Ireland day 0685. Monday 14 August 2023- Newbridge Relaxation *

Ireland day 0685. Monday 14 August 2023- Newbridge Relaxation

Today’s summary	Drove over to Newbridge for a tour of the house and a relaxing walk round the demesne
Today’s weather	Mostly dry and bright with sunny spells and the odd shower in the evening. Light north westerly wind. Appx 20C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Newbridge wander

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

After last week’s adventures which included a couple of Club walks and visits to three new counties, neither of us felt very much like rushing about today. Instead, we decided to start the day with a leisurely morning catching up with laundry and other domestic chores in the flat.

But once that was out of the way, I made a couple of packed lunches and we took a short drive over to Newbridge House, on the north side of the Broadmeadow estuary. Once there, we booked ourselves onto the 3pm house tour – although we have been round before, it’s a fascinating place and as we are members of the Newbridge and Malahide members’ scheme, it didn’t cost us anything. While we were waiting for the tour to start, we had our sandwiches and looked at some of the odd collection of heritage breeds of animals on the farm. One of the bovines had the most peculiar curved horns and looked a bit like one of the now-extinct aurochsen from which modern domesticated cows are derived.

The tour itself was, I have to say, not one of the best I’ve ever been on, but worthwhile nevertheless. And as we were looking at the ancient relics, workmen were scurrying about and hammering away industriously. The multi-million euro restoration of Newbridge roof and windows is almost complete, so they were putting the finishing touches to some of the woodwork, and busily removing the scaffolding, as we toured. The restoration is scheduled to be completed next month.

Once we the tour had finished, and we had absorbed as much history of the Cobbe family as we could bear in one day, we treated ourselves to a cup of tea and cake in the café, and then took a gentle short walk round the demesne. All-in-all it was a wonderful relaxing day, and the perfect antidote to the last week’s frantic activity.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Cheery looking Alpaca checking us out in the Newbridge Farm	Val connecting with her inner famer self

Bust of the architect James Gibbs, who designed Newbridge House. Despite being Scottish, he did most of his work in England, where he was responsible for the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square London and the Senate House in Cambridge. He never set foot in Ireland	Somewhat out of place-looking pseudo-Greek statuary in the hallway between the original 17th century house and the 18th century extension (beyond the door)

This is the downstairs bit of upstairs, downstairs. It’s the semi-subterranean kitchen	Silhouetted cedar tree on our walk back through the demesne

In the “Cabinet of Curiosities” collected by family members over the years. It includes artefacts collected by Captain Cook in his various voyages round the Pacific