A return to Kilkea, Athy, and some beers.

You may remember I was at Mullaghreelan woods, Kilkea, between Athy and Castledermot recently. Even if you don't, I do, because it wasn't that long ago. Anyway, I remember spotting a spot beside a river that I thought had potential.

Yesterday, with other halves being away on a chicken rouFndup weekend or something, A Friend and I took the opportunity to spend some hours making photographs - where better than this place, thought I. So he came to me, and we ventured on out, with our gear. Turned out to be quite interesting - there's a 5-arched bridge over the river, and quite a long weir - must investigate further, as there may be an old mill further downstream. So plenty of scope for photos - and this is what I got!

An overview of the bridge:


A view along the weir, a nice long exposure for some milky water effects


A picture of A Friend, scouting around for targets - his medium format camera doesn't quite have the portability or the clickability a digital camera has, but it's magnificent to hold and has an amazing viewfinder..


And another detail of the weir - whatever way the water was flowing, it turned out to me it looks like a watercolour - but I didn't paint it!



Following that, the light was fading, so we dropped into the shop to buy some (what I didn't realise was gone off) chicken, then we ordered chinese and fired into the beers:

Porterhouse Red - Excellent, very tasty, nicely drinkable, just the right amount of carbonation. The highlight and first beer down;

Porterhouse Hersbrucker pilsener -  a very fine pilsener, again, nice and tasty but this one for me didn't stand out. Above mass market beers yes, but a kind of ordinary non-standard beer if you get my meaning. Quite hoppy, I think, though I'm never quite sure - need more training.

Wells Banana Bread Beer - well now, this was different. Everyone should try this once. You mightn't have another, but it's very very interesting. I was glad we'd split the bottle two ways, as it's quite an overpowering taste, but a very clever beer. I'll have another, but maybe not for a while! It tastes quite strongly of banana bread. Not sure I had to spell that out...

Sierra Nevada Kellerweis - a hefeweisen beer, nice colour, cloudy as you'd expect, and tasty - which you mightn't expect in this style from the US. Could have more, definitely, nice and fruity. A Friend suggested custard, and I'm inclined to agree, there was a sweet vanilla flavour from the beer, which is definitely reminiscent of custard. Mmmm.