Travel

At the start of the summer Mr. Waffle and I went to stay in a lovely hotel in Wexford. I regularly get Blue Book vouchers for Christmas and birthday presents and can I say right now how much I love these? If you are visiting Ireland, stay in a Blue Book place (not sponsored, sadly). One of the things I like about them is that they are generally older houses without a spa (I am not a fan of spas and it always irks me to be paying for the thrill of having one when I am never going to use it, judge away) and the money they save on spas is ploughed into the kitchen. The food is always excellent.

Mr. Waffle is always keen on change (me, not so much), so instead of going to the place in Northern Ireland where we have gone a number of times (recommended) we headed to the South East which is a part of the country I know nothing about. Cork is like France, if you’re from there, there’s no real incentive to holiday outside its boarders. So even though I grew up only a couple of hours away, I never holidayed in Wexford or Waterford.

We arrived on Friday and our Blue Book venue did not let us down on the dinner front or on breakfast the following morning.

Although the hotel is in Wexford, it is very close to Waterford city which we accessed via a short ferry ride. I love a ferry ride.

We explored Waterford. It’s lovely. I was slightly startled to discover that although the rest of the country has what might be called a pretty negative attitude to the Normans (800 years of oppression anyone?), they love them in the South East. It was all Norman content and all “weren’t they great”. Surprising. Not as surprising as the revelation that Waterford is apparently Ireland’s first city. They’ve kept that quiet. I am outraged. We dutifully visited Reginald’s Tower (Ireland’s oldest civic building!) where this and various other Waterford historical information was conveyed to us. Mildly interesting, you know yourself. Waterford has a great cathedral; well worth a visit.

I’ve now reached the age where I like looking at gardens. If you too are in that position, may I recommend Mount Congreve?

I don’t want to sound shallow here – I am going to sound shallow – it has a great cafe and shop as well. So entranced was I by the shop that I decided to buy a jumper. When I got to the till (longish queue), I said to the assistant “Can you tell me how much this is?”. She did and I said, “Well, I’d like to buy it then please.” And she said “Well, you can’t we’re closed.” I was astounded, I have never had this happen to me before. She was utterly unapologetic and we all went back and dutifully put our things back on the shelves and, in my case, bought the jumper online later. As my brother-in-law says, “Why not write your own P45?”

We were, alas, too late to visit the Bishop’s Palace which we had intended to do but we will go another time.

The next day we went for a lovely walk on the hotel estate.

Your daring correspondent went for her first swim of the season. Mr. Waffle brazenly stayed onshore. I cannot lie, it was chilly.

After braving the sea, we went to look at Hook lighthouse; a big attraction locally. It’s the “oldest intact operational” lighthouse in the world. A lot of qualifying adjectives there and when I saw it from outside, I was a bit underwhelmed.

But it did look a bit older from inside.

There was yet another picture of a Norman knight outside. God, they love William Marshal down there. He married Isabel de Clare daughter of Strongbow and Aoife (big couple in Irish history, have a look at this historical painting by Daniel Maclise for a sense of how this union was viewed generally).

On the way to the lighthouse, we passed the most haunted house in Ireland, Loftus Hall. It’s had a go as a hotel and I think people are trying again. I like a big house as much as, or more than, the next person but the situation is a bit…desolate, is it not?

After our lighthouse expedition, we went to Tintern abbey on the way home. It’s a daughter house of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. It is a complete internet blackspot and Mr. Waffle was delighted that his habit of always carrying cash was vindicated as we certainly couldn’t have paid by card. It’s lovely but I found myself weirdly sympathetic with Michael McDowell (annoying IT columnist inter alia) when he wrote in the paper recently hat it was a mistake to strip it back to the old abbey and remove almost all traces of the family who had lived there since the reformation.

Check out their merch. On brand for the South East.

On the way home, we stopped to buy some Wexford strawberries at the side of the road and they were the best strawberries I have had all year.

And, we subsequently discovered, when paying for the hotel instead of deploying two vouchers, Mr. Waffle only gave them one and paid the balance so we still have a voucher left. An unintended error discovered too late but overall good news because I could really do with a nice Blue Book weekend away in January.