Notes Of An Uninteresting Event

Listening to the Fontaines D.C. song “A Hero’s Death” the other day, and this line from the lyrics, “Tell your mother that you love her,” made me reflect on how infrequently, or even how rarely, I would say “I love you” to my mum. In that moment, while sitting at work, I couldn’t understand why I had not ended every call or visit over the years with those three words. That has been one of a million things on my mind after my mum had her first treatment last week, with two more sessions in the next few weeks, followed by surgery in the summer.

I have been calling her more frequently to see how she is feeling, visiting her at home, and now every time I make sure when I leave or hang up the phone, that I say “I love you” because I want her to know how much I do.

Tell your mother that you love her ❤️

There has not been a lot of movement in our surrogacy journey in the last six months. Although, since early March, we now have embryos and it was great to feel we were making progress. But it was short lived after we received the final count following the PGS or genetic testing we had done on them. My husband and I have needed to console each other, and on top of this, we have yet to find a surrogate to support us. Things feel like they are going nowhere, and it’s tiresome to stay positive whilst simultaneously trying to will the universe into giving us a break. I just wish the wind would pick up soon and take us away from this place.

My go-to confectioneries are a purple Snack, a package of BBQ Beef Hula Hoops, and a bottle of Tanora. I’d happily buy all if I’m passing a shop or purposefully pop to get them if the universe is throwing a few too many lemons my way. They have been my second, third, and fourth place comfort food, behind toast, since I was a teenager. From nibbling off the chocolate along the edge of a Snack, to popping a Hula Hoop on each finger or trying to chug a bottle of Tanora, only for it to come out my nose.

I have to say, I do love them and need the comfort more lately.

Mum ❤️

Last December marked the tenth year that I began posting on VSCO, a photo and video sharing website. It’s something I am extremely proud of and flicking through the six hundred plus photos I’ve posted I love seeing my progression as a photographer over the years. From getting a Hanimex 35KAF point and shoot camera before a trip to Boston with my grandparents in 1992, to buying a Leica M6 rangefinder recently as my film camera and using my iPhone everyday to take photos, I cannot wait to see what images I make in the years to come.

VSCO

Lately, I’ve enjoyed brewing filter coffee with a Hario V60 using beans from Imbibe, a roaster from Dublin that I love. The fruity and chocolaty tones are just wonderful in the morning, whether made at home or in the office. My go-to for years though had been an oat milk flat white from either my favorite coffee place Filter or from my Sage Bambino Plus espresso machine, a purchase made during lockdown. My journey with coffee, if you want to call it that, didn’t begin until my late twenties when I would drink caffè mochas, the chocolate helping mask the bitter and burnt taste, from places like Gloria Jeans, Insomnia, and Cork Coffee Roasters. As many coffee shops opened in Cork, and the various roasters popping up too over the years, there is an amazing coffee culture happening. The small coffee shops, local roasters, stalls at farmers markets, and horse boxes at the side of the road or at the beach are all at such a high quality and have enabled me to try so many different roasts. At least these days, there’s so much choice even my dad, who I will always remember cracking the paper seal on a fresh jar of Maxwell House on mornings before school to make his morning cup, has advanced to high-quality freshly ground filtered coffee.

I have not been taking photos much lately, partly due to the kids, the house, and the winter weather. Spending the darker evenings indoors in front of the fire with a Netflix show in the background, I came across the Voigtlander Nokton Classic MC 40mm f/1.4 lens for sale on MPB. I had been considering a change from the 35mm 7artisans f2 lens that I have on my M6, thinking I might want a 28mm lens because I watch a lot of street photographers on YouTube. However, I found that I prefer a tighter frame-line. Many of my shots taken on my iPhone use the 48mm equivalent lens, so I’m going to try the Voigtlander as it’s much more compact than the 7artisans lens. The weather is getting brighter as we head into spring and I’ll see how the images turn out when I get to try it.

We have an egg donor!

Back in November, a wonderful woman reached out through our agency after hearing about our bad luck in finding a donor. She expressed her desire to help. It had been an arduous journey over the past year since we started in January 2023. We had three failed attempts to secure a donor and had to say goodbye to our surrogate back in September. It was wonderful to hear that someone wanted to assist us in moving forward. After signing the legal contracts, following her medical clearance and genetic tests, our clinic informed us that she was ready to begin the hormone injections right away (this was last week). This meant she would be able to donate in about 10 days!

