The Pheasant on tour!

What a weekend! Dave Smithwick celebrates his fiftieth birthday in a couple of weeks time so he had this daft idea of starting the celebrations early!  A group of a dozen or so of his mates would spend a couple of days on a cultural tour of Kilkenny in Ireland!

He went  over there ten years ago and has always longed to go back to claim his family inheritance - Smithwicks Brewery! So a bleary eyed group of us piled in to a minibus outside the Pheasant last Friday morning at 5.00 am - yes am! It was still dark and I even met our milkman on the drive - first time in seventeen years!

Someone you may know
 - in disguise!

A quick flight from Manchester to Dublin and then a short minibus drive to our first pub for a full fried Irish breakfast! A crate of tins of Guinness was then put on the bus and it was off to Kilkenny. We soon booked in to the Kilkenny River Court Hotel then down to the riverside bar for a couple of pints of Guinness before we set off on a tour of the town. Now I don't intend to go into too much detail because "what goes on tour, stays on tour" as someone once said! But let's just say that the only lengthy interruption to our consumer research of the bars of Kilkenny over the next few days was a two hour long enforced abstinence whilst we went on a conducted tour of the brewery.

Smithwick did take us see the family stately pile whilst we waited for the pubs to open the following morning and I reached the conclusion that this was definitely a place to come back to. Kilkenny is a delightful town and is well worth a visit. What a pity the Town Council's moves to arrange a twinning agreement some years ago came to nothing!

Great Uncle Edmund's little place in Ireland

Then sadly another early morning call yesterday to get back to Dublin airport to catch an early plane back to East Midlands. And so it was that we all sat in the Pheasant again at lunchtime eating beef baps and downing the final pints of Guinness of the holiday. A great weekend!