News from Tory Bush

Rude rude owner.

2011-08-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

Rude rude owner.

I have been accused of being rude, please read through and make your own decision, I have attached the booking form to show the hefty discount I was offering for two persons only. I have redacted any means of identifying the writers of the review.

These Guests phoned in July to book a house in August for two people, and I told them I only had the Eco-Loft available which slept only 2 persons in one bedroom and Apartment 6 which slept up to 4 but that I would offer a low-occupancy discount based on two people, they asked could they view them on the internet and I gave the appropriate details.

They came back a day or so later saying they would prefer a house that opened directly onto a garden as opposed to a balcony in the case of number 6, and that there might be more people staying.

I suggested I had house number 2 available but that it was a large house capable of sleeping 6 people so would cost more but that I would still offer a low occupancy discount and that they could pay for any additional guests on a nightly price of £20 per person. They send me a text saying their budget was limited to £360 and I replied by text that I would offer House 2 at £320 for two people and that they could pay for any additional guests at £20 per night.

They replied ‘Thanks, that’s great’ and said they wished to book.

I drew up the booking form below, which shows the full price of the house at £630 but with a ‘low occupancy discount’ of £310, (they were getting the house for basically half price) and emailed it to them on the 25/7/11, and asking for their address details to initiate payment.

I got the following reply on the 2/8/11,

“Hi there, Could you resent payment email. I am paying today but the email seems to been deleted from my junk folder. Apologies for the delay. Thanks K M”

I replied that I would resend the email the next day as I was out of the office. I also sent a text on the 3/8/11 asking again for their address details as it would not be possible to pay online as the Card used is checked against the address details.

I never got these details, instead I got a call a night or two later on my mobile phone from the husband of the couple, saying they were only going to pay the £320 and did not see why they had to pay the extra to have people come down and stay. I said ‘ G… lets cancel the booking and that I am sure that you can find cheaper accommodation somewhere else.’ At that point the mobile phone signal broke-off, I expected the couple to phone back but they did not.

Coincidentally the fact that they phoned on the mobile is significant, not only from the point of view that signal failed which may appear as I rudely ‘hung up’, but to make the mobile phone work in my office I have to leave it in a window and put it on speaker phone when someone calls and not move the phone. As a consequence of this I have a witness to the conversation with G. M. and they were quite shocked by the manner in which I was addressed.

Reviews on Tripadvisor.

2011-08-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

I have had a number of Bad reviews on Tripadvisor, 'I' being the operative word as the critical reviews are more about me than about the properties, if anything the reviews praise the Cottages but have issues about my manner or the rules and regulations I use in the management of the Cottages. Any rule or regulation we have are for the benefit of the guests who have paid their money and chosen to have stayed with us. We see Tory Bush as more than mere accommodation for the night but a holiday experience, we even have people in their twenties now coming back to have their own children experience a place where they had a great child-hood holiday, when I see them bring their grandchildren then I know I will have been in this business too long!

I have no real issue with personal criticism, it hurts at the time of reading, but there is an expression that says, if amongst the people you meet, a third like you, a third dislike you, and the other third are indifferent then you are not doing too bad.

But what is upsetting is that these reviews are putting people off staying at the Cottages, particularly new visitors and visitors from out of the country. We have calculated, using Tourist Board figures that over the 16 years we have been in business we have brought £5.1 million into the local economy and at these difficult times we should all be doing as much as possible to support these primary enterprises that generate new cash for the country. Thankfully we have a high level of repeat business, probably the highest in our sector and that's because most people appreciate the way the cottages operate.

It is noticeable that the bad reviews I have had are where I have challenged people on some issue and it would appear that they are using Tripadvisor as a means of retribution. I actually think that this is an issue for Tripadvisor, and there is a view in the leisure sector that Tripadvisor has been dis-credited as a consequence of malicious, retributive or just plain false reviews. I am not alone in this, none other than Duncan Bannatyne of Dragons Den fame and owner of four Hotels is considering legal action against Tripadvisor.

I am going to post on this blog the contents of the Critical Reviews and let others decide if their is validity in them. By using the 'property right to reply' box following each Tripadvisor review I hope to able to direct people from the reviews on Tripadvisor to this blog, I don't think Tripadvisor would let me give all the background that let up to each review.

2011-03-18T14:28:00.000-07:00

Selecting the tree species that favour red squirrels but are unlikely to encourage grey squirrels into the core area is of paramount importance. Favourable species include Scots pine, larch, Norway spruce, lodgepole pine, Douglas fir, yew and hawthorn. Even a commercial plantation consisting primarily of the North American conifer Sitka spruce, can contribute to red squirrel conservation, providing that 20% of the tree cover consists of the above favoured species , where suitable site conditions prevail.

Woodland managers who require broadleaves for landscape or biodiversity reasons should use any of the following species - birch, rowan, ash, willow, aspen or alder. These species produce small seed and although they are not a favoured food source for the red squirrel, they do not encourage grey squirrel incursions.

The Irish Diaspora

2011-03-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

I thought I would begin this blog with a photograph, partly to add content but also to test out a little bit of software. I have tried to upload photos before but they have failed and latterly I have learned that the file size may have been too big, just too much detail for blogger to handle, apparently an image on the internet does not need to be as 'intense' as an image for, say a glossy colour brochure. So my bit of software can reduce the number of pixels in the photographs so that they can be uploaded much more quickly but still be viewable.

As a consequence of being in the tourism business we get bombarded with information from one source or another, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board has three publications, The View, Tourism Eye, and the Tourism Spotlight, who these are intended for and how the content differs I don't know. We get another publication from 'TIL' , (Tourism Ireland Limited) which is the organisation charged with marketing Ireland on a whole Island basis, there is also Failte Ireland which is responsible for marketing the South of Ireland and I am sure that they have a raft of in-house publications as well.

What I notice is that the most important person in this chain is often overlooked, namely the visitor, is there any publication or E-zine that they can sign up to and be kept informed about happenings within Ireland north and south. It is a bit like the now infamous debate we had in our local council last month, the Tourist Board were admirably funding the erection of new sign-age for a coastal route around the Mourne Mountains, and it came before the local Council for approval.

Here, however, rather than welcoming this development, the issue became the language that the signs were to be in, the Tourist Board were funding signs in English only, but some of our Councillors in their wisdom thought that they should also be in Irish and just as readily a few more thought that they should then also be in Ulster Scots. I think the fundamental point was missed, if language was to be an issue, it should have been which language would most have met the needs of our visitors, German, French, Dutch perhaps?

Back to the matter of those publications, as mentioned TIL, remember who they are?, have a publication called Contact, and apart from the usual range of photos of people in suits standing beside pull-up banners there is some good information, as indeed there is in all the publications, just do we need so many? One article caught my eye, it is a campaign to connect with people of Irish Ancestry throughout the world using twitter, you can read more about the article by clicking on this link, apparently the best tweet will get a 140 hour short break in Ireland.

http://www.tourismireland.com/Home!/About-Us/Press-Releases/2010/Connecting-with-the-Diaspora-in-GB-through-Twitter.aspx

The magical 140 figure comes from the maximum characters you can use in a tweet, you would think I would know what I am talking about, but I haven't a clue really, however next week I have planned some training on social media. This campaign to connect with the Irish Diaspora, as it is called, ie Irish people spread across the world can be checked out on an associated website

http://myirish140.com/ or on twitter itself http://twitter.com/@myirish140 .

