Hi all 👋🏻

Today is the day… I finally will reach the COUNTRY I am moving to.
Are you ready to join me on this next part of my journey? 😊
Get comfortable, get something to drink and a nibble so you are all set for this update ☕️🍫

With this post in our lovely #community this Friday I join in at #MarketFriday by @dswigle - Denise.

‼️If you want to know more about #MarketFriday’s have a look at the community about it: Market Friday community! run by the lovely @dswigle and her last post: Market Friday... Lavender Fields, Forever where you find also the rules what to post if you want to join us. Do join in, it is fun 🤩

Today’s selection will be of 70 photographs
Date: 7 May 2023.
The Photographs in this post are all taken with my iPhone 📱🤓
I will follow the time stamps on them. So it looks like you are experiencing my adventures with me, to 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻 #discover everything what I saw, like the little #details seen through my eyes and the stunning #scenery, #views, #landscape, #seascape and #journey. 😊

If you missed the last updates when I was traveling via ferry from Liverpool to Belfast UK 🇬🇧
You can catch up here: ”LET’S MOVE COUNTRIES WITH A FERRY 🚢 ” Stena Line - Liverpool (Birkenhead) UK 🇬🇧 ~ Market Friday PART 1
and
”🌅 EPIC SUNRISE while moving COUNTRIES with a FERRY 🚢 ” ~ PART 2

So let’s leave Belfast and continue our journey:
As you clearly can see we are still in the UK here while driving through Northern Ireland.

We are driving straight out of #Belfast towards the west.

Not long after we take the inland roads, of course 😉

It is still early in the morning here as our ferry arrived at the port at 6:30am.

Our journey is long and we will be driving for hoursssss 🚗🚗🚗🚗 but I promise we will stop a few times along the way 😉

The landscape around us looks very familiar… lots of plants you find also on the west coast of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

We see beautiful green fields and rolling hills…

Country lanes with trees grown over…

After driving for a few hours it is now 9:30am in the morning and we decide it’s time to stretch our legs.
We find this island and see fisherman along the road.

We find a parking and stop… (no that’s not our car parked there… a bit further was a parking spot for at least 5 cars)

The views are stunning…

The area we are in is at Lower Lough Erne and we just driven over Boa Island.

Let’s walk around a bit… we are looking at the right of the lake.

Still #cloudy this early in the #morning.

On the other side of the road we see this view with a few #fisherman fishing 🎣

After we stretched our legs it is time to drive a bit further. Let’s go… and continue our journey 😎

We drive past a few more loughs/ lakes.

On the small country lanes it is sometimes hard to pass by tractors 🚜

I missed capturing these gates and tried quickly to take a photo aiming backwards… they looked pretty cool, but sometimes one is to late to take a photo while driving hehehe 🤭

We pass by villages and see some barns, this one is pretty filled with firewood 🪵

As I know where we are following the map 🗺️ we reach this little town.

I had set a route to follow and marked in my head the spot were we CROSS THE BORDER BETWEEN COUNTRIES : going over the bridge in Belleek.

So here we are driving in the town of Belleek that’s still in the UNITED KINGDOM 🇬🇧 it’s 10:01am now.

Some cool little local shops around here.

In the distance I see the bridge 😎

Getting closer by… to finally cross countries 😁

And we are almost over the border… 🚗🚗

It’s official: WE ENTERED IRELAND 🇮🇪 🎉🎉 wooohhhoooo

Couldn’t resist to add this photo I took on the ferry 😉

To bad there was not a sign that said “WELCOME TO IRELAND” 🇮🇪
I guess there are signs at other crossings for sure. Just the border we crossed was a route that most wouldn’t take 😉
When I cross somewhere in the near future and see such a sign. I will take some photos of it 📸📸

So here we see some directional signs… what way would we go… hhhmmm let’s go right ➡️

Some interesting things will happen in the next photos… look at the lines on the road… for starter.

The white lines on the edge of the road changes to yellow lines on the edge of the roads. This is typical in #Ireland 🇮🇪 as in the UK they are white. What I have seen while I lived 4 months in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

And… we drive now Km/h instead of Miles/hour hahaha 🤣 what I mean by this:
The United Kingdom 🇬🇧 has the road signs in Miles and here in Ireland 🇮🇪 the road signs are KM/H.
So there is a switch you need to be aware of.
Our car is in Miles… so I needed to calculate what speed I needed to drive 🤓 (and no I can not change that setting)

For me, thinking in Km/h is no problem as I always lived in a country that measured in Km. So it’s back to normal for me. The only thing that is NOT BACK TO NORMAL. They also drive on the WRONG side 😳 just like the UK… and no… I am not used to it YET hahaha 🤣 I keep practising until my head switches this easily.