We had gone from months of nothing but bad news to this, along with getting a sale agreed on our house. So, we are elated. I’ve put my pragmatic hat back on until I have the keys to the house and a baby in front of me. ^^

We, my husband and I, live in a small mid terrace house in the centre of a city and it’s been great place for various reasons - no need to own a car, great amenities, entertainment, etc. Though with our future additions coming along (I’ve heard they come with a swathe of add-on’s from buggies to bed’s and toys to nappies) we knew at some stage the need to move to a bigger place. Flicking through Daft and MyHome was a nightly ritual, and whenever we would pop out to see my parents on the weekends, I’d retrieve the Irish Examiner Property paper from the recycling bin to try and find our future family home. As an outline plan we told each other we would have the first kid, then the second kid, still living in our teeny tiny city centre home and after everything had settled we would buy a bigger house. We save a high portion of our income so our ‘baby, baby, house’ approach was very practical in terms of being able to afford a deposit in the intervening years of our kids being born.

Last winter, as our journey to start a family trudged along and during an evening of us sending each other WhatsApp messages with links to houses for sale in West Cork as we watched Netflix, we found one. Our search criteria was determined by himself having always wanted a garden because our current one didn’t have one and my love West Cork, specifically around Clonakility. The house ticked all of those boxes and very much piqued both our interests. We had developed a pragmatic outlook on everything since our surrogacy journey had fumbled a bit so didn’t think we would buy it and organised to drive down to take a look anyways.

‘Fuck!’ I kept saying to myself as we walked around the area where the house was located and he kept coy but I could tell her liked it too. A modern house, built in early 2000’s, unfinished inside, set on a good bit of land, and adjacent to a river. Oh, and it’s 10 minutes from Clonakility and all the beaches we love. I rang the auctioneers to organise a viewing and the receptionist said, ‘Oh Frank’s on leave this week, and viewings will begin next week. I’ll get him to give you a call, whats your details?’ A viewing appointment was booked in for the following Friday at 10AM.

All the way home in the car I kept saying ‘Fuck, fuck, bollix!’ and hoped we would absolutely hate it after our viewing but we didn’t. We only fell in love with it more which they say never to do. I rang our current mortgage provider in earnest to find out if we could get a second mortgage and we could. We put in an offer and after a tense bidding process, we were accepted at just over the asking price. We’re now at the stage between ‘Sale Agreed’ and ‘Sold’ that could take weeks or months but we’re both committed to moving our lives to West Cork. I guess it’s now going to be ‘house, baby, baby’ or ‘house, baby, nothing for ages and then baby’ because we’ve got so much to do! ^^

I feel like there’s been a disturbance in my procrastination force lately, or maybe it’s been happening over the last few years and I’m only paying close attention to it now. Starting a family seems to have a way of focusing the mind to achieve previously unachievable goals in a very short period of time, well for me. For instance, today I applied for a job and I didn’t overthink it! Dusting off a resumé from the last job I applied for in 2015 to help craft an up to date version, tailored to the role I was interested in. A chat with a colleague from the team I’d be applying for and boom, I applied online via the job advertisement. No sweat.

Admittedly, I have been noticing a subtle change over the last few years but it’s when we began our surrogacy journey that I’ve applied myself to drive that whole endeavour forward, and now noticing that I’m not as perturbed with buying a new house, getting a mortgage or applying for a new job. It’s apt that I titled this post as ‘New Manley’ because I’ll be doing that officially too, soon although that decision did take a long time in contrast to the ‘do not overthink’ above relatively quick decisions. Let’s hope I get an interview. (End)

The past few weeks have been arduous, with work getting busier, the winter nights closing in, me not feeling well following a chest infection I had a few weeks ago, and in the background, our surrogacy journey not working out according to our expectations. As recently as last week, we received an email saying that the third egg donor we had matched with decided they did not want to proceed. She had informed the team at our clinic in Toronto that the process was going to be too much after remembering the last donation she had done and how her family was concerned for her well-being. The realisation of how much of a sacrifice this woman, whom we never met or knew, had gone through was really tough. This was on top of us losing our surrogate, an amazing woman we had been talking to all summer, when a test revealed we would not be able to continue on our journey with her. We’ve both, my husband and I, pushed on trying to find a new surrogate and we’re working closely with our case specialist to find another egg donor but it’s unsettling.

