Sunday 4 September 2011

County Roscommon Day Trip

A big big day for the humans yesterday as they make a day trip to Co.Roscommon so that Mum can see the possible new house for herself, already seen by Dad and JM and Mrs Silverwood. We have deliberately not put any pictures up of it yet because we don't want to tempt fate. Time enough for gazillions of pictures to satisfy your curiosity once we have confirmed our own sale and then got to the 'subject to contract' stage on this one. For now you will just have to know that it is a 2 storey one-time farm house near Castlerea in Co.Roscommon which, if you check your maps, you will find is a county about 2/3 of the way up Ireland and over on the left (but not as far as the west coast).

That puts it about 2 hours drive from Dublin but very near the smaller airport at Knock. It is, to the despair of Mrs Silverwood, a bit of a distance from her bit of Ireland but much closer to the Silverwoods than Kent, where we are at present.

So the plan for Mum to be taken to see the house was hatched, the trusted Kentish builder John Panini (who knocked through our kitchen and dining room (see "The Panini Rooms" of earlier posts, Noember 2009-ish) was engaged to go too on the adventure and cast his professional eye over the property and even Mum's brother (a sparkie) was named as a possible fellow traveller and inspector of electrics. We dogs are being left behind this time, in the tender mercies of the Angel B. The alarms were set to 04:00 and we all took an early night.

In the event John Panini failed to show and could not be roused with phone calls and texts - he'd over slept the alarm, so Mum and Dad had to leave without him. They were very close to the check-in time limit and got a very apologetic phone call from John as they arrived at Gatwick. No word either from Brother who is, at least, already in Dublin so the guys are on their own. In fact, neither Mrs S nor Dad's neice 'Mads' will respond to text either. Is this a conspiracy?

They fly out at 07:00, land at 8, collect the hire car (a Quaskai - spelling?) from Hertz and hit the road (M50 round Dub, then M4 and M6 westwards for the 2 and a half hour run. They meet the estate agent on site and get their look round. Mum falls in love with the place even though it needs a lot of work especially in the woodworm and damp department. They go round all the rooms several times each, pulling up carpets and lino in some, poking and prodding, even moving a stand-alone wardrobe in one place and discovering a fireplace behind it full of sticks, jackdaw-nest stylee. They are happy. They talk to the estate agent and agree to be back in touch.

They adjourn to the nearby size-able agricultural market town of Castlerea where they find a pub called the Golden Eagle Bar and Restaurant where Mum has the chicken but Dad goes for "Bacon and Cabbage" with a very good pint of Guinness. The portions are to suit farmers on a day at the cattle market. This place could become a family tradition.

Job done, they head home via a call in at Steak Lady's, a 20:30 flight back to Gatwick and they are back indoors here by 23:00. Exhausted but quite up-beat about the house. Now it's all in the lap of the Gods, or at least the lap of the Estate agents and solicitors who are slowly grinding our sale through from 'Sold subject to contract' to something a bit more definite (please!). The rest of Project Erroll is now all hanging on that.

Deefs

1 comment:

Mr Silverwood said...

Mrs S phone was unloved and uncharged on the side all day yesterday, should of tried me, nearly always have my phone on, sounds like you did enjoy it though, even if it was a long day.