Fairy Thorns

2011-02-21T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here at Tory Bush we are considering making the biggest hanging basket in County Down, really it is making use of some steel work we inherited, I will photograph the project as it goes on and post a blog later when all the flowers in bloom, if they do bloom that is, Jim and I are not exactly what may be called green fingered, lets say thank goodness for the recent wet summers we have had.

Jim is the handy man here at Tory Bush and from all those that have stayed the consensus is that he does a fantastic job. Talking about wet summers, about three years ago we decided to put window boxes on all the cottages and houses on site and at the time we made a device to attach to a hose pipe to enable us to water the boxes on the first floor windows, but would you believe it given the nature of the last few summers we have not had to use it once. Some may be thinking for a business trying to sell holidays in Northern Ireland talking about wet summers is not doing a good job, but I don't believe anyone books a holiday in Northern Ireland on the basis of guaranteed sunshine, I believe our mild moist climate gives us other attributes in terms of vegetation, or peat covered mountains and of course the moniker the 'Emerald Isle', I also think it reflects in our personalities, the easy going nature of the people.

Johnny Cash had a song called The Forty Shades of Green , and believe me there is forty shades and many more. The song was a tour through Ireland from well known place to another but making no geographical sense.

I close my eyes and picture the emerald of the sea
from the fishin boats at Dingle to the shores at Donaghadee
I miss the River Shannon and the folks at Skibbereen
the moorlands and meadows and their Forty Shades of Green

But most of all I miss a girl in Tipperary town
and most of all I miss her lips as soft as eiderdown
I long again to see and do the things we´ve done and seen
where the breeze is sweet as shalimar and there´s Forty Shades of Green

I wish that I could spend an hour at Dublin´s churning suft
I long to watch the farmers drain the bogs and spade the turf
to see again the thatching of the straw the women clean
I´d walk from Cork to Larne to see those Forty Shades of Green

But most of all I miss a girl in Tipperary town
and most of all I miss her lips as soft as eiderdown
I long again to see and do the things we´ve done and seen
where the breeze is sweet as shalimar and there´s Forty Shades of Green

However back on track, we were walking through the grounds at Tory Bush trying to find a place to locate the biggest hanging basket in Ireland ! !, yes I am making that claim now, and we came upon the Fairy Thorn that is located at Tory Bush and I thought that I had never blogged about the tree so here goes. From old maps there was a fence, wall or hedge down through the field in front of the cottages, we have replaced that boundary albeit a few metres further out into the next field, but when ever the original boundary was removed there was a thorn tree at the start of the boundary and it was never taken away with the rest of the wall or hedge or what ever was there. There is a big superstition about Fairy trees here in Ireland and people won't cut them or indeed dig them up. When I began this blog I 'googled' Fairy Thorn just to get some background and the following link is the first I came across http://ghosterelle.blogspot.com/2006/03/fairy-thorns-interview-wbarry.html and believe it or not I remember very well the incident mentioned in the second paragraph where an electricity sub-station had to be relocated because of the accidents surrounding the removal of the Fairy Thorn.

The local story was that after the first person broke their leg trying to remove the tree and after the remainder of the workmen refused to work on the boss said 'poppy-cock' or words to that affect, 'I will do it, let me in that digger' and as he hurriedly climbed the steps of the excavator in his muddy wellingtons he slipped and broke his leg. I don't know if as many as four people broke their legs but there was at least two.

What my little bit of research did show is that the belief is more prevalent in Northern ireland as the following online definition shows.

fair·y thorn (plural fair·y thorns)

noun

Definition:

Northern Ireland hawthorn bush: a hawthorn bush left growing in the middle of a field through fear that misfortune would befall whoever chopped it down

2011-01-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

I like to start a blog with a photograph and here is one I made earlier, literally!! I built these pillars a number of years ago and had the gates made in a traditional 'Ulster Style' by Walker Brothers of Ballyward. The round hoops are not only decorative but to add strength to the gate to stop it sagging. The hoops are made by the Walkers using a set of Rollers that have been in their black-smithing family for generations. The rollers are like an old fashioned 'Mangle' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine) used to dry clothes except that in this case there are 3 rollers and the straight metal bar is fed in on it's edge, as the curvature of the hoop is increased the rollers are screwed in closer and the bar is fed in a second or third time. Like all these skills and traditions they are at risk of dying out, in mass production gate manufacture these hoops would be cut out of sheets of steel using Lasers I presume. I have taken this photo from the Northern Ireland Tourist Board Library and apparently we, ie people in the Tourism trade, are permitted to use these photos, but why then I wonder is the NITB logo still in the middle of the photo. I think it a bit of an irony that they claim copyright to the image but I had a major contribution in the formation of the image, funny I was aware of that when I was building the gate and pillars; that they would be used to frame photographs of the Mournes.

By the way, talking of gates sagging, the correct way to climb a gate, if it has to be done at all, is to climb it on the hinge or hanger side this avoids putting a strain on the gate and causing it to sag. The current advice in 'gate construction' is to cement a flat stone tightly under the locking side of the gate so that if it is climbed on that side the potential damage is limited.

I was checking out some material on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and came across a great resource based on a programme called 'Your Place and Mine' which is a local BBC Northern Ireland programme broadcast every Saturday morning from 8.00 a.m. to 9.00a.m. and has 12 regional reporters from towns and regions right across the country.

It appears that whatever story the programme covered they added it to their website with more information and audio clips of the original programme. One of the best of these is the feature on the tunnellers who formed the tunnel under the Mourne Mountains to divert the Annalong River to top up the Silent Valley Reservoir in order to maintain a supply of water to the ever avaricious City of Belfast. To view this material click on the link below and see where it takes you

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/yourplaceandmine/down/A727328.shtml

Mourne Mountains, a great description. As promised, here is that description of the Mournes, if you can forgive the initial spelling mistake.

2010-11-15T07:31:00.001-08:00

The Mountains of Mourne are hands-down the most spectacular mountains in Ireland. The mountain range is located in Northern Ireland in County Down, specifically in South Down. The best way to reach the Mourne Mountains is to head down to the seaside resort of Newcastle. This exquisitely-located, bustling little town serves as a great home base for mountain expeditions. The Mournes are the most frequently visited and hiked mountains in Ireland.

The land on the south side of the mountains is known as the Kingdom of Mourne. Due to its isolated location, the kingdom developed a distinct culture and society. The region’s main industries were farming, fishing, and granite. The Mournes are some of the best granite mountains in Ireland, and granite quarries were a huge part of the Kingdom of Mourne economy. Mourne granite can be found throughout Ireland and England, including Belfast, Liverpool, London, and Manchester.

The rugged, granite peaks of the Mourne Mountains add a majestic element to the surrounding golden beaches, deep forests, and emerald fields. The beauty of the mountains was immortalized in one of WIlilam Percy French’s songs. French, an Irish songwriter, wrote the song with a chorus of “Where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.” The Mourne Mountains of Ireland have actually been internationally recognized as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The mountains boast better hiking, rock-climbing, and walking than found at any of the other Northern Ireland Mountains. Some well-known mountains include Slieve Donard, Slieve Lamagan, and Slieve Muck. Slieve is from the Irish word ‘sliabh,’ meaning mountain. Besides visits to these majestic Ireland mountains, tourists can trek up to the Mourne Wall, a man-made, dry-stone wall built between 1904 and 1922. The reason for its construction was to provide work during a period of high unemployment. The wall is 2 m high, a meter thick, and over 35 km long, and it lies across the summits of 15 of the surrounding peaks.

