A SPECIAL POST FOR MY THOMPSON RELATIVES:

MARY AGNES DOWNEY

Great Grandma - Mary Agnes Thompson - nee Downey

What we already knew: My great-grandmother, Mary Agnes Downey, was born in Golden, Tipperary in about 1867, the daughter of Michael Downey and Kate Nolan. Their other children I have a record of are Edmond (1862), Jeremiah (1858), Michael (1873) and Winifred (1871). Mary came out to Australia in the 1880's where she married my great-grandfather Charles Forester Thompson, settled in Clermont and sadly died of Tuberculosis when she was just over 40 and her children were still young. My Great-Uncle Joe (John Dempster Thompson), her youngest child, just remembered her and knew very little of her life in Ireland.

Downeys in the Golden area: A search of the tithes and Griffiths Valuations revealed that there was only one area in the vicinity of Golden where the Downey family lived, and that was the 'townland' known as Cloghleigh or Cloughleigh, which is to the south-east of Golden township, just near Athassel Abbey.

1832 - In the tithe records for this year, Edmond and Darby Downey both are paying tithes for land.

1848 - In the Ordnance survey for this year, there is a Jeremiah Downey leasing land with a house and two 'offices' at Cloghleigh. (Offices just means farm buildings.) We're given their measurements: the house is 32.6 feet in length, 17 feet in breadth and 7 feet high. The first office is 18 by 17 by 7, and the second office is 12 by 10 by 5.6. The name Jeremiah is crossed out, and Michael is written above it - the obvious inference being that Jeremiah has died and Michael has inherited the tenancy of the land. The Irish Potato Famine is at its height at around this time, so the death rate was at its height in the mid to late 1840s.

This is from the letter of an Englishman touring Tipperary during the famine:
"Out of this immense track of
country with its tens of thousands of inhabitants, 80% are wholly destitute of their usual means of subsistence, the remainder have what may hold out with a meal a day for a fortnight, and then they must live as best they may.
It is a perfect mystery to me how the population exist at all, and I believe it is almost as inexplicable to the creatures themselves. If they get a scanty meal of half rotten potatoes-very few of this sort existing-in the course of 24 hours, they feel quite happy. It was appalling-heart-rending-to see in some places the children devouring black potatoes with an avidity not to be described."

Cloghleigh as it is today - a lovely farming district

1850 - In Griffiths Valuation for the primary valuation of tenements in the Parish of Relickmurry and Athassel, there is a David Downey with 2 lots of land (one with a house and office) and Michael Downey has one lot with house, offices and land. Both of these are owned by Laurence Creagh, Esquire - obviously he is the local English landlord and he and his brother Richard own most of the land in the district.

This is a link to more information about the family:
http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/estate-show.jsp?id=3333

Catholic church in Golden

Protestant church in Golden - now disused and with sheep roaming the graveyard!

I found the family vault of the Creagh family - the English landlords of the Downeys. It has just been rebuilt by the local historical society.

1858 - Jeremiah Downey is born, probably the first son of Michael Downey and Kate Nolan.

Given the family names chosen by Michael and Kate for the boys and the scarcity of Downeys in this area, it seems really likely to me that the line goes: Edmond, his son Jeremiah, his son Michael, his son Jeremiah and then another son Edmond.

What happened to the Downeys? We checked the 1901 and 1911 census for Jeremiah and Edmond - neither of them were there in Ireland. They may have died, or maybe they emigrated like Mary did. I haven't checked young Michael yet. However there is a Downey family living in Cloughleigh both decades - 1901 - William (45) his wife Mary (36), his brother Richard (47), four children and three servants. Their first son is David so my guess is that William is a direct descendent of the David Downey who has land in 1850.

Thursday, 31st July                        CASHEL

Robyn writes: We had a big day in pursuit of family history today, with some amazing results! Full details for other family history-oriented rellies will be revealed in a separate blog....

We were up around 8 - slept in as it was very overcast and very good weather for sleeping. Our room here is so blissfully quiet and comfy, it's amazing we woke then! We had a lovely breakfast down in the dining room - the ubiquitous cooked Irish breakfast (I had a boiled egg, Lex had sausages and tomatoes) then some lovely fresh fruit and yoghurt. We had a nice chat to our landlady who was quite amazed at how Australians live (airconditioning, flyscreens, other weird innovations)!

