Today it is a short blast up the motorway from Barmeath to Gormanston. It’s about twenty miles if you don’t mind paying the toll (my brother does). This was not the case in the 19th century.
If I had a thousand bucks for every time I have been told or, more usually, read that stock-picking is a mugs’ game and a low cost tracker fund will, in the long run outperform stock picking.
After my ancestor, Patrick Bellew, was created Baron Bellew in the Peerage of Ireland in 1848 only three more Irish Peerages were handed out. That doesn’t sound quite right, but you know what I mean; namely Lord Fermoy (1865), Lord Rathdonnell and the Duke of Abercorn (both 1868).
Only one’s closest friends welcome Bertie as an overnight guest. This is his fourth time away, and two of the previous stays were in France. So far, it has gone well.
“It rained on Coronation Day in 1953, but nothing like so badly as at the previous coronation in 1937 when it came down like the best of British stair-rods just after the ceremonies in the Abbey had ended and when people were trying to get home.
If you looked in my wallet thirty years ago you would have found lists. PG Wodehouses and Pevsners, Lloyd’s syndicates and books by other authors – perhaps Dornford Yates and Leslie Charteris – a compulsion inherited from Uncle George.
In a week Bertie will have his eighteenth birthday, in months. It’s hard to choose presents for humans let alone a beagle but I hope he will be pleased with my gift.
As you are on a virtual tour we can start in the walled garden. My brother started by restoring the walls which had become overgrown with ivy and overhanging boughs. Then he set to work on the garden – a jungle where he kept his release pens.