Last week we took a visit to Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands.

The Aran Islands are off the West coast of Galway, approximately 20km from Rossaveal Co. Galway, and approximately 20km from Doolin Co. Clare. There are regular ferry services running from both Rossaveal Aran Island Ferries & Doolin Doolin Ferry Company to the Aran Islands.

Aran Ferry

We took the 10:30am sailing from Rossaveal to Inis Mór. The crossing takes approximately 40mins, and was €25 return per adult, €13 return per child (under 5’s free). The ferry arrives in Kilronan, the main town in Inis Mór. There are plenty of horse and carts tours offered by local drivers, there were at least 10 or 12 carts lined up, there are also many mini bus tours offered, but we decided to tour the island by bike and rented bikes. There are several bike rental places around the harbour. Two adult bikes, 2 children’s bikes and one attachment for the youngest child cost €40 plus €20 deposit.
We cycled out to Dún Aonghasa, a famous stone fort sited on the highest point of the cliffs, it is over 2 thousand years old. It is about 10km from Kilronan, and a lot of small hills, some quite tough (I had to get off my bike and push several times!)  We took a detour to try and find the Poll na Peist (Serpent’s Lair)

Looking for Poll na Peist

Dún Aonghasa is worth the cycle, there is an interpretive centre at the foot of the hill, and then a 1km walk/climb to the actual fort. Unfortunately it was raining, so we didn’t stay too long at the fort, the views are spectacular, the sheer cliffs and the crashing ocean (next land mass to the west is America!!). The interpretive centre has a coffee shop, we dried off and warmed up with a well deserved coffee and hot chocolate!
We cycled back via the coast road, passing the Blue flag beach, which looked lovely, but as it was raining we didn’t stop! We passed the Seal cove and saw seals playing in the sea.

When we arrived back in Kilronan around 5pm, we dropped back our bikes and went to our accommodation. There is a 6:30pm sailing back to Rossaveal, so would have been possible to return at this point. There is a tourist office in Kilronan, where they will help you source accommodation on the island.

Inis Mór is accessible from both Galway & Clare, and with several sailings each day it is possible to enjoy the trip to the island as a day trip!

I was looking after 5 girls aged 5 - 9 yesterday morning and decided we’d go for a walk to a nearby field and hunt for blackberries to get them out of the house, especially as the weather has perked up now, no excuse to be inside.

So we assembled some tubs with lids and set off.  I love the way kids get so excited by a simple outing, maybe it was being able to carry their own tub and have responsibility for it, maybe it was the anticipation of what we might se, the thought of all the blackberries :)  They recounted last year’s outing and remembered the “injuries” they had had from various thorns on the way to the field.

We climbed over the wall where last year we met a little frog.  To our delight there are plenty of berries already even this early, and lots of flowers so providing the weather holds we may get a great crop this year.  The tubs were quickly filled then we did some butterfly spotting and saw respectively an orange one with black spots, a blue one, and a red one with black markings.

The Blue Butterfly

The Red Butterfly

On the way home, the girls decided what they would make with their haul: smoothies and muffins.

The smoothie was made with banana, blackberries, tropical juice and strawberry yoghurt.

Discovered I had no butter to melt for my usual muffin recipe, so found this one online which turned out to be lovely: www.joyofbaking.com/muffins/ButtermilkBerryMuffins.html

Unfortunately I have no photos of either the Blackberry Smoothies or Blackberry Muffins because they were hoovered up so quickly I didn’t have time to take a photo!

Yesterday was the Annual Macnas Parade which is an integral part of the Galway Arts Festival.
The Parade started at Spanish Arch, then up Quay Street, High Street, Shop Street, Elglinton Street, Francis Street and over the Salmon Weir Bridge ending at Galway Catheral.

The theme was - The Wild Hunt, and as usual the costumes were great. The whole experience which includes dancers, street artists and huge animated characters -  the Child with a butterfly net, the Crows and the very scary Wolf at the end made the Parade what it is, an interactive show with energy, colours, sounds.. something for all the senses.

We stood on Quay Street and watched the parade what I like about the Macnas Parade is that is it short, probably taking about 15mins to pass, and spectators are very close to the parade and are actually involved!  The street artists and dancers interact directly with the crowd, Pecking the Children with the giant crows, etc.

We attended with 3 children, 10, 7 & 5, and the 5 yr old was overwhelmed but the others really enjoyed it. The Parade is noisy and scary, but also exciting and fun It was a lovely sunny day a respite from all the rain.
Make a point to see the Macnas parade next year if you missed it this time.

