Messing about in Ireland again! Well I only live a modest distance from the ferry at Fishguard, so it’d be churlish not to. A splendid overnight in James Joyce’s former watering hole, the very fine Greville Arms Hotel, in the midlands town of Mullingar in Co. Westmeath. Mullingar won’t ever win any tidy town awards but it had an old Irish charm all of its own. And the railway station had a further delight for us in the overlooked, disused and too-close-to-everything-to-chop-down ancient telegraph pole you see below. And a station on a bend is worth two in the bush or something.
People who like telegraph poles often like old railways too and vice-versa. I’m no different. So next day we found ourselves at Castletown (5 miles SE) walking ye olde rail trail that once ran between Mullingar and Athlone (you remember Athlone don’t you?) Our meeting, along said trail, with an elderly Irish gentleman whose wonderful accent and false teeth that rattled as he talked is a story for another time, perhaps over a pint of something black and nourishing. Anyway, this trail still has lengths of track in places and is a haven for wildlife. In fact, Ireland is fully fifty years behind our UK depletion of nature. I hope they learn from our mistakes. The final photo in the sequence is a delightful croc-face replete with insulators and insulating coat of ivy. This was on the way home in Co. WIcklow. Without further ado.
