On Friday night I headed to The Dock Café as part of a group from my church church.
At the outset, I will hold my hands up and say that despite the fact that The Dock Café has been opened for over four years and the fact that I live just 15 minutes away from it, it was my first time inside.
As part of my travels around the North Coast (which you can read about here) we headed to the Central Wine Bar (or just the Central Bar) in Ballycastle for dinner.
As I mentioned in my last post, my parents are the guardians for a Spanish girl, Maria, who is boarding at Victoria College Belfast this year. She had some family over from Alicante for a few days so we thought we would take the opportunity on Saturday to show them some of what Northern Ireland has to offer.
Our original intention was to head to Portrush/Portstewart but as the North West 200 was on, we decided to head a bit further east to avoid the crowds. They were staying in the Malone Lodge Apartments (which incidentally they said were lovely inside) so we headed from there to Carrickfergus and then Larne before heading up the Causeway Coastal Route
We used to have Spanish friends in my street but they went back home at the end of last year. Their niece had come over to Belfast to board at Victoria College to learn English and with her aunt and uncle moving back to Spain, my parents became her guardians.
We have done a few things with her at weekends and over the May Day holiday we decided to go off the beaten track a bit and go around the Ards Peninsula. My dad was sitting on the iPad last week and happened to stumble across a café called Katch 27 in Kircubbin. The restaurant came in at number 4 for restaurants in Co Down according to TripAdvisor so we thought it would be good to try it.
It’s difficult to write again following my last attempt at summing up following the death of my Community Rescue Service friend and colleague Adrian, our gentle giant.
However, as my friend Sarah said to me, “A writers response to emotion is to write, so you keep her lit”… So without further ado, let me crack on talking about Kraków (that’s an awful attempt at a joke and I apologise now for it).
My attempt at being artistic
This is one of the hardest posts that I have ever written but it is something that needs to be said.
As I was driving to work on Friday 4th March I heard of an ongoing security alert in the Creagh Road/Woodstock Road area of Belfast. I thought nothing of it as, sadly, security alerts are still commonplace across Northern Ireland.
I came into work, checked the BBC Northern Ireland website and read that the alert was around a bomb that had partially exploded under a vehicle, but again I didn’t pay much heed to it. That all changed when I received a phone call around 09:30 from one of my fellow Community Rescue Service (CRS) volunteers to inform me that I knew personally who it was that had been targeted. As the story developed, everyone else knew that the victim was a serving Prison Officer who was on his way to work in HMP Hydebank Wood, but those in CRS knew him personally.
I remember sitting in a school assembly in September 2005 when a notice was read out about the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) Award Scheme. I had heard a bit about this before but I decided that I would go along to the meeting in a few weeks’ time to sign up to do it through school.
For those who don’t know, the Award Scheme was set up by Prince Phillip in 1956 and there are are three levels of programme you can do which, when successfully completed, lead to a Bronze, Silver or Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
I love to travel. Even though I’m not what you’d call a ‘seasoned traveller’, over the years I have picked up ideas or have thought of things which should make travelling anywhere a little bit easier.
My first experience of cruising was in October 2013 from Venice with Royal Caribbean and I was away in October 2015 with Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) from Barcelona.
Splendour of the Seas, Royal Caribbean
When I told people that I was going on a cruise, a lot of people responded in the same way – “I would never go on a cruise” or “I would hate that”. I probably thought the same before my first one but I am now starting to catch the bug. As a result of that, I’ve come up with a few reasons why you should take a cruise, at least once in your life.
The front of the Norwegian Epic
Summer Madness has been a big part of my summer for just over a decade. For those who don’t know, Summer Madness (or just ‘Madness’ as it is affectionately known) is Ireland’s largest Christian festival.
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