taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

So, Nelson is apparently contemplating a trip to Ireland, and was looking for tips. Since he’s not the first to ask, I thought I’d do some research among my friends on things to do and good places to stay and eat in our native country. Here’s the result.

First off — it’s worth noting that we’re all thirty-somethings, so backpacker stuff and heavy boozing is no longer on the menu. If you’re after that, though, head for Temple Bar in Dublin ;) This is mainly nice hotels, good food, and interesting things to look at.

To start with, I’d recommend driving as a means of getting around. Lots of the good stuff can’t be reached any other way, and the roads are generally pretty good nowadays (if a little narrow).

Prepare for rain.

Things to do: Connemara and Kerry are stunning; in my opinion, they’re unmissable, if you’re coming to Ireland in search of natural beauty. Clare and West Cork are pretty good too. Generally, the west coast is the place to go.

A friend recommends the Skelligs: ‘the best thing I’ve seen in Ireland. If its sunny. If its raining it sucks so don’t go.’ (I’ve never been — appalling, given that my great-grandfather wrote one of the definitive works on them, I need to fix that.)

Stuff to avoid: Dublin’s not too hot, unfortunately. Over-priced and hard to get around due to traffic. I mean, it’s quite nice, especially to live in, but as a tourist destination compared to other cities around the world I don’t quite get the attractiveness. Also, the south-east corner of the country, while full of nice friendly people, is exorbitantly expensive in my experience (even pricier than Dublin!), short on good stuff to see, and a bit of a washout, so I say skip it. (I have no idea why it’s so expensive, BTW. my theory is that it’s a traditional in-country holiday venue for Dubliners, and the Wexford inhabitants love to fleece us, so we got fleeced. whatever.)

In general, I’d say the larger towns aren’t too exciting; stick to the country.

The Lonely Planet guide to Ireland, while frequently backpacker-oriented, is pretty good for non-backpacker stuff as well. If you’re driving around, it’s a good source of offbeat stuff to check out. I used it a lot when driving around Connemara last year. They also do a great book of hikes which I can recommend.

Next, places to stay… that friend again: ‘if you’re doing the Ring of Kerry, I strongly recommend diverting to Valentia and staying in Glanleam House (beautiful grub, beautiful gardens, cheap) and doing a day trip from there to the Skelligs.’

Temple House in Sligo also comes recommended: ‘a classical Georgian mansion set in an estate of 1,000 acres, overlooking a 13th century lakeside castle of the Knights Templar.’

There are lots of useless hotel/B&B sites in Google, making it hard to tell crap from quality. But these sites come recommended:

• Ireland’s Blue Book – ‘luxury accommodation in Irish Country House Hotels, Manor Houses and Castles. Also listed are Ireland’s finest gourmet restaurants.’ This is high-end stuff, but it’s pretty reliable, as far as I can see.

• Friendly Homes of Ireland - another friend says ‘aka crazy houses of Ireland — terrible webpage, but good accommodation (its also a more attractive guide). We stayed here and loved it.’

• Hidden Ireland – ‘a unique collection of historic private houses which provide the very best and most stylish country house accommodation available in Ireland – great Irish hospitality at an affordable price. Our houses are not hotels and are very much more than ordinary guesthouses. They all offer a rare opportunity to experience the lifestyle of a bygone age – a special and fascinating alternative to conventional tourist accommodation.’

• Irish Landmark Trust, if you’re interested in self-catering stays at heritage houses.

• Georgina Campbell guidebooks are apparently quite good.

Finally, scams and rip-offs are few and far between, so that’s not something to worry about. Crappy service and mediocre food, however, is more likely to be the source of problems. At least you can now get decent espresso pretty much everywhere!

Hope that helps someone ;) Got tips of your own? Feel free to add comments!

Tags: connemara, holidays, hotels, ireland, kerry, tourism, tourist, vacation

Taken last week in Aigufreda on the Costa Brava, Catalunya, Spain.

Tags: aiguafreda, beach, catalunya, flickr, holidays, pictures, sea, spain, vacation

Quick note — I’m off on vacation next week — so I probably won’t read any email while I’m there ;) Talk to you after the 17th.

Tags: fun, holidays, life, meta, vacation

Well, I’m back… it appears that Google Maps link I posted wasn’t too much use in deciphering where I was going; sorry about that. Myself and C spent a fun week and a bit, driving up to Kings Canyon and Yosemite, backpacking around for a few days, then driving back down via the 395 via Bishop, Mammoth Lakes, Lone Pine and so on.

