Jean Reinhardt's Blog, page 23

Thursday Doors – September 28, 2017

Interesting Thursday Doors on Norm’s blog this week.

Norm 2.0

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing it, between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American easter n time), by using the blue link-up button below. 

Viking Doors – L’Anse Aux Meadows – Newfoundland (part 1)

After we finished the hiking portion of our time in Gros Morne National Park we hit the road and drove up to the tip of Newfoundland’s northern peninsula to the L’Anse-aux-Meadows National Historic site.

A Unesco World Heritage site since 1978, this internationally renowned archaeological site was discovered in 1960 and contains the only confirmed Norse settlement in North America to date.

Sitting at the edge of a meadow on what feels like the ends of the earth, the…

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Thursday Doors – Linlithgow

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The weather has been lovely in this part of Scotland over the past few days, ideal for exploring the area in search of castles, ruins and of course, doors. I featured the ruined palace at Linlithgow a couple of years ago for a Thursday Doors post, where Mary, Queen of Scots was born, as was King James V.

Not much has changed since my last visit. Thankfully, the old palace hasn’t fallen down and the lovely park surrounding it is still beautifully maintained.

Even the swans and other water fowl are still as friendly as ever – especially when food is on offer (although, I don’t think bread is the ideal diet for them).

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My youngest grandchild didn’t seem too impressed and slept through the whole ‘doorscursion’.

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But seeing as she is only a couple of weeks old, who could blame her?

Here’s an interesting door to finish off this post. It’s one my son-in-law took for me, of an old church door in the grounds of an abandoned hospital in Bangor, only a ten minute drive from their home. There’s a lot of history attached to this place and we are hoping to take a trip there soon.

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If you would like to see more Thursday Doors from around the globe, have a look at Norm’s blog and click the blue ‘frog’ link at the bottom of his post. Have a lovely weekend and thanks for stopping by.

 

 

 

 

Thursday Doors – Edinburgh

 

I’m in East Calder, near Edinburgh for a few weeks, which is a great place to find some interesting Thursday Doors to post. Grandchild number five has arrived and I’ve left Mr. R. and The Gaffer to finish off the bathroom renovation. Of course, I’m feeling really guilty holding a sweet little baby instead of a sheet of plasterboard – not.

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After showing me around the area and treating me to a coffee and carrot cake, my grandson brought me to the library to investigate the theory of wormholes and when he walked through the door he spotted one of my books on display and was chuffed. I knew my daughter had left one in with them a couple of years ago, so I wasn’t too surprised to see it there but the librarian asked me to sign it and made me feel like a bit of a celebrity.

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After our visit to the library, we explored the old church and graveyard. It took us a while to find any doors to photograph but there was one, or should I say, the remains of it. Can you spot it in the wall?

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This is the ruins of St. Cuthbert’s Kirk, a 16th-century church which was abandoned in the 1750’s.

Across the road stands a church that was built in 1886, which is still in use today.

No doubt, I’ll be off with my grandson to explore the area again, so I’ll pay another visit to the library and dig up a bit of local history for next week’s Thursday Doors. In the meantime, why not check out Norm’s blog and see what doors are on offer there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing Thursday Doors

We’ve moved! Cavan is now our home county and it’s really lovely here. At present we have no internet, in fact, we don’t even have an electricity supply, yet, but battery operated lamps and candles do a great job for now. However, I can access wifi a couple of times a week, so hopefully I’ll soon be resuming my regular Thursday Door posts – I’ve really missed participating in it.

One of the bonuses of living further north in the country is the fact that we are nearer family and next year we’ll be spending lots of time on the northern and north west coast, especially Donegal. We’ve been there a few times and on our last visit rented a house in Ardara, which featured in a Thursday Doors post, of course.

If you’d like to see Donegal from the air, have a look at Scenic Flyer’s beautiful video, courtesy of Kevin.

There are more fabulous videos on Scenic Flyer’s Facebook page, with a nice bit of history included. Well worth a visit.

Thursday Doors – Red

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Every time we pass this little cottage these red doors jump out at me but it’s not a great place to stop the car and my drive by shots were constantly blurred. On our last trip, Mr. R. found a spot and pulled in so I could run back and take some photographs.

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Nobody lives there but someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make it look quaint. The windows are painted on but the doors and flowers are real.

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The hens are not real!

I took shots from every angle.

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So well done, whoever owns this little cottage, for making it into such an attractive feature on the roadside – it certainly brightens up my journey each time I pass by.

If you would like to see more Thursday Doors, have a look at Norm’s blog, and thanks for stopping by.

Thursday Doors – Flatpack

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An unusual Thursday Doors from me this week – flatpack. We’ve been dismantling a lot of our flatpack furniture and setting it up in the house we are in the process of moving to. The above photo is of the first two of four units I’ll be using for a temporary kitchen, Mr. R. put those together after my botched attempt. Dismantling the shed was a much bigger project, so our grandson gave us a hand with that. Well, he gave his granddad a hand – I stayed at a safe distance from the scarpering spiders. My sister and her husband came to Cavan for the day and were a great help in putting the shed back together. After a while, it was obvious that the men could manage very well by themselves so we went back into the house to assemble the last two kitchen units. Obviously I wasn’t paying enough attention when Mr. R. was putting the first two together.

 

They both fell apart as soon as we tried to move them. I thought I would die from laughing, I’m sure all the neighbours heard us. That was last weekend. Today, Mr. R. assembled them properly and even though I paid close attention, I still don’t know what we did differently. Mind you, The Gaffer wasn’t with me at the time, I’m sure he would have put me right if he’d been there. He’s on strike until we get him a pair of overalls – designer ones! *

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Next week I have the cutest little cottage to show you – and it even has a red door.