She'd told us yesterday about the library at Thurles (pronounced 'Turless') as a great family history resource, so we decided to head there first, with not much expectation of any luck, to tell the truth - family research in Ireland is notoriously difficult. We found a park in Thurles and the library without too much trouble, and headed upstairs to the research rooms where we met young John O'Gorman. Well! The lad is a research powerhouse! He started on my Downey ancestors and before too long had found my g-g-grandfather AND his father's land, including the year it was handed over, how big the property was, buildings that were on it and how big they were! He then whisked into Lex's Ballysheedy Hogan ancestors, determined that in fact they were from BallysheedA (which is sometimes called Ballysheedy by the locals) and found his g-g-g-grandfather's records as well. We were left stunned, gratefully gave them a 20 Euro donation and staggered out some two or three hours later.

Library in Thurles

The cathedral in Thurles. A stunning building in a style we've never seen before - couldn't decide where it came from!

We saw this ruined tower in a hayfield just outside of Cashel.

We had a lovely lunch at Quigley's cafe in Thurles then set out to see our ancestral homes. My Downey ancestors come from Cloughleigh, or Cloghleigh, a little area called a townland (except there's no town there!) to the south-east of Golden in Tipperary. Dad's grandmother Mary Agnes Downey was born here circa 1867. We drove to the area to look around - it's a very pretty farming area now with quite a few houses along the road. No sign of any old houses of course, but when you look at some of the fields you get an idea of sizes perhaps - Michael Downey had around 15 acres and a lot of the fields would be around that size. We visited Golden again and checked out the graveyards of both churches there but no Downey graves at all.

Cloughleigh, near Golden - home of the Downeys

Famine memorial at the Anacarty church

Then we went on to Ballysheeda, a townland near the little town of Anacarty, not far away, where Lex's great-great grandfather Matthew Hogan was born. Again there was nothing old to see except the size of the fields and the odd stone/turf wall. There is an old very ruined bit of a castle, too. The area is quite high up in the foothill of one of the mountain ranges and is forested these days. We checked out the cemetery at Anacarty and did find a 1993 Hogan grave from BallysheedY so the family obviously still call it that!

From there, we drove back to Cashel and spent some time on our computers busily trying to find out more (and in my case, get my head around Griffith's Valuations!) Finally around 7 we realised we'd better go eat, so we walked into town (about 7 minutes stroll) and decided to eat at The Oasis Mediterranean in one of the pubs. We had a lovely meal there - Lex had seafood chowder and Pasta Arriabata and is still groaning occasionally, and I had a Chicken Caesar salad followed by the most excellent tiramisu. Yum! Then we walked (staggered) home to continue hunting down ancestors on the internet. It's now nearly 10 and is finally dark! Don't know if we will find out any more but while we are in the area, it's all systems go...

Peat stacked in the fields. It's left to dry, and then moved in big trucks. It's amazingly light and very strong - hard to break

Wednesday, 30th July          TULLAMORE TO CASHEL

Robyn writes: Today was moving day again, so we were up early and off to breakfast not long after 7.30. Another huge, delicious cooked Irish breakfast - Lex had sausages and mushrooms and was very impressed with them. Then we headed back upstairs to repack our ports and get organised to leave. This took a bit longer than we'd expected and in the end, it was about quarter to ten when we left - unfortunately this meant we got to Daingean at about 5 past ten and by that stage the 9.30 mass was over and done with and once more the parish priest was nowhere in sight. So we never did get the chance to check the parish records for Cuskellys. Maybe NEXT time we're in Daingean.....!
We then headed south towards Cashel. As it's not such a long way to Tipperary, we decided to take the scenic route through the Slieve Bloom Mountains - some very pretty pine forest countryside and moors.


