Our final stop before heading home, a place I have been meaning to visit since being in Ireland.  We booked a tour to the House of Waterford Crystal.

After a tricky drive to Waterford and finding parking for our large motorhome, we explored the area on foot.  To our surprise, there was an art street festival on the road outside the Waterford Crystal factory. There was some lovely street food music and entertainment.

The tour inside the factory was very interesting and slightly stressful, making sure the children were not touching anything.

We wrapped up the day by heading on to our last campsite in Saint Margaret’s.  The campsite was somewhat crowded and had some dodgy characters. We decided to take a walk to the beach as it wasn’t far away. It was rather cold and blustery but that didn’t stop the children running about.

Getting towards the end of our travels, we moved on to Cobh which is a small seaside town on the south coast. It turns out it was the final port of call for the RMS Titanic before she set out across the Atlantic.

Alas, there wasn’t much in this small seaside town but we did have a lovely walk along the waterfront.

Back in the town, we did stumble on an escape room place and got a good deal for a family of four.  We were handcuffed together and locked in to a prison cell. There, we scrambled to find clues and managed to get out of our cuffs though still locked in the cell.  Thankfully William didn’t use the old prop toilet in the cell. After a few helping hints, we managed to get out and proceed on to the next room. Rebecca even managed to work out a few clues and we succeeded in escaping.

We also paid a visit to the Jameson distillery nearby in Midleton.  Sadly, children were not allowed in so we skipped the visit.  However, we were allowed in to the shops, Tony brought some whiskey (no surprise) and Jameson socks. There was also a micro distillery called Method and Madness attached to Jameson, I picked up some preserved black lemon gin which is lovely. Of course, Tony got a few more bottles of whiskey.

We drove to Blarney and set up on the campsite, we had a great idea to get on our bikes to head in to town and see the castle.  Little did we know it was easy getting down as it was a BIG hill!! The return journey was going to be interesting.

We got to Blarney castle and stopped off in a cafe for some lunch, unfortunately we got attacked by a lot of wasps and as Rebecca got stung by wasps, she was very reluctant to be bait again.  After lunch we made out way to the castle and the grounds were immense.

We walked around the grounds and the castle was the typical Irish square building but there were a lot of interesting nooks and crannies of the out buildings surround the main castle. The grounds were vast and there were some interesting trees, one was massive and I couldn’t get on to it. Tony and the kids managed to get on to it.

Explored Blarney castle and Tony and the kids went on to kiss the Blarney stone but I declined.  To hang upside down so far up put me off. We visited the poison garden afterwards which showed the everyday plants which are poisonous and some which we never even heard of. We were talking to an American and learnt a saying of “leaves of three, let is be!”

There were waterfalls, witches caves and gardens which were surprisingly spread out. Rebecca went down a set of steps called the wishing steps, you had to walk backwards and close your eyes to make a wish.  Tony thought it was a recipe for disaster, thankfully no accidents,

Alas, it came to the end and we had to cycle back to the campsite. Rebecca and I struggled and at some point ended up walking our bikes up the blasted hill. William was a little trooper and managed to cycle up with Tony. As you can imagine we were shattered when we got back. We found a disposable BBQ at reception and managed to defrost some meat. We ended up having a lovely dinner outside the campervan and kids loved it.