Lough Hyne
I love little reconnaissance trips, nipping out just to get a taste of the all-shiny-and-new environment. No pressure to see 'everything', because you can always come back; the idea is to tag some worthy-of-further-exploration places.
Lough Ine (which can never be spelled the same way twice - say NO to standardised spelling)* is such a place. The lake is tidal, with an asymmetric cycle: water rises for 4 hours, and falls for more than 8, until the Atlantic gathers enough height & momentum to push up through the narrow Rapids. Wacky.
And Lough Hyne hill is super-cool. Now, after Madeira, anything that doesn't require climbing gear is pretty much okay, but Lough Oighin (though steep) is a doddle - it's got little steps and reinforced paths and signs and even some railings. It starts out as a foresty stroll, with glimpses of fabulous views as you wind your way up. Rowan trees in autumn plumage; blackberries ripening; eat as you go. The crest of the hill is a carpet of heathers and gorse, with phenomenal panoramic views...
And if you recklessly decide to off-road, and climb down through steep spikey gorsey territory (yes, afterwards I looked like I'd been wearing Crown of Thorn legwarmers), you 'come' (read: plummet) through dark woods filled with all kinds o'mushrooms. Which were duly tagged as worthy of further exploration...
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* Although according to the people who validate Irish place names, it should be 'Hyne' in English.
Lough Ine (which can never be spelled the same way twice - say NO to standardised spelling)* is such a place. The lake is tidal, with an asymmetric cycle: water rises for 4 hours, and falls for more than 8, until the Atlantic gathers enough height & momentum to push up through the narrow Rapids. Wacky.
And Lough Hyne hill is super-cool. Now, after Madeira, anything that doesn't require climbing gear is pretty much okay, but Lough Oighin (though steep) is a doddle - it's got little steps and reinforced paths and signs and even some railings. It starts out as a foresty stroll, with glimpses of fabulous views as you wind your way up. Rowan trees in autumn plumage; blackberries ripening; eat as you go. The crest of the hill is a carpet of heathers and gorse, with phenomenal panoramic views...
And if you recklessly decide to off-road, and climb down through steep spikey gorsey territory (yes, afterwards I looked like I'd been wearing Crown of Thorn legwarmers), you 'come' (read: plummet) through dark woods filled with all kinds o'mushrooms. Which were duly tagged as worthy of further exploration...
____
* Although according to the people who validate Irish place names, it should be 'Hyne' in English.
1. Get gaiters for descending through gorse.
2. If you want to make money from adwords lose all those spastic sidebar widgets,nobody cares and put the adwords there instead, that way your reads won't think your blog is an adword honeypot. Adword honeypots always put their ads at the top.
3. Your top banner is top big. Even on my big 17" iMac I have to scroll to read your topline entry. Shrink that banner young lady. Especially as its a bunch of brown shite.
4. Lose all the buttons inviting link juice (delicious, stumbles, etc) it just looks desperate and needy. Its more noise stopping people commenting.
4. Skip the captcha crap for comments and let akismet do the work
5. make trackbacks the topline for comments is bent. Get a better theme that doesn't do this.
6. Put the sidebars on the right. Thats where people's mices are in general.
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So much wisdom...
See, what this says to me is: dump quickblog app. It is unwieldy; really erratic in terms of updating photos/links; I can't add my own html which drives me crazy; there's no preview pane; and the formatting options are cruddy. I like that it links with facebook in theory, but again, haphazard updating over there.
I had thought having the site & blog through godaddy might streamline the process, but no. Yesterday I had idled around Blogger, and started setting up another version over there. An ad-free, neater blog, that goes smooth and by the numbers, with sidebars on the right, in accordance with all good logic...
So in brief: Sir! Yes, Sir! I shall get to work!
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