Giant Child Butterfly Catcher

Giant Crow

I’ve been meaning to visit Woodville House Walled Garden ever since we listed the Garden last year on Mykidstime.ie. So the other afternoon, we met up with friends to make a trip out to Woodville near Kilchreest which is in between Craughwell & Loughrea.

It is signposted but the signs are quite small so if you are coming from Craughwell, look out for the blue Meadow Court Hotel sign on your left and take the next right.  If coming from Loughrea, it’s the first left junction after the last roundabout onto the N6.

You drive down about a mile or so, then follow the signs to the House.  You can either park up by the house itself where the walled garden or down by the farm buildings and walk back to the House.

Woodville House was once home to two prominent Galway families, Robert D’Archy Land agent to the Earl of Clanricarde, and Harry Persse, brother to Lady Augusta Gregory.  The garden which dates back to the 1750s has been beautifully restored and has flowers, fruit trees, vegetables, a fountain and an original Dovecote with white doves (everyone said ooh and aah when they saw the doves).

It costs 5 euros for adults, children go free but must be supervised i.e. no picking flowers or fruit or diving into the fountain!

I wasn’t sure how long the kids would take before the “I’m bored” arrived and I am pleased to report that we spent 40 minutes wandering around, admiring the doves, climbing in and out of the dovecote room on the ground floor, admiring the fountain, spotting insects and butterflies and generally oohing and aahing at the absolutely stunning range of flowers.

There is a little shop which sells a small selection of seeds, hand creams made from botanicals and other gifts.  No cafe so bring your own refreshments or head into Loughrea afterwards.  The fields nearby have cows and there are woods behind the garden which you can visit, but no marked out path yet - the Garden owners are planning to work on this next, as springtime brings hundreds of bluebells to the woods.

You could easily make an afternoon trip out of visiting the Garden then heading to the Loughrea playground where you can picnic by the lake.

My youngest daughter (5) is mad about buns.  Actually to be fair to her, she is mad about the icing on buns.

So, yesterday being a bit rainy-showery, after school we decided to make some buns.  Usually I make a recipe that uses flour, butter, sugar, but decided to try this one out from a book I bought a few years ago called “Gimme Five!” by Nicola Graimes which has “Recipes, tips and inspiring ideas for enticing your child to eat and enjoy fruits and vegetables.”

Each page has a fruit or vegetable with tips for maximising nutrients, a main recipe then other tips and recipes called “How to Eat More…”

The page on carrots has this recipe:

To make golden fairy cakes, line a muffin tin with 12 paper cases adn preheat the oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F.  Sift 225g/8 oz self-raising flour with a pinch of salt and 2 tsp ground mixed spice (I substituted cinnamon yesterday).  Stir in 225g/8 oz light brown sugar and 225g/8 oz grated carrots.  Beat together 3 eggs and 175ml/6 fl oz sunflower oil, then stir this into the flour mixture.  Pour the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for about 25 minutes until risen.

For the icing, cream together 55g/2 oz cream cheese and 30g/1 oz butter until light and creamy.  Beat in 40g/1 1/2 oz icing sugar and chill for 15 mins.

Using a small pointed knife and holding at an angle, cut a cone of cake from the centre of each cooled muffin.  Cut the cone in half to make two wings. Spoon the icing in the center and perch the wings on top.

(We just iced the muffins yesterday without the wingy-bits)

I have to say, these are delicious buns - very moist, like mini carrot cakes in a muffin case.

We tried out half pink and half yellow icing (a recent purchase of yellow food colouring has been a real novelty on the icing front.

Recommended by one mum, one 8 year old and one 5 year old, oh yes, and one dad who had his with a cup of tea that evening.

We recently attended the relaunch of the Galway City Museum Detective Sheet for kids.  This was a project we worked on a couple of years ago, http://mykidstime.ie/blogs/galway/blog/2008/05/07/launch-of-kids-activity-sheet-at-galway-city-museum/, and the Museum has updated the Sheet due to exhibits moving around and changing.

The Detective Sheet is designed to make the child’s visit to the Museum as interactive as possible; it has fun questions to answer and puzzles to have a go at.  It also asks the children to draw and colour their favourite shield from the Galway Tribes and to draw their favourite object in the Museum.  They can give feedback to the Museum as well.

If you haven’t yet visited the Museum, would recommend this as a great rainy day or weekend activity. Stop by the visitor desk to pick up your Detective Sheet and enjoy the journey around this nicely designed building with great views over the Claddagh.

Parents & kids at the launch!