In the center of the Mourne Mountains of Ireland, weary travelers can rest at the stunning Silent Valley Reservoir. Formed by the damming of the Kilkeel River so as to provide Belfast with water, the Reservoir has scenic walks, a pleasant coffee shop, and a shuttle bus service that can take people up the valley to the Crom Dam.

During at trip to this region, visitors can also enjoy cycling, golf, horseback riding, fishing, and helicopter rides. Several parks and natural attractions are located near the Mountains of Mourne. The Castlewellan Forest Park is a good choice for beginning hikers and campers, with gentle walks, brilliant castles, and excellent trout fishing in its shimmering lake. Equestrians, both beginners and experienced riders, can arrange for beach and forest horseback trips at the Mount Pleasant Horse Trekking Centre.

In Newcastle and the Mourne Mountains, there are a number of accommodations available. New Youth Hostel is centrally situated, and the Beach House is a delightful Victorian Bed and Breakfast just opposite the beach. Several other B&Bs and hotels are located in the center and outskirts of Newcastle. Camping is always popular, especially in summer months. The Tollymore Forest Park, with tent and caravan sites, is located about 3 km northwest of Newcastle.

The Mourne Mountains of Ireland offer a breathtakingly beautiful combination of sand, surf, meadow, and mountain. The Mournes are the most famous of the Ireland Mountains and visitors can hike, climb, golf, fish, horseback ride, and simply soak in the superb natural views of these jagged peaks rising high above shimmering seas and fields.

How others see us.

2010-11-15T05:16:00.000-08:00

I have a facility on my computer called Google Alerts which lets me know during the period of a week if the term Mourne Mountains is used on the Web, either on a new website, a blog or an online article say from a newspaper. Anyone can use this facility via Google for any interest they may have, eg 'Line dancing', 'Origami', ' Neil Diamond' ,' Formula One racing', 'Humane Slaughter', or London Transport; now one of the previous is actually another of of my alerts, I will let you ponder on which.

Well the content below is a description of Northern Ireland from a website that is trying to sell 'Vacations' Worldwide, I don't know where it is based but I think it has used a generic description of Northern Ireland written in their own language and then used an online translation facility to translate it back into English. This has led to the word Metropolis being used instead of City when referring to Belfast and the Giants Causeway being described as the Good Causeway. It makes for a fun read but the essential message is still there.

"One or more of the four countries of the United Kingdom is Northern Ireland. This 14,000-square-mile area has a temperate oceanic climate. English Irish and its official languages, although their dialect of English has been influenced by the Scottish.

Northern Ireland has a great scenic mountains and one of the most famous may be the Mourne Mountains. This has been the inspiration of the famous author CS Lewis in his novel Children The Chronicles of Narnia. Numerous activities can be as the famous Mourne Mountain conducted a walk, hiking, fishing, horseback riding and more.

The water resources and networks are also a paradise in Northern Ireland. Several rivers and do Lough (lake) are as Bush River and Lough Neagh scattered throughout the country, where you can travel especially cruising, fishing or take it by foot or bike.

be far more than 40,000 of polygonal columns of basalt layers, which are guided by a volcanic eruption happen to the interest of tourists visit the good Causeway. The mean Percentage of the coastal road offers a breathtaking perfect hexagonal layers. This led to the Causeway declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The capital Metropolis, Belfast, can be the household with the famous ship Titanic. Located in the center of the city, the Cathedral Quarter in the center of attention of culture, architecture and Cooking was. Belfast is also the world-class interactive Science Discovery Centre, the W5, in addition to the ancient yet vibrant and colorful St. George's Market. The Metropolis is also home to a large number of gourmet restaurants, chic bars and shopping centers.

The Walled City of Derry, the only surviving in Ireland, is a of the largest walled cities of Europe. The landmark building, popular walls and panoramic views Foyle charm lots of visitors. The targeted visitors for free and relaxing trails and roads from the Foyle Valley, it produces an award-winning bike path.

Where do you want to travel in the world? For an idea of where to go on your next vacation, visit famouswonders.com. While you are on the site, also take a look at things to do in Ireland."

Coincidentally on Google Alerts, two weeks ago, I came across a description of the Mourne Mountains on another world wide Vacation site and it is one of the best I have ever seen, I hardly recognised the place and I live here. I will post this on a second blog; the only down side is that the have titled the article 'MOURN Mountains'

Turn any Stone

2010-10-31T13:41:00.000-07:00

There is an expression we have here in Northern Ireland,'Turn any Stone and there is a story', and it is almost true. I guess we are a small country with a long history, a varied geology and a culture of myths and legends.

What brings me to this topic is the film about Burke and Hare that is on current release, coincidentally for me, in that it is directed by John Landis who directed American Werewolf in London and the 15 minute long video for Michael Jackson's Thriller, both of which I saw as part of the Halloween celebrations by Newcastle Community Cinema, a small community driven cinema that puts on interesting films once or twice a month usually on a Friday night, worth checking out if you are staying in the area.

However back on message, Burke and Hare were both Irish, Burke was born in Strabane in1792 and Hare was born in Scarva possibly in the same year, they both reputedly worked on the construction of the Newry Canal, the first canal dug in Britain since the Romans, 20 years before the famous Bridgewater Canal that brought coal into Manchester and often cited, incorrectly, as the first canal in Britain; coincidently the Newry Canal was also constructed to move coal from the coal fields in Tyrone to the port of Newry, we even have a town called Coalisland in Tyrone.

See, there goes that 'Turn any stone' thing again, not any canal but the first in Britain, our own Coal mines.

I heard a local historian on the radio today mention that Burke and Hare worked on the Newry Canal but by my reckoning it was finished a good 50 years before they were born, perhaps they worked on it's extension or a branch, in any case the used this experience of working on canals to move to Scotland to work as navvies there. Being a 'Navvie' as it is known, from the term Navigation Canals would be with out doubt hard work, cutting trenches through solid rock on occasion, Burke and Hare soon spotted an easier way to make money using there digging skills.

Edinburgh had a well renown Medical School and Medical Science was becoming important as a study, medicine was moving away from the old Apothecary to the beginning of modern Medicine, Jenner had just discovered vaccination, Davy had developed the first anaesthetics, the first stethoscope was made in 1816, and the first blood transfusion in 1818. Doctors could now be trained, but, just as they do to this day, they needed cadavers to study anatomy but just as the demand increased the supply decreased. Up until the 1800's the source of dead bodies were people hanged for committing crimes, and under what became known as the Bloody Code, lots of crimes could be punishable by death, hanging for pick-pocketing was only repealed in 1808, writing a threatening letter could be a hanging offence. At one time there were 222 crimes punishable by death, but in more enlightened times Judges started to find people not guilty as they knew a guilty verdict was certain death, and combined with the repeal of these laws and the increased use of transportation as the 'punishment of choice' the numbers of bodies declined to only a few actually guilty of murder.

The word got out that the Medical schools would pay well for recently deceased bodies and so began the practise of Grave Robbing, where a freshly interred corpse would be dug up and sold to the Medical Schools, on a 'ask no questions be told no lies basis'. Burke ad Hare saw this as an opportunity to make use of there digging skills and for that matter the digging was easy, not rock but freshly backfilled soil.

