Daily Blog

Thanks for all the comments of support. I'm just in after finishing the Marathon in four hours twenty minutes, delighted!! The picture was taken at the start on my phone!! I am posting this from the phone.

Phew, I nearly didn't make it today, but here I am just in time ! I am posting from Dublin, thanks to John Walsh in Kiltimagh he fixed one of the cars and we made the trip to Dublin. I am running in the Dublin marathon tomorrow ( "running" might be a little exageration but I'm participating anyway) so I expect I'll be late again tomorrow!!
Here is a sunset picture from Co Clare

This morning I awoke to the heaviest rain I have seen for a long time! I wont be surprised if we see some flooding. We are supposed to be going to dublin for a few days, and I told you in the week that my car was broken, well i decided not to fix it untill next week, you know ,cash flow, ! So we were going to Dublin in Patricias car, but guess what, it broke last night!! So now we trying to get one of them fixed this morning, and it being a Saturday of a bank holiday weekend it might not be so easy!!
Todays picture was taken outside Kiltimagh on a much sunnier day!!

Posting in a little haste this morning. This picture was taken about a month ago on Achill island.

Another lovely morning in Mayo, a broken car has kept me in this morning!!
Here is a sunrise taken a few days ago here in Kiltimagh. I'm off now to cast my vote for president !

Its a lovely morning in Mayo, and I have just returned from a trip to Lough Muck, it was lovely. I left the house in a hurry, squeezing my trip in between appointments . I threw my camera bag and tripod into the car and headed off. When I got to Lough Muck I went to the back of the car, as I did I thought to myself," I hope I put the memory card back in the camera"!! It turns out I did, I just didn't put the camera back in the camera bag!!!!! I won't tell you what I said when I made that discovery. So no picture from Lough Muck! Todays picture is from Doolough.

I'm a bit late posting today, and as you can see from the picture it is very grey and overcast, lots of rain and surface water around, this is the river at Turlough. I was in Castlebar this morning and passed Turlough on the way home , I had no tripod with me and this was a 15second exposure, so I had to rest the camera on the bridge and use the self timer to take the picture.

This picture is taken half way up Croagh Patrick, just before the "real" climb starts. I dont normally inlude people in my landscape pictures but there are at least thirty one people in this picture! The mountain really dwarfs them!!

Well done New Zealand ! But the french were superb , not what we expected and in truth in the end we were wishing they would win! what a great match. Todays picture was taken in Murrisk , close to Croagh Patrick.

Here is another view from the summit of Croagh Patrick. I have often climbed to the top and had no view at all, but on this occasion, we had lovely views in most directions accept Clare Island could not be seen.

No sign of the sun this morning!! Here is a sunset instead taken from Slaugher in Westport on Sunday evening.

As I write it is overcast and raining, looks like it will stay overcast for the day. this picture however was taken about half an hour ago, shortly after sunrise and the low clouds gives the lovely colours. Sunrise is often the best part of the day, and usually worth getting up for! Even the cattle in the field seemed to be enjoying the sunrise!

So having climbed Croagh Patrick on Saturday the "superfit" McCarthy family decided to go for a 37kilometer cycle on Sunday! We were however on Electric assisted bikes! My friend Paul Harmen runs Electric Escapes and arranges holidays for people in Mayo using these Electric assisted bikes. I have done a lot of work with Paul but had never actually ridden one of the bikes, so we decided to give it a go. We collected the bikes from Travis at Clew Bay Bike Hire in Newport and cycled on the greenway from Newport to Mulranny. the Greenway is a newly developed cycle path that runs from Westport all the way to Achill, along the disused railway line. The views are spectacular and the path is fairly flat and very safe for children. The Electric bikes however really were a luxury, you still have to pedal, but there is no difficulty cycling against the wind and any hills can be treated with complete contempt! My wife Patricia has had back surgery and has not ridden a bike for years, we all struggled to keep up with her! We had a great time cycling to Mulranny where we stopped at the Park Hotel for a little lunch, enjoyed along with live music and returned back to Newport just before the first shower of the day!! This picture was taken as we approached Mulranny.




To Learn more about "Electric Escapes" click here Electricescapes

Clewbay Bike Hire can be contacted here and also have a lovely video of the Greenway Clewbay bike hire

And if you want to contact the Park Hotel...Mulranny Park hotel

Its raining again this morning but I dont mind, we had two glorious days at the weekend, we climbed Croagh Patrick on Saturday and cycled the Newport to Mulranny Greenway yesterday. I'll tell you more about the greenway tomorrow, but in the meantime here is a picture of Bertra Beach and some of the islands of Clew Bay taken from the summit of Croagh Patrick.

Finally the sun came out, so having watched an Irishman put the poor Welsh out of the world cup, we headed over to Westport and climbed Croagh Patrick ! I took this picture on the way down.

The forecast last night said heavy rain during the night clearing from the West to leave a sunny day in the west. Yippee!! So I set the alarm to go and photograph the sunrise, but guess what, ITS STILL RAINING! it will clear up later. I am now about to settle down to watch Wales beat France in the Rugby ! I cant shout too loud though as my daughter and her boyfriend are visiting from Scotland , and he's French!!

Well I drove all the way to Dublin and back yesterday, I had to be at Dublin Port around sunrise time and was very hopefull of some pictures on the East Coast. but the cloud cover over there was as bad as in Mayo. It was a really dull day with rain at times. I had arrived back in mayo with no pictures so just before I got home I did a detour around some of the small lakes around Kilkelly but everything was just dull and grey and I was completely uninspired!! Just when I had given up and thought I would get no pictures I spotted this portrait opportunity!!

Finally , late yesterday afternoon it actually stopped raining!!, Too late for me to get any new pictures though as I teach two evening classes on a Wednesday so once again I did not get out with the camera. I am posting early this morning as I am about to drive to Dublin, I'll be bringing the camera, so lets hope I get something new. This picture of a small rocky beach on Achill was taken on a very windy day. The picture looks peacefull enough but I got absolutely soaked by an incoming wave!

Yes its STILL raining!! though it does look like it might clear up this morning. I have not used the camera now for four days!! So its back to the archives again for this picture of Carramore starnd, which was taken also in horrible weather but there was a five minute gap in the rain!

STILL raining in Mayo, did not get out at all yesterday and it doesn,t look to good for today either, so once again its back to the archives for todays picture of "The Windy Gap" just out side Castlebar, the mountain in the background is Nephin.