QP4Me
New Member
- Messages
- 439
Hi all,
Just home to the west coast of Ireland, from my annual holidays, 6 days is an enormous extravagance in my world, yes, being self-employed is great, until it comes to taking time off!
While I have travelled to the UK many times on business, I, like many other Irish people, never really consider the UK as a holiday destination, the reasons for this are manifold and mostly historic. As a small example of the 'Anti-Brit' training' we used to undergo in school, would be radical Catholic Christian Brothers bringing into classes items, such as Rubber Bullets, CS Gas cannisters, bloodied items of clothing and letters from IRA prisoners held in UK jails. While I was indoctrinated into that mind-set while younger, I put it into its rightful context in later years.
I decided to incorporate my visit to AutoShield with a few days touring around, having a look at the UK as a tourist, and it was a eye opener. While I was mostly visiting tourist areas, it left me with a really positive feeling about what I saw and who I met. I am glad that staff in hotels, stately piles and other destinations are mostly, 'natives', as one of the biggest complains visitors voice here in the ROI , is about the almost exclusive employment of foreign nationals in the above establishments. High on visitors 'wish list', coming to Ireland, is the desire to meet Irish people and we have failed miserably on that score. Almost without exception, every service-provider I met in the UK was polite, helpful and knowledgeable-a real and tangible asset which is a credit to the people involved.
As an example of warm welcomes, while visiting Haddon Hall, in Bakewell, I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Manners, an incredibly nice and delightful man, his family have lived in Haddon Hall for the best part of 800 years, and what a place! Incredible does not do it justice! We travelled on several steam trains, it was a joy to see the delightfully eccentric 'steam train enthusiasts' taking photos and jotting down the various engine details that are a seemingly secret code amongst their ilk!
On the subject of roads, its a mixed report. While I positively got giddy on a stream of Bentleys, Maserati's and various exotica, the road manners of some others leave a lot to be desired. The driving standards, particularly on Motorways, seems to have suffered in recent years. Last minute 'diving' into the Outside Lane, no indicators or effort to speed up to a reasonable speed, hogging the Outside Lane, oblivious to anyone else, seems to be a real problem and made me, a very confident driver, slightly edgy. On the positive side, there seems to a genuine appreciation of nice cars (unlike here, where you are viewed with great suspicion!), and I indulged in a number of competitive dashes with others, on one memorable occasion with a Bentley, MB an Audi and a Focus ST. Embarrassingly enough, the Ford, while we were all held up by a lesser mortal in the outside lane, undertook us all and disappeared in the distance, but it was refreshing meeting these guys who were up for a bit of fun and who could obviously handle their cars.
There were very few downsides to our trip, one being the squalor of some of the working class areas we passed through, I presume this is the kind of well that people like Jeremy Kyle pluck their living from. Prices, in general, seem to have risen to near ROI prices, there were no real bargains to be had as there were in previous days. One of the biggest annoyances to me are the amount of food outlets, everywhere you go. You can't move for people trying to sell you something to eat. While I know it's an important income source of income for venues, I really felt under pressure to eat, eat and eat. Which I did, and now deeply regret....
So thanks once again to Marios and his teams for the great service, as always, delivered with a smile and to the various establishments for the warm welcome.
I will be back!
Just home to the west coast of Ireland, from my annual holidays, 6 days is an enormous extravagance in my world, yes, being self-employed is great, until it comes to taking time off!
While I have travelled to the UK many times on business, I, like many other Irish people, never really consider the UK as a holiday destination, the reasons for this are manifold and mostly historic. As a small example of the 'Anti-Brit' training' we used to undergo in school, would be radical Catholic Christian Brothers bringing into classes items, such as Rubber Bullets, CS Gas cannisters, bloodied items of clothing and letters from IRA prisoners held in UK jails. While I was indoctrinated into that mind-set while younger, I put it into its rightful context in later years.
I decided to incorporate my visit to AutoShield with a few days touring around, having a look at the UK as a tourist, and it was a eye opener. While I was mostly visiting tourist areas, it left me with a really positive feeling about what I saw and who I met. I am glad that staff in hotels, stately piles and other destinations are mostly, 'natives', as one of the biggest complains visitors voice here in the ROI , is about the almost exclusive employment of foreign nationals in the above establishments. High on visitors 'wish list', coming to Ireland, is the desire to meet Irish people and we have failed miserably on that score. Almost without exception, every service-provider I met in the UK was polite, helpful and knowledgeable-a real and tangible asset which is a credit to the people involved.
As an example of warm welcomes, while visiting Haddon Hall, in Bakewell, I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Manners, an incredibly nice and delightful man, his family have lived in Haddon Hall for the best part of 800 years, and what a place! Incredible does not do it justice! We travelled on several steam trains, it was a joy to see the delightfully eccentric 'steam train enthusiasts' taking photos and jotting down the various engine details that are a seemingly secret code amongst their ilk!
On the subject of roads, its a mixed report. While I positively got giddy on a stream of Bentleys, Maserati's and various exotica, the road manners of some others leave a lot to be desired. The driving standards, particularly on Motorways, seems to have suffered in recent years. Last minute 'diving' into the Outside Lane, no indicators or effort to speed up to a reasonable speed, hogging the Outside Lane, oblivious to anyone else, seems to be a real problem and made me, a very confident driver, slightly edgy. On the positive side, there seems to a genuine appreciation of nice cars (unlike here, where you are viewed with great suspicion!), and I indulged in a number of competitive dashes with others, on one memorable occasion with a Bentley, MB an Audi and a Focus ST. Embarrassingly enough, the Ford, while we were all held up by a lesser mortal in the outside lane, undertook us all and disappeared in the distance, but it was refreshing meeting these guys who were up for a bit of fun and who could obviously handle their cars.
There were very few downsides to our trip, one being the squalor of some of the working class areas we passed through, I presume this is the kind of well that people like Jeremy Kyle pluck their living from. Prices, in general, seem to have risen to near ROI prices, there were no real bargains to be had as there were in previous days. One of the biggest annoyances to me are the amount of food outlets, everywhere you go. You can't move for people trying to sell you something to eat. While I know it's an important income source of income for venues, I really felt under pressure to eat, eat and eat. Which I did, and now deeply regret....
So thanks once again to Marios and his teams for the great service, as always, delivered with a smile and to the various establishments for the warm welcome.
I will be back!