The Percy French song 'The Mountains of Mourne' has a few lines about the naive Mourne Man in London coming across people digging in the streets, obviously digging pipe trenches etc but they spin him a yarn,

They don't sow potatoes nor barley nor wheat
But there's gangs of them diggin' for gold in the street.
    At least, when I asked them that's what I was told

So I just took a hand at this diggin' for gold;

Well Burke and Hare did take ' a hand' a the digging and got as well paid as if they had been digging for gold, they got paid up to £10 per corpse, the average workers wage at the time was £1 per week. But that was not enough for these two entrepreneurs, whether it was all that digging or that it was becoming more difficult to get into graveyards, guards were being employed and cages were being erected over fresh graves and left until decomposition would have set in, but Burke and Hare decided to short circuit the process by killing there own bodies. In all they killed 17 persons and were only caught when they left a body under a bed in a lodging house kept by Hare's wife Margaret and one of the other lodgers returned unexpectedly to search for some clothing.

The evidence against the pair was weak but the Lord Advocate in Scotland offered Hare immunity if he would confess and testify against Burke which he readily did. Burke was hung in January 1829 and with a touch of irony he was publicly dissected in Edinburgh Medical College.

Hare was released the same year and began a nomadic life, some say he was blinded when thrown in a pit of lime and for a time was a blind beggar in London and last seen living in Carlisle. At some point he must have made his way back to Northern Ireland because he is buried in Kilkeel, something I need to check out for myself.

Talk about turn any stone, from a Gravestone in Kilkeel to a a blockbuster film by a leading Hollywood director.

A little foot-note Hare is not a common name here in Co Down and Co Armagh, but O'Hare is and I would assume that was Hare's correct name but it may need a little research just as I would like to link the O'Hare name here with that of O'Hare Airport in Chicago, named after a WWII flying Ace Edward 'Butch' O'Hare, interestingly the son of Al Capone's lawyer Joseph O'Hare who helped provide evidence against Capone on his tax evasion charge, and there lies another interesting story, the subject of another blog I think.

"Leave as found", puppy dogs and babies.

2010-10-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

We use the term "Leave as found" in our terms and conditions, which is basically a request to leave the cottage on departure as clean as it was found on arrival. A not unreasonable request we think as we believe the affordable pricing of self-catering, based on a per person per night price, from as little as £12 per night even in peak season, is a trade-off between us the provider and the guest where the servicing tasks are shared. This is opposed to the fully serviced provision in Hotels, Guest Houses etc where the higher price includes an element to clean up after the stay.

We take the meaning of the term Self-Catering in it's fullest sense where guests 'cater' for themselves, not only by cooking for themselves but also cleaning for themselves. Now we don't expect guests to leave the houses spotless but we do expect them to make some attempt to tidy up. What causes me to raise this topic is the way some guests left one of the cottages on departure today, they just walked out leaving the house in a 'right state'. It appears that they cleaned nothing from arrival and just let their children run riot with breakfast cereal all over the floor and other foodstuffs walked into the floor. Thank goodness we have durable tiling on the downstairs living spaces, if we had carpets we would not stand a hope.

We pride ourselves on how clean we prepare the houses and this matters greatly when we have a number of turn-a-rounds on busy days such as Saturdays in July and August when we could have as many as 17 properties to clean in the 5 hours between departures at 11.00 a.m.and the new arrivals at 4.00p.m., so that trade-off really comes into it's own.

I don't what this blog to become a rant, I think it is the exception that makes the rule and the truth is that the vast majority of guests leave the properties as they found them, so it really stands out when some don't, I believe it shows a degree of dis-respect for my cleaners and my property.

On the topic of how guests leave properties, we often come across items left behind, the most common is the humble telephone charger. These are often plugged into sockets in bedrooms or behind furniture, so are often over-looked on departure. I can't think of the most unusual we have come across but a colleague in the self-catering business has the best story. After some guests left she was preparing the house for new arrivals when she came across a puppy sleeping in the bottom of a wardrobe, I don't know if the guests ever reclaimed the puppy, but thank goodness the cottage owner was a dog lover. It reminds me of a story some nurse friends told me in London, one of them was working in a maternity hospital and this extended family came to collect the new mum and baby. It was the nurses final responsibility to carry the baby down out of the Ward to the exit and hand it over to the departing parents. On this occasion so many of the extended family had arrived, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, siblings that by the time they all clambered back into the small Nissan Sunny, new mum and all, they closed the door and drove off and left the nurse standing holding the baby. I would like to say they were half way across London before they realised, but I think they only got as far as the hospital gates.

Snow in September

2010-09-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

This photograph was taken with my Blackberry phone on Sunday the 12th of September in Tollymore Forest Park, (apologies for the quality, this phone not noted for it's picture taking abilities) The photograph shows snow in amongst the Pine trees of Tollymore, all I can say is, Global Warming what Global warming??.

But look closer and you see no snow on the track and even more remarkable no snow where I am standing, what can it mean? It reminds me of the old joke, about re-drawing the borders after the Second World War, and a Polish Farmer was approached and asked if he wanted his farm to be in Poland or Russia, and he replied "Poland, I can't stand those Russian winters."

I have got to own up, it is not snow but sheets of a heavy white paper type material, a bit like the mulch matting you buy in Garden Centres to prevent weeds. The paper is cut carefully around the trees and tree stumps and looks remarkably like snow covered ground even close up.

The truth is, it is a location for an American TV series which is being shot in Northern Ireland.

The series which will star Sean Bean ( formerly in Red Riding, Sharpe) is called A Game of Thrones, and is being made by HBO TV, famous as the makers of The Sopranos. A pilot was filmed in Northern Ireland last year, and if you pardon the jargon the 'pilot was picked up' and filming is now in progress for 9 episodes.
Game of Thrones is HBO's adaptation of the George R.R. Martin best-selling Songs of Fire and Ice fantasy-book series. It is described as an epic struggle for power set in a vast and violent fantasy kingdom.

One of the reasons Northern Ireland was chosen was that the interiors are being shot in the former Harland and Wolf Paint Hall one of the last remnants of our ship building tradition and is now the indoor largest Film and TV production stage in Europe .

Keeping up to date

2010-09-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

A guest recently asked me why I did not keep up to date with my blogs and in truth I am not sure, just managing the cottages seems to take up a lot of time. We have an online booking system that gives the availability of the properties, the prices and allows them to be booked and paid for automatically but yet I seem to spend a lot of time answering enquiries by phone or by email. I think people still like to have the reassurance of contacting a real person.

I seem to spend a lot of time in front of the computer, especially at this time of year, this is the time when all the entries are completed for next years brochures, this typical of the tourism business we are planning a year in advance. I compiled a list of the brochures and websites we market ourselves through and one of my intentions is to keep these up to date as much as possible, this list includes,

Northern Ireland Tourist Board
Northern Ireland Self Catering Assoc.
Holiday Villas and Cottages Magazine
Yell.com
About Britain
Visit Britain
Greentraveller.co.uk
Farmstay UK
Perfect Getaways in association with Ryan Air
Stilwell's Cottages Direct

Each one of these has there own requirements, descriptive text of a certain number of words, photographs, prices for different sizes of house different times of the year etc. It would be great if one template would fit all but maybe that would be boring and in any case each is targeted at a different market segment so requires a different emphasis.

