northern ireland

In my last post I hoped for better weather, well my wish came true, we really couldn’t have had better weather for Easter and with my Hb off for the week we made the most of our days.

After a lovely lunch out on Easter Sunday we headed to Hillborough Forest park for a walk, where nature was beginning to wake up.

We took a walk around the historic village of Hillsborough too, this is the Queen’s official residence in Northern Ireland.

Divis Mountain, the highest peak in the Belfast Hills was our destination on another day out.

And as you can see we made to the summit (that makes it sound like Everest!), not too hard really and the thought of the flask of tea and the chocolate Easter egg in my Hb’s backpack to enjoy at the top, spurred us me on!!

The views of Belfast city from the top of Divis are pretty amazing!

If you’ve ever flown into Belfast International Airport you will flown round behind this mountain and if you’ve never flown into Belfast International, then why not???? Come and visit us, it’s lovely here and we’re very friendly! 🙂

On another daytrip we drove through Carrickfergus on our way to Whitehead, Carrickfergus has a brilliant Norman castle.

Belfast Lough looked almost Mediterranean on that day!!

In Whitehead they like to paint their houses pretty colours, some bright and ………………

……………….some pastel.

This is Portmore Nature Reserve which is run by the RSPB, it was on the BBC’s Countryfile programme a few weeks back where they featured Irish Hares which are flourishing there. We thought we would pay them a visit in the hope of seeing some. Sadly not, the hares live beyond the lapwings breeding area and no one was getting anywhere near that at this time of year and rightly so, I would have liked to have seen the hares though.

On the way back from Portmore we drove around the shore of Lough Neagh, the grasses were very pretty in the sunshine.

The gorgeous weather has meant some garden time too which has been great.

There have even been opportunities for some stash enhancement over the past week too because you know how it is, I have very little yarn! 😉

And of course I have made time for some bunny making as well, with a start made on the April Girls.

All in all it has been a lovely Easter with temperatures reaching 20 degrees C on most days, my favourite time of year was certainly everything I hoped it would be.

The European Heritage Open Days were held here this weekend, it’s a time when all over Europe historical and famous buildings throw their doors open to the public.

We always like to pick somewhere we haven’t been before and this year we chose to visit the beautiful Florence Court, near Enniskillen in County Fermanagh.

Florence Court was the 18th century home of the Earls of Enniskillen.

We started off our visit with a picnic in the grounds in the brilliant sunshine, the weather was very kind to us, big cheer for Indian Summers.

We then took a tour of the house.

Now as is almost always the case with all these magnificent buildings there was no photography allowed inside the house except in the room that the tour started in.

So you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it was indeed magnificent.

There were many treasures from a trunk that belonged to William III to a chair that the Earl sat on in Westminster Abbey at the coronation of Elizabeth II. So many interesting artifacts and beautiful furniture.

I really loved the ‘downstairs’ it was so very Downton Abbey, the kitchen where the food was prepared, the rooms where the servants ate and where they filled hot water jars and oil lamps for ‘upstairs’, all fascinating.

After the tour of the house we went back out into the sunshine to enjoy the grounds and gardens.

Now at first sight this tree doesn’t look very significant. It’s an Irish yew tree which is a different species to the English Yew, this particular yew is the mother plant of every other Irish yew tree in existence throughout the world today. It dates back to between 1740 and 1760.