty to share, but hopefully I will be able to get to a computer in Ireland to let you know how the tour is going!

Take care all, much love…

Jonny

Bristol Sunset

DSCF1143, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

Just a quick one today. Eve and Helene and I and a whole bunch of friends went to Ashton Lodge to celebrate Helene’s 30th. We had a thoroughly pleasant afternoon in the park… Here is the sunset as we were walking back to the bus stop at the edge of the park…

Terror Threat

Explosion, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

Eve and I were in Gosport, just across the ater from Portsmouth, The Solent and the Isle of Wight.

Gosport was a funny old town, very white, very middle class and very middle aged. Everyone everywhere was stopping for a chat, which is lovely and friendly, except that it makes for a very very slow ride into town on the bus as the driver must chat at length with each passenger as they get on, and again as they get off the bus.

There were very long lines in the supermarket, because the checkout operators forgot to scan the food because they were busy chatting.

The buskers on the street had empty guitar cases, not even a few pennies, because they were chatting all day and forgot to play their instruments for their supper.

And the taxi driver who took us from the station was chatting so much that he forgot what he was chatting about three times, and had to start again, which was a little painful. We got him to take us to the wedding venue later on, just for fun. He chatted about the same stuff on the second taxi ride, too.

The most interesting feature of Gosport, however, was not the friendly chatty locals, but the informative street signs. In this photo you can see that the local council is so efficient that it manages to erect a street sign informing the public of terrorist activity before the activity has even finished. Yes, that’s me, watching civilians being hurled across the street by car bombs. If it wasn’t for the sign, I probably would not have noticed the huge blast down the road.

As for the locals, they were just sort of lingering on the street, chatting as if nothing had happened…

🙂

Jonny

The End Of The Golden Weather

Summer is good. The days are still long, but the people that make the weather are telling us that it will be rather wet for the next couple of decades. Just as I feel quite settled into my life in Brizzle, it is coming to an end.

Only two weeks of school to go! So, for the second time in a year I have that ‘almost at the end of the year’ feel. The summer rain has set in over the last few days and I have been bussing and training around Bristle for the last few mornings to get to work. Which means that the trains and buses are quite empty, due to me living in the central city and working mostly out in the wop-wops. So the traffic flow is usually in my favour. Having said this, I had a rather interesting British Rail experience today.

Coming home from a morning’s work at Yate, about 10 miles north of Bristol, I hopped on the 13.10 train, A few minutes later I got off at Filton, (where they made Concordes, Bristol Freighters, and all of the best British aerolanes except for the Supermarine Spitfire. Now at the same factory they make wings for Airbus planes.)

The 13.10 dropped me off at Filton, and then continues past Stapleton Road which is my stop. I couldn’t stay on the train because it was going straight past my stop without stopping. So I waited a while and analysed the timetable information. I determined that the quickest way to get home from here would be to take the next train, which also went straight past my stop without stopping, on to Bristol Temple Meads where I would grab another train to backtrack to my stop a couple of miles up the way I had just travelled.

At Temple Meads I had to change trains so quickly that it was close to impossible to make it to my connecting train that would take me back the way I had just been to get me home to where I wanted to be which was where I almost was minutes before!!!

Lucky I had my bicycle!

So, I hopped off the train and pushed my bike at sprinting pace to the stairs that lead under the platform and down the alley to the stairs that lead up to the next platform to get to the paltform that I needed to be on to get the train to the stop that I had only recently travelled past at 63 miles per hour.

Once I got up the stairs I saw that the platform was very long and very empty. So I mounted my bicycle and rode at a swiftly safe pace between the pedestrians, few and far between. I could see my train waiting 150 meters in front of me.

At that point, the platform was empty. Nothing seperated me from the train I had to catch but for a few decimeters of atmosphere. And a station guard.

Like many British folk, he was uber-security-focussed. He made a snap decision and decided that I was a possible terrorist and ordered me off my bicycle, demanding that I walked to the train. Riding a bicycle on an empty thirty meter wide platform is strictly forbidden.

I dismounted oblingingly, fearing the worst, with memories of police action in the London underground swirling through my mind.

I walked the last 80 meters to the train. I noticed that there were only two people aboard. The doors closed. The train pulled away. I wasn’t quite on board.

The train from Yate to my stop takes 23 minutes, if you could go direct. I arrived home two hours and fourty five minutes after I left the staion at Yate.

Normally I ride my bike back home from Yate. Its a lovely ride. It takes just shy of one hour.

I know the train people try to do their best, but its a pity about the rain!!!

Take care,

Jonny

Midsummer’s Morning

Midsummer’s Morning, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

Cold, for the middle of summer!

Inside the Stone Circle

Inside the Stone Circle, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

The Stonehenge site has been used for more than a long time. The current model has existed for at least 4500 years, according to people that know far more than I do on these matters. Before that, the Druids erected structures to observe the movement of the variation of the Sun through the course of the solar year.