It may be noticed that we put a great effort on promoting the cottages outside Northern Ireland, ie Farmstay Uk Visit Britain etc, there are several reasons for this, firstly I believe we are in the tourism business, ie we should be striving to bring visitors into Northern Ireland as a primary economic function. We have few natural resources like coal or iron that can be exported so for NI plc to grow it's economy we have to sell our tourism product like an export ie it brings new money in to the economy, anything else is just a recirculation of money within NI.

However the main reason is because I believe we live in a very special part of the world and I believe it is important to share this with people who will appreciate it. Every day I look out on the Mourne Mountains and they are truly beautiful mountains, I am sure psychologists can probably explain why we find landscapes beautiful, I don't know why but the Mournes really are. I think one of the reasons is that they are comprehensible, what I mean by this is that they are not a big range of mountains and they are not that high that they are daunting, they seem like you discover all you want about them in a single visit. I was on a trip to the Italian Alps and the mountains just seemed to go on for ever and the peaks ended high in the clouds, they were probably a paradise to the technical climber but for the likes of me they were just too foreboding and off-putting.

The Mournes you know you can tackle and have a good days walking, and they are good walking mountains, I have had guests comment on how resilient the ground under foot is and they describe other mountainous regions in Ireland and the Uk as needing Wellingtons rather than Walking boots.

Having said, look at the top of this blog to see a photo of the Mournes from the Cottages, and see if you can appreciate why I enthuse such much about the view we have.

Eco-Tourism

2010-03-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

I recently received a questionnaire on Eco-tourism with some good short questions, such as do you tell your guests about the Culture and Heritage of the area. Do you talk to your guests about the environment etc.

And then it asked what I thought Eco-tourism meant and my answer given of the cuff was as follows.

'I would say Eco-Tourism is the provision of a holiday product where the provider tries to minimise the impact of their activities on it's Environment, which includes the Ecology, Landscape, Culture and People.'

I don't know if this is a good or a bad answer, I think it a bit of a blunderbuss answer in that everything is in there, nothing is missed a bit like the famous Eric Morecombe quote, 'I am playing all the right notes, but necassarily in the right order...'.

There is an expression bandied about in tourism relating to minimising ones impact on a destination,

'Leave nothing but foot-prints, take nothing but photographs.',

and that, though simplistic, is a correct approach.
I remember as a child, that a local Forest Park had to put up signs to deter people from taking cuttings, as it was beginning to threaten the viability of certain plants. On the issue of leaving nothing but footprints, this is simplistic in the sense that too many footprints can lead to Erosion. The famous Mourne Wall Walk of the 70's and 80's had to be abandoned as on one Sunday in June up to 3,000 people would turn up to do the walk and if this followed a wet spell it could lead to serious erosion, in places the turf was eroded of a path, in places, some 6 metres wide adjacent to the wall.

As I type this there is a little filler programme on TV about walking in the Mournes, what a coincidence! It is on BBC NI and presented by the enthusiastic Darryl Grimason, some of the graphics showing the routes on a 3D OS map are very good and there is a series of these programmes showing walks in the Sperrins, Glens of Antrim as well as the Mournes. There is a website associated with the programme which I hope remains extant well after the programme is off-air. Click on http://www.bbc.co.uk/blueprint/offthebeatentrack/ and see what happens, you can click on the individual walks which are listed down the righthand side of the window and seen as red blobs on the map of N. Ireland.

The actual site http://www.bbc.co.uk/blueprint is absolutely fascinating, associated with a very good Television programme about how Ireland came in to being in geological terms, where it's people came from, and much more a really good informative resource.

Rules and Regulations

2010-03-15T19:18:00.000-07:00

I attended an agricultural Diversification on Friday last and a speaker emphasised the importance of blogging and what he called micro-blogging by which he means Twitter. So I have resumed this blog and will consider twitter.

The first topic is rules and regulations .

The reason I pick this topic is because I was watching a TV progamme on Sunday night about the Solar System and the presenter was staying in a motel in Mid America as he was following Twisters to show the phenomena of 'Conservation of Angular Momentum' which spinning theory can be applied as much to the circular pattern of our solar system as to a Tornado.

On the wall of the motel were two signs with two Rules, the first said 'No Hunting Dogs in the Rooms' and the second said 'Game not to be cleaned or gutted on the beds'. That got me to thinking about the rules each accommodation provider has to apply in their particular circumstances. In ours is the rule that we do not permit visitors to the cottages at any time. We do that because at times the number of persons on our site could practically double if visitors were permitted and this can cause problems with some guests who come down for a tranquil time. There is also the problem of exploitation where people may rent a cottage and their relatives camp near by but spend all their time on our site. It is our belief that only the persons who are paying are entitled to be on the site and those that are paying are right to be aggrieved if others are there without paying. Tory Bush is more than just a place to sleep but there is an ambiance about the whole site and some regard it is a privilege to be there.

Blogging from a Blackberry

2009-08-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

This a first blog from a Blackberry phone so need to see if it works. This third attempt so going to publish now.

I have aquired a new Blackberry phone and it has the capability to go on the internet anywhere either directly or via a WiFi hotspot, and thankfully I have 3 of those one at Tory Bush and one at Dundrum Bay Holiday Homes and one at my own home. This means that I should be able to blog more frequently as can do it when ever I have any free time and not just when in the office at Tory Bush.

The first sentence above was uploaded from the Blackberry, I admit it not a significant sentence but then all modern soundrecording from Wax Cylinders through 78's, 45 singles, CD's DVD's and even MP3 players began with the sentence "Mary had a little lamb" , spoken by Edison when he first recorded sound on the 6th of December 1877, so perhaps there is hope for this blog.

Sticking to the point.

2009-02-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

I notice from my last blog that I strayed severely from the title of the blog which was to be about the recent snow we have had. I have therefore taken a policy decision to stay 'on message' and try and keep the blogs about the events at Tory Bush Cottages or things of relevance to visitors to this general area, i.e. the Mournes, County Down or at times Northern Ireland.

On the latter item, Northern Ireland as a destination has a lot going for it, in 2007 it was rated in a'Lonely Planet' publication, the "Lonely Planet Blue List, The Best in Travel 2007" as one of the worlds must see destinations.

Not 5 mile from us here at Tory Bush is the Royal County Down Golf Course, rated as one of the top three best Links Courses in the world, Tiger Woods regularly plays the course prior to the British Open.

The Antrim Coast and Causeway Coastal drive is rated as one of the best Coastal drives in the world not far behind drives such as Prince Edward island in Canada, the Monterrey coast of California.

Not bad for such a wee place.

Well back to the snow one of the advantages of the snow is that it lets us see some landscape features not usually visible. It may recalled that in an earlier Blog I mentioned the remnants of the Lazy Beds that are still visible on the higher slopes, this is where, during the famine, people tried to grow potatoes as they assumed that the disease was in the soil, so they moved to land that had never grown potatoes. Little did they know that the disease was in the air, spread by spores from the remains of the stalks of the potato plants from the previous years diseased crop. All they had to do was burn the stalks of the old crops in the Autumn and the disease could not have survived the winter, but then the Science of Plant Pathology did not develop for about 100 years later.