Kings Canyon: Unfortunately, not so much fun; we had the bad luck of encountering what must be the tail end of the mosquito season, and spent most of our 2 days there running up and down the Woods Creek trail without a break, entirely surrounded by clouds of mozzies. Possibly this headlong dashing explains how we ran into so much other wildlife — including a (harmless) California Mountain King Snake and, less enjoyably — and despite wearing bear bells on our packs to avoid this – a black bear…

We rounded a corner on the trail, and there it was, munching on elderberries. Once we all spotted each other, there were some audible sounds of surprise from both bear and humans, and the bear ran off in the opposite direction; the humans, however, did not. We were about 500 feet from our camp for the night, so we needed to get past where the bear had been, or face a long walk back.

Despite some fear (hey, this was our first bear encounter!), we stuck around, shouted, waved things, and took the various actions you take. It all went smoothly, the bear had probably long since departed, but we took it slow regardless, and had a very jittery night in our tent afterwards. After that, and the unceasing mozzie onslaught, we were in little hurry to carry on around the planned loop, so we cut short our Kings Canyon trip by a day and just returned down the trail to its base.

Yosemite: a much more successful trip. There were many reasons, primarily that the mosquito population was much, much lower, and discovering that the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge – comfortable tent cabins, excellent food, and fantastic company — provided a truly excellent base camp.

But I’d have to say that the incredible beauty of Tuolumne Meadows and the Vogelsang Pass really blew me away. I don’t think I’ve seen any landscape quite like that, since trekking to Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal. I’m with John Muir — Yosemite and its surrounds are a wonder of the world.

Lee Vining: had to pick up a sarnie at the world-famous Whoa Nellie Deli. Yum! After all the camping, we stayed in a hotel with TV, got some washing done, and watched scenes from a J.G. Ballard novel play out on NBC and CNN. Mind-boggling.

Mammoth Lakes: A quick kvetch. Mammoth is possibly the most pedestrian-hostile town I’ve ever visited. They have a hilarious section of 100 feet of sidewalk, where I encountered a fellow pedestrian using those ski-pole-style hiking walking sticks, and entirely in seriousness. Was the concept of walking so foreign in that town that long-distance walking accessories were required? I don’t know, but it didn’t make up for the other 90% of the streets where peds were shoved off onto the shoulder, in full-on ’sidewalk users aren’t welcome here’ Orange County style.

On top of that, the single pedestrian crossing in the main street spans five lanes of traffic, with no lighting, warning signs, or indeed any effective way for drivers to know whether peds were crossing or not. Unsurprisingly we nearly got run over when we tried using the damn thing. Best avoided.

I’m amazed — it’s like they designed the town to be ped-hostile. Surely allowing peds to get around your town is a bonus when you’re a ski resort for half of the year? Meh.

Anyway, back again, a little refreshed. Once more into the fray…

Tags: backpacking, bears, california, camping, fun, hiking, kings-canyon, lee-vining, mammoth-lakes, national-parks, tuolomne-meadows, vacation, wildlife, yosemite

Vacation: We’re back. Well, technically, my body is back, but the silver thread is reeling in somewhere over Greenland. So I’m pre-classifying my mail and looking for urgent stuff with my eyes glazing over instead of doing anything more useful.

Scams: Interesting Wired News article: ‘Cyber-blackmail artists are shaking down office workers, threatening to delete computer files or install pornographic images on their work PCs unless they pay a ransom’. ‘The e-mail typically contains a demand that unless a small fee is paid … they will attack the PC … or download onto the machine images of child pornography.’

Of course, it’s simply spammed out, and they phish in anyone who is dumb enough to take it seriously and reply. But it does raise an interesting point, which I read about last week in this interview with Pete Townshend:

‘Perhaps Townshend (was) thinking of a case at Southwark Crown Court in 1998, in which the judge made it clear what constituted possession: that you were in possession of child pornography not just if you actively downloaded it, but if it appeared on your computer screen at all.’

So that sounds like, if child-porn images are found on a PC — and it doesn’t matter how they got there — the PC’s owner is liable. So theoretically this could be exploited to cause serious legal difficulties to a UK resident with a lack of computer literacy, or a bad email client that displays images in messages from unknown senders without user approval first. Another bad law.

Funny: Andy Kershaw in North Korea: songs about revolutionary cabbage-growing.

Tags: anything, body, child, computer, mail, pornography, possession, silver, stuff, thread, vacation

Did you know that George W has spent more days of his presidency on vacation than any president in recent history, and is currently in the middle of a month-long extravaganza worthy of a French public sector worker?

Don’t mind me, I’m just jealous and missing Eurohols. (factoid via the SFGate morning fix)

I am speechless yet again.

Malware: The SOBIG.F deluge continues. No, not the virus itself; the various AV scanners around the world, telling me that some machine on the internet forged a message with my address. Accordingly, here’s a set of SpamAssassin rules to catch them; write a procmail rule to detect that in the resulting X-Spam-Status header and divert.

Tags: eurohols, extravaganza, factoid, history, middle, presidency, president, sector, vacation, worker