Casual Day

Laura and I decided to make it a slow day and walk around the town of Bangor, where Laura’s cousins Helen and Sam each live. Bangor is a seaside village which has a history as an important port and location of a significant monastery. It is home to a Viking burial ground and there have been swords from the Bronze Age discovered buried on its beaches.

The small town was bustling with daytime activity – people shopping, eating, working. We located a small computer shop which offered the only Internet access we could find in Bangor. Three pounds bought us an hour of broadband, some free coffee, a restroom and casual conversation with the store owner. It allowed us to check email and make our first blog postings.

We left the store and ate lunch at Ava restaurant, a modern eatery that offered hot sandwiches, Guinness and cross-cut potatoes. Wandering into Ward park, a city green space, we took in the aviary and watched some retirees playing lawn bowling.

In the evening Sam took us to Scrabo Tower, a surreal looking stone structure near the town of Newtonards. Sitting high above the countryside the tower stands by itself. It was built as a memorial to Charles Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry who was one of the Duke of Wellington's Generals during the Napoleonic Wars but the inside word is that he simply had rich friends who collected enough money to put it together. We arrived at the tower too late to climb to the top, but the view from the tower base was spectacular as it was an unusually sunny and clear Irish day.

We stopped to buy ice cream in Newtownards before heading to Sam and Dawn’s house for a nice pasta dinner.