I've been travelling again...

But only as far as Wexford and hook head..  After my recent busy time I felt like a break so we booked a last minute deal and took a few days in the sunny south-east.

Well, in between the showers and thunderstorms it was the sunny south-east!

The day before we set off I was fishing on Lough Owel, and we were treated to a wonderful display of sun and storm clouds...

I also took some photos of very strong rainbows over the lough, but my lens washed the rainbow out of the shots.... ces't la vie..

I am going to try and get some painting done next week, I have time free from Wednesday.

Woodwork, fishing and very little painting...

I have been busy clearing the trees from around the cottage for the last week.  I'm still a good lumberjack, not one of the eight fell on the cottage..  ...although I did use a rope and pulley system on some of them to make sure they fell the right direction, after all they were only eight or ten feet away from the building itself, and a dozen feet away from the caravan.  (which also escaped unscathed)  I now have enough firewood for quite a while as a bonus, and a much brighter interior in the cottage.

As a result I have been doing very little painting.  I am fishing all this coming weekend, as I have a client booked for my angling guiding service and consequently I'll be away from my studio all this week too.

I was hoping to work on some studio works from my plein air studies from Kerry, but all I have managed was a quick study of the view on my way to a fishing competition at Kilbride in County Wicklow

I don't know if this study will translate into a finished painting though, but I felt less guilty about not working...  I didn't do well in the fishing competition though, I had an off day.

Sligo Cottage, our country estate...

Here are the promised photos of the cottage in Sligo, and here are two views from the road (boreen) to the cottage

 and the view across from the cottage over our land, and up onto the mountain.

As you can see it is a verdant wilderness, complete with wildlife such as these noisy neighbours...

Who conveniently fledged the following day, I think they were just waiting for their photo opportunity...

I will be travelling back up there this week, there is still a lot of work to be done around the cottage, with trees and hedges to be cut back, and I'm hoping the weather will be a little kinder this trip as we lost a lot of time because of the rain again.