These remnants of the Lazy Beds have been obliterated on the lower ground by subsequent years of agricultural activity most notably by tractor ploughing, but on the higher slopes inaccessible to machinery they are a 'frozen' memorable to a generation that was almost wiped out by a famine in the mid 1840's.

The photo at the top of the blog is the lines of parallel Lazy Beds running up Slievenaman Hill a hill adjacent to Tory Bush and you can see the lines of the Lazy Beds emphasised by the melting snow. (Literally a frozen memorial)

I am indebted to John McCombe a neighbour and installer of a WiFi system at Tory Bush for this photo. John has his own blog on which he regularly publishes good photos of Mourne, and he and his wife Elaine have their own Tea Room and Craft Shop not far from Tory Bush, well worth a visit if staying in the area.

Let it Snow

2009-02-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

It is a while since I last blogged, if that is now a verb, as I am sure it is. It is strange how nouns become verbs, one of my favourites is 'to bin' as in put something in a bin, so if I see some litter on site I may say to someone "bin that please'.or I binned last weeks paper. (using the recycling bin of course)

On the subject of 'bins' this expression is the cockney rhyming slang for glasses, as in reading glasses, so if someone is having trouble looking up a number in a telephone book you might say put on your 'bins'.

The logic behind this is a little more tortuous than with most Cockney Slang, usually the rhyme does just that, it rhymes , so Apples and Pears is the stairs, or Trouble and Strife is wife, though I suspect in the latter there is more than just the alliterative value of the rhyme invoked.

Another word for glasses is spectacles and that rhymes with another word for bin which is receptacle, basically the rhyme should be put on your receptacles but that just not as good as , put on your bins.

Cockney rhyming slang is an evolving 'language', a lot of the older terms were named after famous people of their day so a cigarette or fag was known as a Harry Wragg, a famous jockey in the 1930's. Today the names of present day sports people are used in the slang such as Becks and Posh, ie David Beckham and his wife 'Posh Spice'.

So when someone says' I can't go out tonight I have no Becks' what they mean is they have no spending money. Can you work out the link?

Becks and Posh rhymes with dosh and dosh means money, itself a slang term which is now an accepted usage but of very uncertain origin.

Given the present economic situation we are all a bit short of Becks.

One of my favourites is 'Get on your Dick Van Dyke' i.e. 'get on your bike', which is usually used as an expression to clear off.

Amazingly Dry Weather

2009-01-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

It has been dry here in Co Down for the best part of three weeks, which is highly unusual for this time of year. A Continental High pressure are has been sitting over the UK for the last while and whilst this means drier weather it also means colder weather and indeed it has been cold for the last week or so. Our daytime temperature should be in the region of 6 to 7 degrees centigrade, but it has struggled to reach 3 to 4 for most days.

The long range forecast is that in about a weeks time the Winds will start to once again come in from the Atlantic bringing back, in relative terms, the milder weather, and with it the rain. Apparently only for these winds bringing this milder air in from the Atlantic which has been heated by the a Current called the North Atlantic Drift - a continuation of the Gulf stream- Ireland would have much colder winters. Northern Ireland is on the same latitude as Goose Bay in Newfoundland and the average daily temperature at this time of year is an unbelievable Minus 13. This may not be a fair comparision as I am sure Goose Bay suffers from the affect of being part of a large Continental Land Mass and these tend to have bigger seasonal temperature variations, think of the central European Countries like Bulgaria etc.. Islands like Ireland benefit from the buffereing effect of being surrounded by water, but the point is that with out the heating affect of the Atlantic Drift we would be much colder, possibly in a mini-ice age.

The fear is, and this was not in my mind when I began this blog today, (I simply wanted to give a weather report), that as a consequence of Global Warming and the melting of the Polar Ice Caps there will be an influx of colder water from the North Pole which will push the benefits of the North Atlantic Drift much further south. So ironically as a consequence of Global Warming here in Ireland we may actually move into a mini ice-age. I seem to recall a BBC Northern Ireland Programme on this very topic presented by William Crawley and I do remember him traveling to Newfoundland and 'flying' about on a snow-mobile.

Now I am in a quandry, should I buy a new pair of Thermals or a pair of Bermuda shorts.

Electric Brae

2008-12-31T10:13:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been telling guests about a little known place of interest near Tory Bush, if that not an oxymoron.

This place is an Electric Brae a hill at which Newtons discovery of the Law of Gravity is defied, basically a parked car with it's handbrake off appears to run backwards uphill. I am uncomfortable with the term Electric Brae; it comes from hill in Scotland, near Ayr, where the same phenomena is observed. Brae is a Scottish word for hill not in common usage here and Electric because the effect was initially thought to be an Electric or Magnetic attraction or repulsion from the surrounding hill or in the case of the site near Tory Bush a large reservoir. Just visualise how two magnets repel each other.

However in lieu of a better term I am stuck with Electric Brae. The location near Tory Bush is at Spelga Dam in the Mournes, if you have an Ordnance Survey Map then the Grid reference is 265 275, and I will atempt to give directions from Tory Bush as follows. Leave Tory Bush by turning right on to the Tullaree Road proceed to re-join the B180, the main road between Bryansford and Hilltown, at the junction turn right onto the B180 heading towards Hilltown and travel about half a mile to take the second left, the Slievenaman Road. Travel about 4 mile up the Slievenaman road climbing all the way, as you travel up you will pass Fofanny Dam on the left and in front of it the new underground water treatment plant which should only be visible by looking backwards when you just past the entrance and you should see the rear doors down below the road. On the right just oppsite the dam wall you will see the massive land-slip on the slope of Butter Mountain that occurred on the day of the heavy rain in August 08, the same day the under-pass in Belfast flooded.

The road will level out and down to the right you will see Splega Dam and a road that swings down to Hilltown, take this road down past the dam. On your left will be some car-parking spaces and on the right a toilet block, drive past the dam wall and start to decline what is known as the Spelga Hill Climb an apline like zig-zag road, but don't go far. Just beyond what must have been a dam-workers house there is a little road into the left driving straight towards the dam itself, and at the end of which is two gates into the grounds infront of the Dam. Park in front of the gates and put your car out of gear and the hand brake off and see what happens. The road has recently been tarmacced so the phenomena should be more apparent, previously you used to get stuck in a pot hole.

Hopefully your car will appear to run back up the slope of this little private road. It can be appreciated why some thought it was a magnetic effect with it being attributed to a magnetic repulsion caused by the large body of water behind the Dam Wall.

Presently I will leave it to you all to come up with an explanation I have my own theory and it involves the use of a spirit level.

Sky Rocket

2008-12-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

I was out doing a little bit of shopping today, not Christmas shopping I hasten to add, I was trying to get a particular type of tall thin coniferous tree, to be planted and obscure the support leg of the new Balcony on house 6, the idea being to make the Balcony look like it is floating unsupported. The common name for the tree is Skyrocket which pretty much describes what it looks like, quite imaginative these gardeners, I think it a member of the Cypress Family, on checking I see it is called Juniper Skyrocket, proper name Juniperus Scopulorum and is a member of the Cupressaceae family often commonly called the Cypress family.

Well I did not get my plant, I will have to go to a more specialist Garden Centre.

But having noticed the number of cars from the South of Ireland up here it made me think of the reasons why, I heard on the radio last week that what costs about 1,300 euro in Dublin can be bought for 1,000 Euro in the North.