Daingean, home town of the Cuskelly family

From the lookout in the Slieve Bloom Mountains on the way to Cashel

Then, after a stop in Mountrath for morning tea, we joined the motorway and from then on it was straight down and into Cashel, getting here at about 1.30. Cashel is a pretty and busy little town absolutely dominated by the Rock of Cashel, the huge castle complex on the hill overlooking the town. We found our B&B on the outskirts of the town; it's a lovely building built in 2000 and we have a really nice, quiet and spacious room at the back overlooking a hilly green field with lots of cattle in it. Very tranquil and rural and the only noise we can hear is the mooing! We were able to book in even though it was a bit early, and then headed out to visit the Rock of Cashel.
This is owned by Heritage Ireland, so once again we got free entry with our English Heritage membership. We had a look around by ourselves first, then joined a tour that started at 3.30. It was really excellent, as Niall took us through the chorister's house, Cormac's Chapel (a stunning church built in the 1100s which still has its original roof - oldest existing one in Ireland), the cathedral, round tower and the rest of the complex. He had the real Irish pronunciation where "th" is pronounced as "t", so we heard about the 'gotic' style of the 'catedral' in the 'tirteent' century! I really enjoyed listening to him! Rock of Cashel is a very historic site dating back to St Patrick, who visited here, and the legendary Irish High King Brian Boru. It was used as a religious site right up until the 1700s, but most of it was trashed by Cromwell's men in the 1600s. Of course. You can just see the remains of the beautiful frescoes which used to cover the ceiling of Cormac's Chapel - they destroyed most of them. And then of course, they massacred nearly two thousand locals who had taken refuge in the cathedral, then torched the building. Tragic history aside, we really enjoyed the tour and looking around the site, which has the most beautiful views including a ruined abbey below it. The sun came out quite a lot during the afternoon and the scenery was quite beautiful.

Inside Cormac's Chapel at Rock of Cashel. You can still see traces of beautiful fresco paintings left on the ceiling of the chancel.

Lex in the cathedral

Niall our guide outside the ruins of the cathedral

Inside Cormac's chapel looking towards the back. The outside of the chapel is covered with scaffolding as they are protecting it from all rain, and carefully keeping humidity out to preserve it.

The western end of the cathedral and the round bell tower

Lex outside the Cathedral and overlooking the valley below. Stunning scenery!

From the other side, we looked out over Cashel

Me in front of the cathedral

The whole complex. You can see the scaffolding at the back covering Cormac's Chapel. The bishop's palace is on the left (you can see a huge chunk of the building which blew off in a storm during the 1700s!) and the cathedral on the right.

After our visit to the Rock, we walked down into town to the Visitor Information Centre to find out about local attractions, and Lex bought another CD of traditional Irish music (he has a few now!) We came back to Aulber House and put our feet up, then showered and headed out for tea. We finally settled on the Castle Kearney Hotel bar - the front part of the hotel is a tower built by local merchants in the 1500s! (The inside was quite disappointingly modern, though). We had a lovely, huge meal there (Lex had a baked salmon and veges and I had Chicken Kiev and salad). We'd actually intended to go to a local Irish music show this evening but are both so tired that we've decided to leave it until another night. It's now ten past 9, raining gently outside our open window (the cows don't seem to mind) and still not dark. We are very glad to be snug and warm inside.

Castle Kearney Hotel, where we had tea

Aulber House, our lovely B&B home for three nights.

 

The bridge over the Shannon River at the appropriately named Shannonbridge!



Charleville Castle near Tullamore

 

Lex at Clonmacnoise - you can see the Shannon River in the background where Viking raiders would have sailed

Pope John Paul II was here



Me against one of the round towers where the monks would hide from the Vikings and other attackers. As you can see, there were lots of tourists there today.

Replica of one of the crosses (the original is housed in one of the round buildings you can see in the background)

Have no idea what this bird is called, but I call them the "Phantom" birds because of their Phantom of the Opera mask!



Another cross replica in front of some of the ruins



Lex outside one of the ruined chapels

 

Ancient gateway at the Kiladerry Cemetery just near Daingean

Grave of Pat Cuskelly who died in 1927 aged 74

This adorable baby robin was in the graveyard

Lex outside the Daingean town hall

Tuesday, 29th July                        TULLAMORE

 
Robyn writes: We've had a lovely day today. We both slept in until about 7.30, then got ourselves organised to get downstairs for breakfast, which was included in our hotel room tarrif. They had a lovely spread of pastries, scones, fruit etc plus the full Irish cooked breakfast. I had a fried egg, sausages and hash browns and Lex had sausages and tomatoes. We were very well set up for the day and could hardly move by the time we'd finished!

We set out about 9.30 - first, we were looking for a new phone charger as for some reason, our other one wasn't working, and we will need the phone to use as a satnav. We had no luck in the shops in the town centre, but found another little shopping centre on the way out where we finally got one for 15 Euros (horribly overpriced but better than the 30 Euro one Lex saw yesterday.) And at least this one works!

