Hot and cold?

With the recent unseasonably late snow ("Beast from the East" and his younger brother!) my thoughts turned to the warmest and coldest tours I have ever done. There was no competition - two tours jumped out of the archive in my head, straight away!

In 2013 I took a notion and organised a tour to Ireland's Eye, a little island, just ten minutes by boat from the busy fishing port of Howth. This was one of my better ideas - I managed to get the hottest day of the entire summer - a balmy 28 degrees (82 degrees in fahrenheit). 39 people were there to greet me as we arrived on the train in Howth - three boat loads!

The island was fantastic - home to a lot of seagulls, a Martello tower (signal towers built when Napoleon was a threat) and a ruined church - St Nessan's. We explored it all and then settled on the beach to bask in the sun. Some enterprising person had even set up a "pop up" sushi bar on the beach. I knew that this was a "golden moment" and wanted the clock to stop for a while.

When we got back to Howth, most of us were "underwalked" and enjoyed the cliff walk, an ice cream/pint at the Summit and gloried in the knowledge that we had spent the hottest day in Ireland that year with good company, in a lovely and interesting place.

And the coldest? Mullaghcleevaughan, Wicklow's second highest mountain in January 2015! Too cold to eat our lunch at the top - now that's cold!

Ireland's Eye - July 2013