Thursday Doors – Fermanagh

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Last year I posted some Thursday Doors from this location but it’s definitely worth a second sharing. Recently we took a short boat trip up/down river (not sure which) and paid another visit to the Crom Estate, in county Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It’s so beautiful there, I can see us making a lot more visits once we move nearer. The Visitor Centre was closed on our last trip so I made sure to include it in this one. Here’s a slide show of what was on display inside.


Click to view slideshow.

Fancy a leisurely trip on the river?

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They knew how to do it in the old days.

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Interesting bit of history about the people who lived at Crom.















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Close to the Old Castle ruins are Crom’s famous Yew Trees. They are a conjoined pair of a male and female English yew, with a combined circumference of 377 feet (115m) and a diameter of 115 feet (35m). The larger, older female yew is of a considerable age, although how old exactly has been the subject of debate for many years. *










The earliest known reference to the tree is from 1739, when it was described as an already venerable tree. The male tree is much younger, and was most likely planted in the 19th-century. The Crom Yews were the only trees in Northern Ireland to be featured on the list of the 50 Greatest British Trees drawn up by the Tree Council to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. * The Gaffer wasn’t too interested in the history, though. He was busy cooling off in the shade beneath the trees.












The whole place is amazing and makes for a very relaxing day out. We didn’t even get as far as Crom Castle. That’s for another Thursday Doorscursion.  

Thursday Doors – Cavan

Last weekend my family had a get together in what is soon to be our new hometown, Belturbet in County Cavan. We rented two houses next door to each other and played crazy golf in the daytime and board games at night and even the dog, aka The Gaffer, enjoyed himself.

Our ages ranged from 84 years to 20 months and some of us even found time for a spot of fishing. This is a view from under the bridge of some of the public mooring in the town, it’s also where the fishing took place.

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Some of us spent a lovely evening in Flynn’s bar, just around the corner (here’s a shot of the beer garden that I took from the back bedroom of the house I stayed in). The pub is celebrating 50 years in business this year and I have to say I like their choice of door colour.

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The house we stayed in had a nice selection of photographs and paintings on its walls, one of which was very appropriate for a Thursday Doors enthusiast.

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Thanks so much for viewing this week’s short and sweet Thursday Doors. Norm’s blog has a link to lots of international doors, if you’d like to see some more.

 

Thursday Doors – Wee House

I know the house we’re renovating is tiny, but this little building is even smaller yet it has more toilets in it. This is the public toilets at Gougane Barra forest park in County Cork.

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A friend sent me this one for Thursday Doors, so a big thank you to Alan Carratt for sharing this cute little thatch with us. It’s definitely a ‘wee’ house in more ways than one.

Speaking of wee houses, I’ve been trying to take a shot of this one on every trip we’ve made to Cavan but there’s nowhere to park and I have to take it from a moving car. This is the best one so far – it was the red doors that caught my eye.

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It’s said that Cavan has 365 lakes – one for each day of the year and from what I’ve seen so far, I believe it. What do you find on rivers and lakes?

Water fowl – lots of them.

And barges – I love barges.

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Here’s a beautiful video of the Gougane Barra Forest Park, shot by AirCam Ireland.

Well, I’ve got to go help Mr. R. dismantle the flat pack furniture. I hope you enjoyed this week’s very random post. Thanks so much for stopping by. Norm’s blog has a link to a great selection of Thursday Doors from around the world. Click on the ‘blue frog’ at the end of his post.

Thursday Doors – A Dog’s View

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Jean is so busy this week I offered to do her Thursday Doors post for her. I doubt she’ll even have time to check it out, as the big move is looming. See that crate behind me in the photo, with it’s door open? Well, that belongs to Alfie. He’s the dog on the right, almost as handsome as myself, and he lives with relatives of my family, so we’re kind of related. He’s just a nipper (in terms of age – not biting ability) so he respects my ten years of wisdom and humour. That’s me in the photo telling him all about the antics of Mr. and Mrs. R.’s DIY efforts. He found it so hysterical, he rolled around the floor laughing. I didn’t think it was that funny, but then again, I am eight years older and a lot more mature.

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We had to wait in Dublin while the youngest member of the family attended a Green Day concert. I didn’t mind, as it gave me a chance to catch up with Alfie. Personally, I would have said it was a ‘grey day’ seeing as it was raining but apparently this was something amazing and well worth the hours spent standing in a muddy field getting squashed, just to be close to the stage, as you can see from her photograph.

Humans, I’ll never fully understand them. But I digress. Back to the DIYers. The next day it was all hands on deck for another bout of renovating. I don’t know why Mr. R. was complaining about me looking over his shoulder while he worked, I was only keeping an expert eye on the job.

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As soon as he left I jumped onto the other chair and had a good look at that doorway he was working on.

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Not bad, but that doesn’t mean I can take my eye off them. I even had an extra person to watch over, the latest recruit to the crew, recovering from her wet but wonderful concert in that muddy field the day before.

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In the end, all that hard work sanding was worth it. You can see through the doorway, how nice the walls turned out when painted and the floor, even with only its first coat of Jacobean Oak stain, doesn’t look too bad either.

During our lunch breaks we often have a game of cards, but of course I usually win, which doesn’t go down too well with the rest of the crew. This is my ‘poker-face’.

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If I’m supposed to be the gaffer, why does everyone complain about me watching them work? This week, they’ve put me in charge of soft furnishing (I think they’re just trying to distract me) and it took me a while to learn how to use the strange contraption they gave me but I got there in the end.

Well, I hope you enjoyed a Thursday Doors post from a dog’s perspective. Speaking of posts, I must take a wee walk and find one. I believe there are a lot more doors to see on Norm’s blog, if you’d like to view them.