We then headed out towards Daingean, the home town of the Cuskelly family. One the way, we called in on the little village of Killeigh, where we'd stayed in 2006 on our last trip here - all still looked the same. Then we drove on to Daingean, which was about 15 degrees warmer than our last visit, but sadly just as overcast. We explored the remains of the old Protestant church graveyard (last time we were ankle deep in the swamp that it was at the time!) but still failed to find any Cuskelly graves which are apparently there. It's all come back to me just how deteriorated gravestones get in Ireland - you are lucky to find any name you recognise. Then we went for a drive around the town and went back to the very old cemetery on the outskirts of town. Last time we were there I hadn't even gone in, as it was nearly dark and rainy and so cold that the girls and I huddled in the car! This time I did get to look around at least and we saw the one Cuskelly grave there - that of Pat, who would have been alive when 'our' Cuskelly family left Ireland. The graveyard has a fascinating gateway, with wonderful old carvings on it. Lex and Glen photographed it last time but we were able to see it much better today.

We went into the town office and asked about local records. The nice man there asked our name and Lex said "Cuskelly". He said, "Oh, Kelly - that's quite a common name..." and I said,
"It's actually CUSkelly," - and all of the office chorused,
"Oh, Cusklee!" (Phonetic reproduction with emphasis on first syllable). Apparently the way we say it in Australia is not the authorised Irish version....anyway, he said there are still some in town. He suggested that we call on Father Townsend, the local priest, to check for records first, so we headed up to the Parish house but unfortunately no-one was home. Hopefully we might get back there tomorrow.

From Daingean, we headed for Clonmacnoise, as it was now after noon and it's about an hour's drive away. We enjoyed the drive through the Irish countryside and found Clonmacnoise easily. One thing we've noticed since 2006 is that now things are actually quite well signposted - last time you were lucky to find one! The entrance fee was 6 Euros each but as we are English Heritage members, we get in for free. Yay! As soon as we got there we had lunch in the cafe (vegetable soup and brown soda bread - has an interesting texture and an unusual taste) then set off to look around. Lex knew quite a bit about it already as he and Glen had visited it before, but I'd never seen it.
The monastary there was founded by St Ciaran in 546, and over the centuries grew to be very large, rich and impressive. Unfortunately in the four centuries from about 800 to 1200AD it was attacked and trashed about 40 times by the Vikings, the Saxons and the locals! I imagine this all got a bit disheartening, but every time they rebuilt, and developed strategies like building the tall, round towers where they could climb up by a ladder, pull the ladder up, and stay safe inside. The Shannon River lies right next to the site so it was easy prey for the Vikings especially. Today, however, there was nothing more threatening than a few pleasure boats on it, but I imagine a thousand years ago the site of a Viking longboat rounding the corner would have made your heart stop beating. There site remained a monastary right up until the time of Henry VIII, when of course it was finally trashed for once and for all - all of the buildings lost their roofs and anything of value was stripped away. It certainly stayed holy ground to the locals, though, with burials there right up until the end of last century, even though the new cemetery is right next door. There were three huge Celtic crosses there which have now been moved indoors and replicas put where they were. Also a new chapel where Pope John Paul II prayed when he visited Ireland. There were an amazing number of German tourists there - I think we were about the only ones speaking English at one stage! On the way out, we drove around to the Nun's church, which had the most amazing carvings on its doorways, mostly still in quite good condition. It would have been a lovely building.

We then headed towards Shannonbridge and then back to Tullamore, taking a different route to see some of the other little villages along the way. We drove into Charleville Castle, which is on the outskirts of Tullamore, to have a look at it. This is a fairly amazing building, built in 1798 but once the Troubles started, it was uninhabited from about 1912 and was nearly a ruin before volunteers started repairing it. It looks pretty good now and is obviously being used as a venue for special occasions, as they were setting up something quite big when we were there. Mind you, it is apparently one of the most haunted places in Ireland, so I wasn't too sad not to get inside...it was nice to see it, anyway, and it's NOTHING like Charleville in Queensland!

Once we got back to the hotel, we had a rest for a while reading our current books, then Lex went for a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood, before going down for tea. We checked out several of the pubs/restaurants in the area before coming right back where we started from - the pub here at the Bridge House Hotel! Have had a lovely meal there and are now groaning slightly due to overeating while we contemplate repacking and moving on to Cashel tomorrow...