There are several reasons, the pound has weakened against other currencies last year it was worth 2 dollars now it is only worth 1.5 dollars and it has softened about 15% against the Euro, not more than a month ago the Euro was worth abot 78 pence now it is almost 86 pence.

In addition at the last budget in the South VAT was increased to 21.5% whilst on the same effective date, the 1st of December it was reduced to 15% here. An all Ireland Chamber of Commerce site says that this leads to a 43% difference in the VAT rates either site of the Border, this is a significant difference if say buying higher value electrical items, such as Plasma TVs. Almost 100 pounds on a 52 inch Sony TV for example and that not allowing for the currency differential.

I am not sure if this the topic for a blog but interesting all the same, apparently it has lead to squabbles in Newry, the nearest Border Town, now a city, to Dublin, over issues such as parking spaces and Shopping Trolleys. The Spirit of Christmas lives on, I think thats where I came in.

Fact Finding

2008-12-12T12:58:00.000-08:00

I had a big long blog all typed out with links and lost it all as I downloaded software that required my browser to be shut down, my blogging software has an autosave facility that saves every 2 minutes so I don't know what happened on that occasion. I have just seen it auto save twice since restarting.

The content of the blog was basically that I would check out some of the stuff I wrote about in the last blog, firstly the decline in bird populations around Rathlin Island. This I recall from a BBC NI news story so naturally that was the first place I researched but no luck, I spent hours on this and eventually came up with a website http://www.birdlife.org/ , type decline into the search box and click on the article about Irish Birds in Alarming Decline. This kinda substantiates what I recalled, that bird species are declining as there food sources are moving elsewhere.

I also stated that Rathlin was an amazing place, that Robert the Bruce hid out there for a while in a cave before heading back to Scotland to give the English a whooping at Bannockburn. A good website is http://www.goireland.com/antrim/rathlin-island-attractions-id3646.htm and it tells the story of how Robert got inspiration on the Island and came up with the expression "If at first you don't succeed, try try and try again." If it does not go straight to the Rathlin page then just enter Rathlin in the search box at the top of the site and click on first entry that comes up.

Marconi sent the first Radio Signal across water from the Island, you could say radio was invented there.

Mary Black the singer was also from the Island at least her parents were, I think she was born and brought up in Dublin, but I personally prefer her sister Frances, check out http://www.frances-black.net/ and click on the song " Don't be a Stranger" which I propose to be the anthem of this blog.

I was going on to explore the assertion I made in the previous blog that the main issue was the speed of change of Temperature which leads scientists to conclude that this Global Warming is man induced.
There always has been temperature fluctuations, apparently there was a mini-ice age in the middle ages and people could skate on the Thames.
Over the last 150 years since the industrial revolution got into full swing the mean temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees which may not seem a lot but if compared with the change since the last major Ice Age which ended about 8,000 to 10,000 years ago which at it's coldest it was only 5 degrees colder than now. This coldest part of the Ice Age was probably about 15,000 years ago, so in that time the temperature has risen 5 degrees, about .0003 degrees a year, but in the last 150 years now our temperature has risen about 0.6 degrees, that is .oo4 degrees a year.

This may be a simplistic calculation but it appears that the rate of change is ten times faster than before we began belching out all that CO2, and they try to blame the cows, an animal I like to call the Benign Bovine. I will explain the rationale behind that another time.

A quiet time of year

2008-12-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

Presently we are experiencing the quietest time of our year, the weeks in the run up to Christmas, it is unusual for us not to have someone staying at Tory Bush most weekends and apart from a last minute booking this evening we would have been entirely empty this weekend.

These customers are a young couple on there third visit this year, and they have asked for Number 6 our loft apartment and indeed asked had the new balcony been fitted which it has. However I can not see anyone sitting out on it over this weekend, it has been what I think is unseasonably cold here over the last week or so. Today the temperature failed to rise above 3 or 4 degrees centigrade. I will put a few chairs on the balcony just in case they decide to brave the elements.

Apart from my strong 'Green' credentials I would say roll on Global Warming.

Actually what alarms me most about global warming is the lost of species of animals and plants. There are lots of predictions out there and I am sure some are scaremongering, but two I note are that up to 30% of land birds species will be extinct by 2100 and the number of Polar Bears will be reduced by two thirds by 2050, just over 40 years from now.

What is causing this is the speed of change, there have been climatic changes before, such as the last Ice Age, but species have had time to react, now the increase in temperature is too rapid. There is television footage of the polar ice-caps literally melting in front of the camera. Europe has it's first Desert in Southern Spain and it is expanding.

I recall that there was a recent news item about the decrease of a certain bird species around Rathlin Island, the Puffin I think, and this was attributed to global warming affecting the supply of it's food, a certain type of fish that itself was in decline or it's migratory path had been altered by the changing temperatures. It did not have to come as far south to reach warmer waters as it used to I think.

But I will do a little research on this and firm up my facts in a later blog.

More About Bryansford

2008-12-07T14:21:00.001-08:00

Following my last Blog about the origin of the name of the village of Bryansford I have included two scans from the reference book I use, "Place-Names of Northern Ireland" Vol 3 County Down 111 published by the Dept of Irish Studies, Queens University Belfast.

2008-12-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

I have finally got my computer back up and running again, at least what I hope is in a safe and secure environment.

Following an enquiry passed to me from a member of staff of the Mourne Heritage Trust I have just a short blog on the origin of the name of the village of Bryansford which is our neighbouring village about one mile away and is probably the most picturesque village in the Mournes. The enquiry arose from a visitor to the area from Dublin who had the first name Bryan and wondered if there was a connection.

Well there is, Bryansford literally means "Brian's Ford", the ford over the little stream in the middle of the lands own by the son of a local chieftan called Brian McHugh Magennis and this son was also called Brian. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Bryansford&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=47.080837,78.75&ie=UTF8&ll=54.228251,-5.93766&spn=0.008241,0.019226&t=h&z=16&g=Bryansford

The stream runs just outside the village shop in Bryansford, literally under the Phone Box, now in a culvert bridge and virtually unnoticed by the traffic that passes it each day. I will attempt to scan a reference on the origin of the name from my book "The Place Names of Northern Ireland" in a future Blog, but first got to master the technology.

2008-11-19T12:18:00.000-08:00

I have been unable to update this blog for a week or so as my previous computer was severely corrupted by a 'Trojan-Horse' which i believe is some kind of virus.

Before I go much further I must refer to a previous blog about the stone workers from Mourne who built the Princess Diana Memorial and I added that they were working on a memorial in Virginia, well I have learnt that they are, or will be, working on the memorial to the British people who lost their lives on 9/11 as a consequence of the attacks on World Trade Centre in New York. Their website is www.smcconnellandsons.com

Another website which is worth a look is www.harryfergusoncelebrationcommittee.com which is about the work by a small committee to create a rememberance garden to propably the greatest Engineer and inventor to come \\from

Always Something new at Tory Bush

2008-11-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

In my previous blog i mentioned that I would check out that Clonachullion really did mean the 'Hill of Holly', well I was only partly correct, it means Meadow of Holly, although an alternative interpretation may suggest that the second part of the word i.e. '...chullion' could come from an Irish source meaning steep unbroken slope, but the reference book I use 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland, vol 3 County Down III, The Mournes ' suggests that when the first part 'cluain' is used, and that definitely means meadow, it makes more sense to conclude that it is Meadow of Holly, rather than 'meadow of the steep slope' which is a bit of a contradiction in terms, one imagines meadows to be large tracts of flat lush land.

