Why oh why haven't I finished the driving license process back in the Republic?!
Perhaps because it was so easy to get around without one.
Woe is mine, for now I'm screwed.

We went to Birr last weekend. It's a small town in the Irish midlands with a nice looking castle and large, publicly available demesne with gardens full of the Fat Hens and other birds, many of them of more chirply than cooy persuasion (chaffinches, grey wagtails, tits, wrens and others). I will not dwell too long on ridiculousness of the fact that the castle itself is still a private property of the "Earl of Rosse" which is an English title for ascendancy pals who failed to notice Ireland is no longer part of British Crown. Apparently part of settlement with Britain after Irish Independence War was that British gentry planted in Ireland got to retain their privileges. There's one thing the Soviets got exactly right: if some bloody bastards exploited your predecessors to death for centuries, proper place for them and theirs is on the gallows, not in a castle funded with your great-great-great-grandparents starvation. OK, they mostly shot them in the head but hey, dead's dead.

Well, the demesne itself was great enough to make up for that and more, so enough with People's Revolution Rawr (especially that apparently my mom's descended from petty gentry, which is not all that bad as the Polish petty nobles worked their own fields and so on). The trip to Birr broke our respect for Bus Eireann. Friday's last-of-the-three bus from Athlone to Limerick, which was the only route Bus Eireann's Journey Planner threw up when asked for Belfast-Birr connections, left exactly on time, which was a bit unfortunate given the 20 minutes slip of our bus's arrival from Dublin. It was a bit of an epiphany, to see our last bus leave just as we stopped at the station, blocked by other passengers who didn't happen to be in as much a hurry as ourselves (honestly, even if we were at the door before stopping, we'd be some 15 seconds too late). The station attendant was kind enough to explain that the Athlone-Limerick bus is not a connection for Dublin-Galway service so we can just feck off. The taxi cost us an extra 60EUR, which means we could have spent the day in Cracow or Wrocław within the same budget and spending a bit less time in travel. Not very cheerful given less than 300km Belfast/Birr distance and 2500km to Poland.

Good job the place itself is so nice. Great B&B, great gardens, awesome ruin of a monastery (the last one quite obviously closed to the public, since it's by far the coolest place in town). We still took some shots through the fence, although framing options were severely limited by the fence and the size of our lenses. Birr is a place where there are surprisingly few rock pigeons (perhaps 'cause it's not littered) which in turn means good numbers of doves, the Fat Hens (yes, right in the very center of the town, and many). Lots of corvids, but jackdaws are not so much outnumbered by crows (lack of litter again?).

Contrary to the forecast, it didn't rain for most of the day and there were even some very welcome sunny spells. Speaking of wrens, I spotted something that's either a wren's nest or was a seriously considered candidate for one. Perhaps it was a female inspecting one the cock nests before lining. One of our private legends about the Fat Hens was confirmed as well: they do sometimes just sit very content with themselves, emitting now and again a very self-satisfied single "rooo" (as opposed to the standard "roo-rrrooo-roo-roo... rooroo" rap. One of them sounded as if from inside a high shrubbery in demesne's French-style garden, but our attempts to seize and fondle it only resulted in discovering the Hen's real position on top of the hedge (too high to reach).

Well, next time I want to get somewhere in midlands, I'll wait 'till I get a car and a license. 6 hours journey across such distances is plain crazy.

On an unrelated note, we watched first Narnia film last week. Stunningly disappointing. Maybe we're spoilt by LOTR films and GoT series or maybe you have to read the Narnia books as a kid and have it firmly engraved in your memory as a great fairy tale to see it in proper way. Oh well. The Hobbit's on the way, we'll see how THAT children's book gets filmed :>

How is it possible I don't have a copy of The Hobbit on my bookshelf? o.O