Monday, 28th July               Dublin to Tullamore

Robyn writes: Neither of us were at all impressed when the alarm went off at 7 this morning, but we knew we had to get up and get going, as it was moving day again. We managed to get dressed, organised and out the door by 8 o'clock to walk to the bus stop we needed in O'Connell Street. From here we quite easily caught the 40 bus, with a very nice bus driver who obligingly stopped the bus just near where the Avis depot was located for us. That was the easy bit! The bloke at the Avis depot was very nice, and offered us a size upgrade on our car for just over 100 Euros, which we ended up taking, as the boot in the one they had for us (a Nissan Micra) was fairly teeny. We now have a Toyota Auris which has much more room. No satnav, sadly - we were really spoiled with our last car in Scotland! So we are back to using Lex's phone, though our friend at Avis gave us such good instructions that we hardly needed it today. He's also given us a road map of Ireland which will be very useful over the next month.

The fun bit was getting back to the unit through busy Dublin traffic - our Avis friend had given us directions and told us we could go a certain way through town as it wasn't yet 10am - unfortunately the policewoman on duty disagreed in no uncertain terms and waved us the other way. Possibly it's changed because there is so much road work in central Dublin as they build the new train lines. Luckily the phone satnav stepped in and navigated us across the river and we were soon back at the unit. We quickly packed the car, did a last minute cleanup and then we were off to Tullamore in Offaly a bit after 10.

 Lex outside The Brewery Tap, where we had a lovely lunch

 Me outside the Bridge House Pub near the river. We have a photo of Cait and Cassie in the exact same location in 2006!

 As you can see, various parts of the buildings extend out and over the river. And there's some wild foliage growing there too. We'd never seen anything like the giant rhubarb on steroids in the middle of the picture below! (I may have made that name up, does anyone have the foggiest idea what plant it might be?)

 

 The local Garda station. That's 'Police' to you and I!

 Lex outside the Tullamore Dew visitor centre

Pubs! This place is full of pubs! There's one on  almost every street corner and several more often thrown in for good measure. And almost all of them are very pretty. You can see three in this photo.

 

Getting out of town actually wasn't too bad, and we were soon out on the motorways and it was quite a quick trip - we were here by 11.30. You look at a map of Ireland and think something is a fair distance away, then you're there in an hour on a motorway (the speed is 120km/p/h). We found our hotel quite easily, as we'd had lunch in the pub part by the river in 2006 when we were here. To our surprise, though, behind the nice little pub is a huge, grand hotel! The entrance is extremely impressive and we certainly were impressed! Our room wasn't ready so we went off up the road and had a lovely lunch in a little pub, "The Brewery Tap" then wandered back to find our room was now ready. We're on the third floor and had asked for a quiet room - the receptionist apologised that it doesn't have much of a view because it's at the back but in fact it's not bad, and it is very quiet, especially after very noisy rooms in London, Paris and Dublin! It's a nice big room with a desk, extra bed and a nice big bathroom so we are quite happy. We may be especially grateful for the quietness of being at the back of the hotel tonight as there's a high school graduation going on downstairs and one of the waiters told us gloomily that they'll be there until 6am. Ah, the energy of youth!

We went for a long walk around the centre of town, called in at the Tullamore Dew Distillery for some tourist info, and looked at all of the shops. There are a lot of empty shops but Tullamore doesn't seem too badly off, all things considered. Hopefully they are recovering ok from the recession, but it's a far cry from the days of the Celtic Tiger last time we were here. It's a nice mid-sized town and the locals are very friendly. We are both glad to get out of Dublin for a bit of country peace and quiet!

Lex had a nap this afternoon while I caught up on emails and went to the post office, etc. We are very central, and the local shopping centre is just across the road. For tea, we went to the hotel's Italian restaurant (we were going to try their "Charleville" restaurant, but it was closed tonight) where we had the most magnificent meal - I had a stuffed chicken breast and Lex had the seafood marinara with linguine - both meals were excellent. We were sitting next to the window and were treated to a floorshow, as the graduates were on the terrace outside. Some of the lads had undoubtably been sneaking drinks beforehand, and it was very entertaining to watch them! At least one was indulging in a spot of hurling (only the Australian version, not the Irish sport, if you know what I mean...) A few of them came over to the window for a friendly chat, but were sternly moved on by the bouncers. I may have missed checking out the Marist Formal this year but I've certainly now had my dose of Formal watching! (Just hope we don't HEAR them all night....) Tomorrow we are planning to go back to Daingean and hopefully to Clonmacnoise, which I didn't get to see last time, as I was sick at that stage. It's nice to be back in Offaly.