England is well posiltioned latitudenally, so that the sun rises and sets significantly furthur south (in the northern hemisphere) each day as midsummer approaches until the sun reaches its zenith on the solstice, around the 22nd of June. Every day before the solstice, the sun reaches higher in the sky and stays heavenbound for longer… When I arrived in Brittania 3 months ago at the equinox, the sun rose at 6am and set at 6pm. Now, it rises at 4 am and sets at 10pm.

Eve and I hired a car… a Peugout 306, brand new, smooth as silk.

From Bristol to Stonehenge is a 50 mile drive, and we took the backroads to bypass the big motorways and travel through the villages instead. This was a wise move. It was late at night and Eve and I were both tired and excited about getting to Stonehenge for such an astronomically important event. Beautiful stone houses leaning left, right, in and out, lucky that England doesn’t suffer frequent earthquakes!

We were driving towards Salisbury. I was in charge of the throttle and brake, Eve was in charge of the map. We drove past the ‘Tank Crossing’ signs and a halo of light appeared on the horizon. A few miles on and the light grew whiter… A huge line of policeman in dayglow jackets appeared on the road ahead, and we pulled to a halt. I thought we had at least another ten miles to drive, and presumed we had stumbled across an enormously huge funeral or perhaps an Abba tribute concert. Then Eve suggested that we had arrived at the Stonehenge carpark. Crikey dick, it was huge, probably the biggest carpark that I or anyone this side of Murchison has ever seen.

Drizzle. Rain. Not quite muddy. Plenty more than 10, 000 people.

Parked the car between a vanload of scouts and a carload of drunkinmunters and walked for half an hour. Up ahead appeared a vague bump on the top of a mound, the bump and the mound grew until it was clear that we were in the presence of a very very ancient piece of masonery.

From a distance Stonehenge looks very small. Whoever designed the place knew a fair amount about optical trickery because as you draw closer, the stones and the size of the circle increase exponetially until you realise that these stones, carried 40kms from the quarry site, are enormous. Bigger than you could squeeze into your pocket.

The stones that comprise the Outer Circle or about 4000 x 1000 x 400mm each, give or take a bit. This equates to about the size of a Mammoth. How on Earth the Druids managed to transport, dig and lift the stones defies all logic. With modern technology, diesel engines, and John Deere tractors, it would still be a huge task. But 4000 years ago?

What I am attempting to say is that, despite the rain, mud, drunken munters, cops, security guards, and everthing else that you can imagine, I feel truly blessed to have been able to be part of this celebration that has been repeated for more than 5000 years. If only I could have seen the Sun rise through the stones!

Jonny X

Finally, a Bath

Avon, Bath, originally uploaded by Jonny Hanlon.

Phew! After many aborted attempts, I finally reached Bath on my bike. The ride was fantastic… 15 miles of mostly level ground from Bristol on the bike path that follows an old rail route. About an hour and a bit each way, through deciduous trees and alongside fields of onions. Unfortunately when I arrived in Bath it was raining so I didn’t stick around for too long, that will have to wait until next time.

Here is a shot of the Avon, which flows from through Bath, downstream to Bristol and then into the sea at (unsurprisingly) Avonmouth. Yep, its a bit murky, and yep, there were people swimming. But it was great to get out of the city and see some open space, which I have really been missing.

My little bout of homesickness seems to have subsided as I get to know the place better. There’s plenty happening and the work is more than interesting. Already my trip is half over but there are plenty of plans for the near future.

Eve and I are hiring a car next weekend and driving to Stonehenge for the summer solstice… one of the few occasions where the public are allowed inside the fence to have a bit of a party around a bunch of historically significant old rocks. Should be fun!

In August a bunch of us are heading to Wales, hiring a VW Kombi Camper and exploring Pembrokeshire to celebrate Eve and Helene’s 30th birthdays. Then back to Ireland to see the Waterford O’Hanlons, and then it’ll nearly be time to wrap things up and head home for the spring.

Summer has settled itself into a nice rhythm here, it has been sunny and warm for days and the forecast is good. The British summer is rather good when the sun is out, not too much wind, warm enough but not scorching, and with days that begin before 4am and don’t end until after 10pm.

I have been getting plenty of cycling miles under my belt. Each day a few minutes are shaved off the previous day’s time and the body and mind are feeling great for it. So my plans to return to NZ looking like I did when I was 18 are coming along nicely. I hope.

Trust you are all having a fantastic time…

Jonny

Bristol – Bath Cycle Path

Today I went for a ride up the Bristol – Bath cycle path, a 15 mile ride up an old rail corridor… Well, at least the plan was for me to get to Bath and have a look around. About 4 miles up the path, the clouds opened up. Have a look at the next photo… (!)