Summer of visitors. Our turn to sit still a bit.

Apart from the two small tours in the UK this summer, we had a rare opportunity to stay relatively stationary and have the world come to our door instead.

Left: Pip and Alison admire some of the very tall trees in the Woodstock estate.




Sue found a pretty tall thistle, too - about as tall as she is - on the trail up Brandon Hill.

Friends old and new came from England, Scotland, Canada and Italy, and we had a great time showing them around our corner of Ireland. Even found a few corners we didn't know about before.

Left: Reia and I took our time getting to the top of Brandon.

There were many raspberries and blueberries to be eaten on the way.

Mike and I hadn't been to Kells Priory in years. I always forget how spectacular it is.

We went twice this summer, enjoying both the ancient ruins of the priory and the not quite so ancient but still impressive mills and arched bridges nearby.

Not all of the fun was outdoors. The Phil Murphy Weekend was on down in Co Wexford while Toni and Michael were here. We caught, among other things, a set by L'Angelus - a truely charming and incredibly energetic young Cajun family band - before moving on down the road to join in a crowded session in a tiny pub well into the early hours of the morning.



We also managed, somehow, to get some work done on our little stone farmhouse, and will be adding more photos soon on our web page: opland-freeman.com/inistioge