Sunday, 27th July                   DUBLIN

Robyn writes: Our last day in Dublin at this stage today, and we both managed to have an excellent night's sleep and be up reasonably early. We headed out at about 9.30 - Lex to the Writer's Museum and me to the shops to look for a new pair of walking shoes/sandals - my poor old red ones are getting extremely flat and not very supportive these days! Neither of us had much luck at first - Lex got to the Writer's Museum and discovered that it WASN'T open from 9.30, as it had said on the internet (that's the second time that's happened to us - notions of time are extremely fluid in Ireland!) - on Sundays it's open from 11. So he went off for a nice long walk to wait for it to open. I discovered that, unlike Australia, the vast majority of shops don't open at 10am on Sundays - they open at 11 or even 12! The tourist shops, however, were open in their multitudes, so I enjoyed browsing them. I took the tourist bus down to Trinity College and had a nice walk around the campus there. It has some beautiful buildings. It was going to cost 9 Euros to get in and see the Book of Kells, so I decided against that - I figured that for 12 Euros just the other day we got an entire day at the Louvre and all of Europe's treasures, so I had seen enough for one week!

 Trinity College

 I loved the buskers in Grafton Street - this one was painted as a statue and was attracting a lot of real pigeons!

St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre

I then walked up to Grafton Street and the mall there and enjoyed looking around the shops there and at the nearby shopping centre (but had no luck with finding any comfy shoes) until one o'clock, when it was time to meet Lex at the Little Museum of Dublin. He rang to say he was on a tourist bus but was still a quarter of an hour away (those things take forever in the Dublin traffic) but luckily there was a nice little cafe right next door, so I popped in and had a cuppa and a scone while I waited for him. When he arrived, we walked to a sandwich store in the mall and got ourselves some rolls and wedges for a picnic lunch in St Stephen's Green, the big park right next to the end of the mall. It was a very agreeable place to sit in the sun or shade and watch the Dubliners enjoying their Sunday all around us. When we'd finished our lunch, we walked around the park to see what was there - it's a really nice green space for all of the city dwellers and was being very well used.

Lex in the park

 Some lovely flower gardens

This was erected in memory of the famine victims

At the Little Museum of Dublin - me and Mrs Brown!

 

                                            

Lex and the perfect pint

Then we headed across the road to the Little Museum of Dublin. This is reasonably new - set up in the last few years from donations by the people of Dublin, and tells the story of it basically from the beginning of last century. We did a tour with a fabulous guide who was very entertaining and really made it all interesting. They also had a U2 room which was great to see, and a temporary display about Brendan O'Carroll from 'Mrs Brown's Boys'. I don't know about the actor himself, but his family is quite fascinating - his grandfather was Michael Collin's second in charge and was executed at his house one night during The Troubles, and his mother was the first woman voted into the Irish Parliament. We spent a very enjoyable couple of hours at the museum, before heading off again.

We walked back home (via several more unsuccessful forays into shoe shops) and went to a nearby pub, The Celt for a drink on the way home. It wasn't living up to its name - tonight there was country and western music playing! Dublin has a sad tale at the moment - this weekend was supposed to be a huge C&W weekend with several Garth Brooks concerts sold out to several hundred thousand people. Unfortunately, the tickets were sold "subject to license" and the license was refused and all of the tickets had to be refunded! Apparently, according to our taxi driver, this happens quite frequently and makes them the laughing stock of the world. So all of these poor people had already bought travel and accommodation and of course you don't get THAT refunded! I noted today that Garth Brooks T-shirts are now 3 for 10 Euros....and all of these disconsolate fans wandering around in big hats looking for C&W music! Anyway, our pub's music was dreadfully loud so we only had one drink (Lex had a perfect Guinness while I had a fairly vicious little Sav Blanc) then headed home to cook tea and PACK. Again. Tomorrow we collect our third hire car and head for Tullamore in Offaly (very close to Daingain, home of the Cuskelly family).