Returning to the previous flashback

It's getting hard to keep track of days. It was Wednesday night that we ate in Bushmills. The Inn there was very pretty and friendly.

I should stop again to comment on how positively nice the people here. There's nothing forced about it. Between that and the fact that they speak English, it makes the underlying works of a trip like this much easier than most. The food had been pretty good so far too. I can't say every meal has been wonderful, but overall it's been fine.

So eventually we arrived Wednesday night at our B&B, which, in the middle of the night, felt completely out in the middle of nowhere, to a kind of spooky effect. Of course, inside there was nothing spooky about it, even though our room was named after a famous rope bridge that spans a local chasm. The owner was clearly anxious to get to bed, though he was perfectly friendly (of course).

In the morning I got up and walked outside, and of course it looked quite a bit different. Almost breathtakingly beautiful, and speaking of breathtaking, just amazing air. It's always worth taking a moment to sample the air wherever you are. Air should not be taken for granted, and some of it is better than others, and this was one of the good ones. Clean, with a bit of sea smell, and perhaps a touch of some sort of animal manure, but not to the point where it was more than a hint. It was a wonderful thing to get up to.

The breakfast at the Causeway Inn was pretty great. I didn't know B&Bs had menus. I had a pancake topped with bacon and a poached egg.

So what's the perfect way to follow up a breakfast? A visit to the Bushmills Distillery, of course. It was relatively unbusy, because it was before the busses started to show up from Dublin full of day trippers. They weren't distilling anything, but we had a guided tour around from a very well-rehearsed young man, who as an aside advised me to drink as much Guinness as I could while I was here because it wasn't the same anywhere else. We also learned about the very important distinction between Irish and Scotch whiskies, and among the Bushmills varieties. The coolest thing to see was the bottling plant, where you could see bottles get rinsed, filled, labeled, have their caps screwed on, put into cases, an palletized.

And then of course there was the tasting. We were under the impression that you got like a thimbleful, but nope- full portions. Unaware of this, I ordered a tasting and was given enough whisky to allow me to comfortable nap for the remainder of the day, probably a bad idea while I was driving.

From there we went to Giant's Causeway, which I already wrote about, and then on to Derry, following the scenic coastal route. Scenic yes, and uncomfortably narrow at times. Amazing that I didn't hit anything. I can't emphasize enough the danger here. There are plenty of things for which my instincts or training and practice aren't exactly right, but there are very few where everything I know is the exact opposite of what I should be doing. I can get on okay, but I know that if I get in a panic situation there's a decent chance that I'll do something terribly wrong.

Long day's drive from Derry to Galway on Friday. Keep your fingers crossed (or course my posting this on Friday implies that it wasn't disastrous).