I don’t know about you but whenever I see a gift of an arts or craft project that my daughters have received my heart usually sinks…  This is because I know that inevitably the project will be ridiculously fiddly and hard for them to do and they will get bored and guess who ends up having to finish it for them?  “Paint your own” projects are especially annoying to me because we end up with ceramic items that sit around gathering dust.  I suppose the paint your own mugs are good because you can at least use them.  But we’ve had a paint your own piggybank (which ended up brown all over), paint your own teaset (most of the pieces broke in the first week), paint your own masks (aargh) and paint your own paint (only kidding on that last one).

My oldest daughter came home from a birthday party recently very pleased with herself as they had sewn little purses at the party with blanket stitch and she had really enjoyed it and liked her new purse.  She begged me to make another so we got out some felt that I had bought about 3 years ago in a craft shop thinking that would be handy but never quite knowing what to do with it.  (I wish I was that arty crafty type of mum who knows what to do with these things!!)

Luckily the purse design was quite easy to copy (basically two rectangles and a triangle at the top) and I also had some brightly coloured threads from another sewing craft project that never got finished and plenty of spare buttons.  So we made another purse.

Meanwhile, youngest daughter had just turned 5 and wanted to try one of her presents, Finger Puppets which you sewed then stuck on the decorations.  I have to say this is one of the best ever craft presents we have been given.  It came with 2 puppets to make, a lion and a monkey.  The sewing was easy for her to do with my help and she could stick all the decorations on easily.  And she then spent an hour making up a puppet show with the puppets.

This was a Tesco product from their Go Create range, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, if you’re looking for a good birthday present or rainy day idea for younger kids.  This is the box for the kit:

Oldest daughter decided to tackle some more sewing and so we cut out a dolphin from felt and she stitched around the edges and with a little help, sewed a button on for its eye.

It’s always interesting to see what people from other countries recommend for families in Ireland.  I just came across this article in The Independent, the UK based version: Family Ireland: There’s plenty to distract parents and children alike in this green and pleasant land.

Trying to cover a whole country in one article is tough enough so I think the writer did quite a good job!

Jill

On Tuesday this week, my eldest daughter’s 2nd, 3rd & 4th classes went to University of Limerick to the new Irish World Music & Dance Centre to a lunchtime concert being performed by 4th class pupils from Scoil Iosaif Naofa from Kinvara, Co Galway.  Since last year when they were in 3rd class (9 years), they have been playing music once a day with their teacher, Maura (sorry I didn’t catch her surname!).

This was actually the first ever public concert in the concert room in the Centre (a lovely space, great acoustics).  As well as my daughter’s school, St Ultan’s from Dublin (recently featured on Music Changes Lives) had come down to the concert.

I was privileged to attend as one of the parent drivers taking our school classes down from Galway.

There was a mix of instruments: violins, cello, guitars, tin whistle, flute, accordion, percussion, piano.

The children played their way through a selection of Irish, Scottish and Scandinavian tunes including Galway Bay, The Galway Girl, Inisheer, Pearl’s Barndance, Shingle Beach (from shetland) finishing up with polkas from Kerry where Maura is from.

I thought the kids were really fantastic, they played very well together, were very calm.  They took it in turns to introduce each tune that they played and showed great team work in e.g. taking off the music sheets off the music stands when they had finished one tune.

It is very inspiring to see children playing together and playing in such a fine venue as well, they should be really proud of themselves!

The campus looked absolutely fabulous in the spring sunshine as we drove away back to Galway.

A fitting concert indeed for this week ending in National Music Day,

Jill

Today we piled the kids’ bikes into the back of the car and nipped down to Ballyloughan Beach to try them out on the mini-promenade down there.  The promenadey-bit has a footpath right next to the cycle path going along the length of the beach.

This is really the ideal biking solution, having a dedicated path on the actual pavement rather than these cycle paths they put in along main roads which force the cyclist to go over drains and down gullies as cars and bigger vehicles breathe down your neck.  Let’s face it, you wouldn’t feel comfortable letting your kids go along a roadside cycle path.

Unfortunately, the one at Ballyloughan doesn’t take very long to cycle along! but fortunately you can cycle up and round the other bit of parkland there.  With views to the left to Oranmore and to the right to Salthill and straight ahead is Hare Island and the Burren, this is a nice spot to come to.  The paths are semi paved so fine for the junior cyclists and doing a few loops around the headland here was good exercise for them.  Plus plenty of grassy areas to veer onto if they needed to.  We stopped near the big rocks for a spot of rock climbing as well.

There were 4 horse riders on the beach today (how lovely they look sauntering around the beach) and while it was windy, it felt great to be out and about and enjoying the beach without being frozen or rained on.  We had remembered to take a bucket this time to hold all the treasures found on the beach.  And when we got home, our youngest daughter spent half an hour cleaning the sand off all the treasures so she could display them in her new museum