So as the journey is still longggg let’s continue our drive. We reached my country of residence now… but we still have to drive to the rental house. 🏡

The views along the way are stunning… 🤩

We are close to Sligo now and I am looking on the map 🗺️ to see where we could go for lunch 🥗

I found something… let’s head there.
We see mountains in the distance, they are mesmerising 😊

We are still following the signs to Sligo here.

For the reader… and viewer… that knows Ireland: yes we are following also the signs for the WILD ATLANTIC WAY and we go south. If you don’t know it, have a look into it 🥰

The fields, #river, #cows 🐄 and #mountains are just picture perfect.

On our journey we cross many county’s 🤓

Again the WILD ATLANTIC WAY sign… 🪧

The flowing roads, as you can see the sky is getting brighter. What a wonderful welcome 🤗

Look at this mountain 😎 it’s a table top mountain.

We are carrying on with the journey… are you still with me? 😊
Let’s sip some more coffee… what nibbles did you bring?

Just a little bit longer, maybe we need a quick stretch of our legs…
I think we like the sound of that.

I search for a stop along the way… but I don’t loose the mountains out of my sight. They are stunning 🤩

We reached a town just before Sligo we go through…

And we parked the car 🚗 finally… we so needed to stretch our legs again.
I brought us to a lovely space along the river Garvoge. What runs towards Sligo Bay and Lough Gill the other way.

On the parking spot we see this statue:

The views around, do you see the shoes on the pier?

People just went out kayaking 🛶🛶🛶

Such a lovely spot.

Little islands in the middle and nets for playing games on the water. Stalled for the winter months. I guess soon they will be in use again.

We see a few ducks around, this one is resting in the grass…

Between all the little flowers 🌸

They seem pretty used to people and stay calm. I am careful not to scare them away, let them rest 🦆🦆🦆

Walking along the path…

I think to myself, I sure would like to return here and follow the paths all the way. Today we don’t have time to do so…

Let’s walk back to the car and go to the location I have chosen for some lunch.

We drive through a part of Sligo city.

We see across the roads this #streetart/ a #mural… click a quick capture 😎

Driving out of Sligo it looks so pretty… so many shades of green 💚💚💚💚

On a roundabout I see a #classic #VW #camper #van, I just captured the front and zooofffff he was gone. As you know, I love all classic cars 😎 and had many…

We reach the area I chose to go to. Let me show you around STRANDHILL BEACH 🏖️

We walk along the waterfront and next to us we see the famous Sligo mountain. In front we see a golf course ⛳️🏌🏻

The beach looks stunning and the water calm 🌊

People are enjoying this beautiful day out… it is Sunday around lunch time.

The sun is doing her best to show us some warmth ☀️ There are dunes and the grasses are flowing in the wind 🌬️

Our view in the back looking towards the parking area we came from.

We peek 🫣 over the dunes to see the golf course

But… let’s go for some food now. We are all hungry from this long journey.
We enter SHELLS. Their menu:

Their website you find here: Shells Cafe
Location is on the sea front in Strandhill, County Sligo in Ireland 🇮🇪

Looking up from our table I see the following text written on the plexiglass:
”HAPPINESS
IS A MOOD
POSITIVITY
IS A WAY OF LIFE”

Our orders:
The Simple

Avo Toast for me of course 😊

I think we are ready after this nice lunch to go further with our long journey… 🚗🚗

Because we haven’t reached our rental yet and the area we are heading for I decided not to make this post toooooo long… and stop for today 😉

After lunch walking to the car I spot these #stickers

…and here I say “that’s all for today’s post my friends” We have a long journey ahead of us…. And some #crazy updates to come… So join me for more #updates, #adventures, #stories and #photographs soon 😎👋🏻 Even some #artworks once in a while will come by” 🎨
Thank you so much for looking, and reading.

#ecency banner by @irisworld

Any questions or comments, let me know. Always happy to help.

Have a great #marketfriday all 😎
Grtz Jackie

first photo taken by hubby

The divider by SilverFish / mondoshawan

Unless stated otherwise: All art and photos used in my posts are taken, created and owned by me. If you wish to use any of my photographs, please contact me first. As I have used some commercially myself. We don’t want that you or somebody else gets into trouble 😉 So please don’t use them without my consent.

🖼 My PRINTSHOP: for the purchase of all kind of prints in many sizes from my Artworks 🎨 and Photography 📸 Which come on different objects too. Have a look in My Prints Shop!

If you want to see where I traveled to and what I already shared in @pinmapple, have a look at my personal map here: Littlebee4 PINMAPPLE MAP

#ecency image by @brittandjosie