We woke up sad to be leaving Kinsale today, it is such a lovely little seaside village. Our feelings continued after a lovely breakfast – yogurt and homemade granola and dried fruit for both of us, a blue cheese and bacon omelette for me and Eggs Benedict and bacon for Eric. Also, this B&B has a wonderful commercial grade coffee machine and Philip taught Eric how to use it so we’ve had the best coffee on the trip here. After breakfast we took one more stroll down the hill to walk around the village, down to the marina and back, sadly, back to the room to pack up.
As we packed we talked about how much we loved it here and didn’t want to leave… and then we decided we weren’t going to! We hemmed and hawed a bit but then while I was checking about cancellation for our next accomodation, Eric went to check with our host to see if we could stay another night in our beautiful suite or any other room they might have. Success! We could keep our same room one more night. Our luck held when Eric called to cancel our other room. On such short notice we figured we’d have to pay for the room but the gracious woman said no problem and said she’d even give us our deposit back! Irish people are so nice. So we had one more day here, even though for two people who like plans and rules we felt a little giddy for awhile for being so spontaneous.
We set about another walk through the village, stopping here and there with a much more relaxed feeling. Back to the B&B, we set off in our little car to visit Charles Fort which is about 2 miles out of town on a peninsula on the Atlantic. This fort was built in the 17th century and is star shaped. It was an important staging site for many important battles and conflicts including World War I when it housed as many as 6,000 people inside and outside its walls.
Also if you look down the coast you can see the lighthouse atop the Old Head of Kinsale peninsula. It was just 11 miles off the head that the Lusitainia was sank by a German submarine in 1915. Many of those are buried here in Kinsale in one of two church cemetaries.
After exploring the fort for awhile, we headed down towards town on a very scary hairpin turn road to the Bulman Pub which we were told by several people to visit. Eric had fish and chips and I had a goat cheese tart with pesto, sundried tomatoes and eggplant. We enjoyed the atmosphere so much we decied to come back for our evening meal. After a bit of a lie down, we had afternoon wine and cheese in the dining room and set off for our third walk of the day. At eight, we called for a cab and we were back off to the Bulman. The road was even more scary in the dark. I finally had fish and chips (I’d been focusing on salmon and seafood thus far) and Eric had a pint and a creme brulee, being not that hungry. We sat at the bar this time and were well attended by the young barman Tyrone who tried to help us with the Irish Times crossword puzzle (impossible!) and told us about how fresh the fish and seafood is. The Bulman is one of two restaurants in town that gets their catch right off the boat in the morning and brings it to the restaurant, because of their high self-inspection standards. Others have to have their catch inspected before it comes to the restaurant.
Tyrone told us in the summertime the Bulman staff can go fishing and bring their own catch and be paid in free pints of beer. A fair trade for a day’s work for an Irish guy! Tyrone called us a cab when we were ready to go. I was glad it was full dark and I had a pint to calm my nerves for the ride down the hill. All and all, an unexpected day well spent.