Adventures With Harvey

The Troubles 300 tonnes per week.  Yes, that’s how much barley is needed to produce 11 million bottles of whiskey per year at the Bushmills Distillery.  Of course, the Irish and Scottish will never agree on who invented what or who is the best at it, however they’ve been distilling whiskey (or whisky if you’re Scottish) at Bushmills since 1608 - it was certainly a treat to visit and taste the produce thereof, and one of many highlights over the last couple of weeks. So far on this trip we intrepid Woodies have car-ferried into or out of 9 different ports; Dover, Calais, Dunkirk, Caen, Portsmouth, Trelleborg, Klaipeda, and now we can add Cairnryan and Larne to the list!  The old saying is ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ and we often stumble across useful things quite by accident.  Our original plan was to sail in and out of Liverpool and Dublin however that added up to over 300 miles of driving – Cairnryan was only 70 miles away and only a 2-hour crossing instead...

Kilts, Castles and Whisky Greetings from the train between Glasgow Central and London Euston – yes, the Travelling Woodies are making a flying overnight visit to London… FOR THE RUGBY!   For your rather excited author, the dream of following the All Blacks on a November UK tour has finally been realised: Cardiff, Edinburgh and London in three weekends!   But before I lose a section of my readership with rugby stories, let me back the train up a week or so for a few more interesting tales 😊 After loitering a couple of days in Cheltenham while some minor Harvey repairs were completed, our motorhome and his occupants pointed their noses in a northerly direction.   Following  a most enjoyable overnight stop in Stafford with our friends Lisa and David, we found ourselves in the ancient city of York.   Like many towns in the UK, the Romans were parked up there for a few hundred years, however (in the opinion of this correspondent) the most interesting history of ...