NincompooperyUK

Okay when it rained on St Swithin's Day (15t July) I knew that the rain would be with us a forty days and forty nights more, possible bad news for anyone near a river.

I thought when I touch down in Ireland that the same St Swithin's Day rule must apply as on thursday and friday it bucketed down, saturday was not bad and then suddenly on Sunday the sun came out and reminded everyone that its July still.

Jane, Miranda, myself and Sam (honorary musketeer for the weekend) and I headed to the Arran Islands and landed on Inis Mor in blazing hot sun. We got bikes (I haven't been on a bike in about a decade) it soon became clear that me and the bike were not going to get on, my co-ordination or lack of it could not keep up with it. Anyway we headed for the hostel which was lovely and then off to the beach on the low road it was absolutely beautiful with a long sandy beach, hot weather with just enough of a breeze to keep you cool and a picnic.

At 5ish we headed for Dun Aonghasa which is a huge semi-circular fort begun in 1,000BC it developed over time and has three separate rings however it is surrounded on one side by the sea and being situated on very high cliffs the views are spectacular the sea stretches on forever. By the evening I was suddenly aware that my skin was very sore and today I am a lovely lobster pink and my skin in pulsing.

I left the crazy cyclists to head of somewhere else today and instead I became a hiker which is much more my style and headed out to look at the ruined church of Tempall Chiarain and the seals at Seal Point a couple of miles away and then we re-grouped to head back to the mainland.

The Arran Islands have been a delightful surprise the landscape being nothing you could easily describe and something I suspect photographs will not do justice to either. (I will publish photos later)

Well Tasha and I have just come back from a lovely few days in Bath, ostensibly to cover Peter Halls Pygmalion but actually to have a lot of cake and coffee and do touristy things. We walked around a lot and managed to stop each other from buying stuff, visited the Abbey and a variety of hostelries of which our favourite was The Raven.

As for Pygmalion it was a traditional but excellent production and very different from My Fair Lady. Instead you get a Victorian view of the suffragette movement, Eliza Doolittle (played fantastically by Michelle Dockery) is fighting to find a new path for herself highlighting the lack of options open to Victorian women who either needed to or wished to make their own way in the world. I have seen a few plays like that this year, especially at The Orange Tree Theatre with The Madras House and Diana of Dobsons; what it shows is that Victorian and Edwardian playwrights were aware of the arguments for women's suffrage in a way that we often forget.