Ironically the truth is that Clonachullion hill is rather a steep hill as can be seen from the photo in the previous blog. One interesting feature on this hill and which is visible from Tory bush Cottages are a number of parallel ridges in one of the fields running up the hill. It is my view that these are 'Lazy Beds' which were the technique for growing potatoes in this area prior to horse ploughing, and these ridges are still visible as the farming family that created them either died or emigrated as a consequence of the potato famine which lasted from 1845 to 1849. A fuller explanation is given on the cottages website http://www.torybush.com/ and click the Genealogy button . It has been estimated by scholars that the population of Ireland declined by between 20 and 25% as a consequence of the famine, either through death or emigration.

It has to be said that the landlords in Ulster, the northern nine counties of Ireland were a lot more caring about their tenants than in other parts of Ireland and offered relief by means of food in return for work. Many of the long rambling walls around the Estates and Demesnes of these landlords were built at that time.

Every day at Tory Bush something new or different seems to happen, to-day at short notice we had a group of walkers from Dublin come down from the mountains just to shower and change before travelling back to Dublin by coach. We have never had this type of usage before, and I only got the phone-call last night.

Equally on Thursday night I got a call from a youth group in Lisburn that they had been let down by a bicycle hire company and could we provide 13 bicycles for a group of young people aged 13 to 15 on Sat morning at 10.00. Thankfully we were able to help, as in partnership with my son Ronan, we operate a bicycle hire business on the same site as Tory Bush, it did mean a bit of a last minute flurry as though we have quite a few bikes not all are sitting ready to go out on hire, esp. at this time of year and in particular the smaller sizes required by this young group. Ronan was at work all day Friday so it meant we brought the bikes to be used into the large meeting room at Tory Bush, having covered the floor, and Ronan worked on them to about 10.30 pm.

We like the bikes to go out in good order and the leader did comment on how well the bikes performed and in particular the gear changing, which is a particularly difficult thing to get right.

For some reason this month I have lots of meetings and most business related, perhaps the organisers recognise that Nov. is a quiet month in our type of work and a good time to hold meetings. I don't think of meetings as work but I guess they are an essential part of operating my business, I will report back on some of them in future blogs.

Blog with a photo

2008-11-07T12:03:00.000-08:00

As this is our second blog I am going to try and import a photograph from Tory Bush Cottages.

Obviously I have succeeded in importing the photo and whilst not showing the cottages themselves it is still of interest, next time I will preview the photos and select one that shows the cottages in their rural setting.

The photograph was taken by one of our guests in May 2008 and is a view from the bedroom window of apartment 6 looking out over the garden towards Slieve Bearnagh, the mountain with the Volcano type crater to the left of centre in distance. ( it is not a extinct volcano, the Mournes were not volcanic but a magma intrusion, where molten rock swells up under the existing rock surface a bit like a blister under skin) through time the existing rocks have wore away to expose the Mourne Granite.)

The Granite is a very durable rock and has been used to form the cobbles of numerous English Towns, particularly in Liverpool and Lancashire, perhaps the cobbles of Coronation Street are Mourne Granite. The Plinth of the Albert Memorial in London is made of Mourne Granite.

The Diana Memorial in Hyde Park London whilst made of Cornish Granite has a connection with Mourne in that the firm of Stone Masons who built the memorial are from Mourne, McConnell and Sons of Kilkeel cut the memorial from 545 pieces of Cornish granite.

Now there is little Granite extraction in Mourne and so McConnell's are working with stone from all parts of the world with an expertise acquired whilst working Mourne Granite and past down through generations of the one family. Presently they are working with Thassos Marble from northern Greece on a memorial for Richmond Virginia USA. This memorial coincidentally is to replace a previous Marble memorial that has virtually disintegrated as a consequence of atmospheric pollution.

Back to the photo, the Mountain in the centre of the skyline is Slieve Meelmore and the hill in front of that is Clonachullion, which I believe means hill of the Holly Trees but I will check that out for the next blog.

In the photo of the grounds of Tory Bush there are three things to note, the black Bee hive shaped structure in the bottom right hand corner is a compost maker in which we mix grass cuttings and old cardboard boxes, on their own neither compost well but make ideal compost if mixed. During the summer we generate amazing amounts of grass cuttings at Tory Bush so will have to develop a larger scale means of composting it. We tried adding food waste to the compost makers at Tory Bush but this just attracted rodents so we are looking out for a system specifically for food waste, possibly a wormery.

In front of the compost maker in the grass there is a silver manhole cover and this is the lid to one of the two large underground rainwater storage tanks that collect the rain from a number of the buildings at the cottages and is used to supply the Washing Machines for the laundry at Tory Bush. From this it can be gathered that we have strong enviromental principles at Tory Bush but more of that in future blogs.

The final thing to note in the photo and perhaps a little mundane is that the garden contains 3 clothes lines, well now it doesn't, it just has one. Originally the grounds at the cottages were quite open with little defined boundaries, but we recognised that as a weakness, people seemed to prefer there own space so over time we built walls, planted hedges, put on gates etc., to such an extent that people were hesitant to enter this garden to use the clothes lines. We have had to give each house it's own line. The initial thinking was that we did not want clothes lines spoiling the overall look of the place so they were placed out of view in this garden, but the same cause that gave rise to the requirement for individual clothes lines also provided the solution. The hedge and tree planting we used to give individual house privacy also provided secluded corners were the individual clothes lines could be located.

So now from the roadside critical view of the cottages the clothes lines are quite obscured.

Hope that last bit not boring, but it typifies a lot of the thinking we put into our actions at the cottages.

2008-11-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

Today has been eventful, apart from Barack Obama becoming the 44th President of America this is the first day of the Tory Bush Blog.

Blogging has been recommended by our web-site designer Andrew Kane of Ardnet as a good means of letting people know about the every day events at Tory Bush. These 'people' could be past guests, prospective guests or people who just come across the blog as a consequence of a 'Google', or similar, search.

In case you are one of the latter I should explain that Tory Bush are a group of self-catering holiday cottages located in one of the most scenic parts of Northern Ireland, over looking the Mourne Mountains, there is more info on our website www.torybush.com .

The Mourne Mountains are a small range of Mountains no more than 12 miles long with the highest peak Slieve Donard only 849 metres high, about 2785 feet, and made world famous by the song 'The Mountains of Mourne' written by Irish song-writer Percy French. This song is still bing recorded by singers today and one of the most famous versions was by Don Mclean (of American Pie fame) in 1974. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mountains_of_Mourne

A good site to learn more about this area is www.mournelive.com
I hope you have enjoyed this first blog

David

News from Tory Bush

Rude rude owner.

Reviews on Tripadvisor.

The Irish Diaspora

Fairy Thorns

Mourne Mountains, a great description. As promised, here is that description of the Mournes, if you can forgive the initial spelling mistake.

Mourn Mountains

How others see us.

Turn any Stone

"Leave as found", puppy dogs and babies.

Snow in September

Keeping up to date

Eco-Tourism

Rules and Regulations

Blogging from a Blackberry

Sticking to the point.

Let it Snow

Amazingly Dry Weather

Electric Brae

Sky Rocket

Fact Finding

A quiet time of year

More About Bryansford

Always Something new at Tory Bush

Blog with a photo