As you are all aware I love spending my time in rural Ireland. Here are a few images I took around County Leitrim. County Leitrim is a very rural county with beautiful unspoilt landscapes.

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. Today myself and my husband visited Clonmacnoise in County Offaly. Clonmacnoise is located on the edge of the River Shannon which is Ireland's longest river. It was founded in 544 by Saint Ciaran. It is a monastic site with ruins of two round towers, high crosses, seven churches and even a cathedral. It is a wonderful place to visit and look around with a visitor centre on site. The photographs came out pretty well for a cold January day in Ireland. Hope you enjoy.

{Images from All things nice...}

As most of you may not be aware, my background is in urban and regional development, I have also worked in heritage related posts and in rural development. I am a qualified planner and did some teaching too. I am also a farmers wife, may I add. So today I would like to introduce to you, The Urban Nexus Initiative. This initiative was initiated by two of my  friends whom I met when we pursued a Masters Degree in University College Dublin. While we have gone our own ways career wise since, we are still in contact and enjoy meeting up every so often.

For those of you who are not from Ireland or are not aware of the Initiative, it is a design and research based programme developed in 2010. It's main aim is to explore cities using alternative techniques and methods in order to inspire creativity and originality in the city design. It is all about more holistic approaches to how the urban realm is designed in the modern day city.

In order to put this into practice, they have developed the XXI Century Liffey Project (The Liffey being the main river which flows through Dublin City). This is an urban design project to re-vision and re-imagine the Liffey Quays for the XXI Century. It is basically about the River Liffey and its quays- an iconic space in Dublin City, but a space that seems to have been left behind. Through the project they aim to re-imagine the role the quays play in the XXI Century Dublin by considering design as the vital element in the creation of dynamic and interconnected spaces. They have began to stimulate discussions and debates through various methods including a number of exhibitions, lunch time talks and seminars prior to any proposed plans for the area. Ultimately they hope to initiate new ways of thinking which can be applied to the wider urban areas of Dublin and other cities alike.

{All images from Urban Nexus Initiative}

This weekend was a bank holiday weekend here in Ireland :-) Don't you just love long weekends! I hope you all had a nice weekend, did you get up to anything nice??? I Spent some time with my boyfriend and enjoyed the good weather :-) Here are a few photographs I took of the Forest Park...

This Sunday I had a fully charged camera to bring on our trip to Lovely County Leitrim. Why not explore all the lovely sites I saw. It was dry and sunny but cold at times. I hope you like the photographs. The first is of the courthouse, It was converted into a gallery/ theatre and design house for arts and crafts.

Here are a few of the boats that travel along the Shannon Erne Waterway in Carrick on Shannon.

A pretty quaint courtyard which now houses a coffee shop but it was closed when we were there.

   

Another view of the boats at the waterfront.

Again the old cut stone courtyard buildings, I think they have markets here on Thursdays.

More cruise boats

This is said to be the smallest Church in Ireland, isn't it very quaint. I couldn't get a great photograph of it as there was a car on the street blocking the view.

We went on a stroll through this wee urban park which lead to the waterfront.

And came across this converted church which is now a restuarant.

And a closer look, it is nicely restored, I love when old ecclesiastical buildings are converted into new uses.

A Georgian house which was located next to the courthouse, very grand indeed.

Pretty cherry blossoms I just had to photograph them, they are such lovely trees with their perfect pink petals.

This landscaping was in a small village we passed through, isn't it pretty with the bog oak sculpture and the water feature.

And across from this sculpture was this wee railway man on the signage to mark the village railway station

So there you have it, our tour on Sunday, it was quite short but there was lots to see. We hope to make it to the seaside some of the weekends soon :o) I love the sea air and I'll be sure to take some photographs to share with you all :o)

Hello all, hope you enjoyed the weekend, weather has been very cold here in Ireland but no rain where I was :) Had a lovely weekend away with my boyfriend. Only problem was that it went too fast. What did you get up to? Here are a few photographs of my weekend away. Our hotel was really nice, very trendy and good value. The photoraph below is a lovely canvas in the hotel, how pretty and very girly.

We went to the seaside on Saturday to Strandhill with its long strand and the seaside village of Rosses Point, it was extremely cold and got very foggy too. Here are a few photos of the beach and views in and around  Strandhill

   

   

   

   

      

   

The further north we travelled it started to get very misty and foggy so the next few photographs aren't very clear, we couldn't even see the sea.

So as you can see the visibility on the West Coast of Ireland wasn't great, so we decided to head back to town and looked around the shops and got some food.

Today we relaxed and visited the seventeenth century Markree Castle on the way home. It is surrounded by mature demesne woodland and the River Unshin runs through the grounds. It is now a hotel and has been home to the Cooper family since Cromwell's time. Here are the charming entrance gates and some more views of the Castle.

Here are two photographs of the entrance, how elegant is that??

Up...

And back down...

Check out the website for some more photographs Markree Castle Hotel

The River Unshin

There are also luxury self catering cottages at Markree Castle Home Farm

This was such a wonderful demesne with its weatlth of built and natural heritage. We then said goodbye to Markree Castle and headed on the road for home.

Along the way we spotted a nice scenic viewing point of Lough Key

This sculptured metal horse with a Gaelic Chieftain marks the site of the Battle of the Curleius, which took place in 1599.

So thats the end of my lovely weekend away and as they say time flies when your having fun. What all did you get up to this weekend?