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.

The exciting world of home upgrades

We fitted a brand new toilet seat today, to replace the rather wimpy affairs that come as standard. What an exciting life this is, eh? Off to a family party shortly, then we have guests later on. Watch out Monasterevin!

We were in the Porterhouse the other evening with some friends, in the spirit of the season. Some people had spirits, the others had beers and ciders. Some yummy beer was had, I started with a 14% lager called samichlaus beer. Austrian Santa Claus beer, which is brewed but once a year and aged for 10 months. Serious stuff, and one bottle is more than enough.

Also had some Hoegaarden, which is nice. They put lemon in it, so must remember that for future weisbeer (sorry, not sure about the fancy german B-s) consumption. Nice burgers too. A good place to meet up. Got the bus home to Kildare then a taxi. Bit of a pain in the behind, but then we did get a lift up which helped.

Actually, while there are regular buses to and from the big smoke, you are getting on the Limerick service, and the last one leaves at 20:00. What that means, is that another ticket is required to get onto the Kildare service. While that makes sense in somebody's head, it meant we couldn't get a return ticket on the bus up and use it on the way back, on a shorter journey? Thanks to Bus Eireann for that one.