I’ve noticed myself drifting, forgoing running (the weather hasn’t helped), not eating as well as I should, and seeing my to-do list, important for a recovering procrastinator, not getting any shorter. My subconscious led me to music, like I’ve always done, to soothe my unsettled mind. In particular, I’ve been listening to Kishi Bishi’s ‘Violin Tsunami’ on repeat, a haunting piece of music that grips the racing heart, yet the words have the ability to soothe*. Although the song’s lyrics are about hard-learned lessons of history and reckoning with America’s past internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, the melody and, in particular, Kaoru’s violin playing which begins slow and crescendos in the middle to a satisfying plateau then settling back down as the singer sings the final few lyrics to reduce my anxiety. The song is uplifting, beautiful, and it gives me goosebumps too, which is what I need when I feel everything is a bit too much. I can think clearly and feel a little more optimistic, especially about our surrogacy journey and talk more openly with my husband, who has been amazing over these last few weeks. I’m sure everything will work out.

When our faith was on the edge

Of the weight of summer days on end

Memories of the setting sunlight

Would tell a different way to be

To be, to be

youtu.be/xlXwpaAVo…

*REVIEW: KISHI BASHI – VIOLIN TSUNAMI via musicvein.co.uk/2019/07/0…

This week, I was reminded of the time I played basketball as a teenager with the rest of my family at the old E.S.B Sportsco on the Curraheen Road, here in Cork. The building is gone now but it was the sports and social club for E.S.B’s Cork based employees, with a main sports hall for indoor games, changing rooms and pool tables downstairs, a bar and function area upstairs and two football pitches outside next to a carpark. Our Dad would bring us kids, myself, my sister and two brother’s there every Friday night during the school year to run around and arriving around half six we’d often have to wait for the men to finish playing indoor soccer before we’d be allowed in. The basketball nets would be winched down into position by hand and in the colder evenings during Winter the hall would be freezing due to the lack of heating, which was no bother since we’d be running around during practice. Boys and girls of all ages, kids of the employee’s and their friends, we’d bring our friends too, would turn up every week and a flurry of activity would always ensue. In the early years, we’re talking the very early nineties it was usually two or three of the dad’s who would be our basketball coaches for the evening getting us to do lay up’s, shooting practice, running, etc. As I got older we had a proper ‘coach’, a guy by the name of Freddie who had played with the Blue Demons team in the eighties, and with a few older kids joining our Friday Night’s, it began to turn into a proper practice. We were doing ‘suicides’ to warm up, drills and everyone would join in a full court game to finish out our 60 minute time slot. It was great!

After every session finished we’d all move upstairs, tired, sweating and go straight for the bar to get a pint of ‘rasa’ along with a package of Tayto crisps, and maybe a KitKat. It was almost a staple to get the same combination of ‘pint of rasa, crips and a chocolate bar’, that I still love the same to this day. Usually there’d be no one in the bar when we’d arrive as a group, so we would spread out sitting at those small bar tables and stools, drinking, talking and eating and maybe watch a game if it was showing on the old CRT TV’s hanging from the ceiling. The Dad’s would come back from cleaning and sorting out the hall to ensure all the kids were well behaved. All of us would stick around and then finish our drinks after which we would bundle ourselves into the car so our Dad would drive us back home. Sometimes we’d pickup a few bags of chips from The Fry in Ballincollig and watch the VHS pre-recorded episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when we got in the door at home. My Friday Nights at the E.S.B Sportsco stopped when I went into fifth year, and I have great memories of that time because of how positive effect it had on my life.

ESB Group - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESB_…

It has been a tough few weeks on our surrogacy journey, and last Thursday, we made a difficult but inevitable decision to end our relationship with our surrogate. We had matched back in May and had been getting to know her, and her partner during the summer. As part of the process she needed to be medically cleared by our clinic before we’d sign any contracts and it took a few weeks before that could begin. Over that time we were brought into her life, and her into ours, so it was the worse feeling ever when one of her test results revealed something serious. It was something she had not known about and wouldn’t of if she’d not begun the journey with us. It felt like a breakup when we said we wouldn’t be able to continue with her and in my heart I felt she wanted us to, after the devastating news she’d learnt about her own health. We’re taking a few days to recover from this but have to move on and hope another woman, our future surrogate, will find us and do the most amazing thing ever, help us start a family.

We’re experiencing some usually hot weather in Ireland this week, for September and I’m conflicted by it. On the one hand we had such a shit summer that I feel we deserve it but on the other hand, it is evident our climate is changing. It was balmy at 6AM each morning when I walked up the hill to work and difficult then to keep our house cool with our living area being upstairs. Today, we drove down to Red Strand and a sea fog hung over the beach. The weather is due to break tomorrow but it was nice to have a few days of delayed summer.

[originally posted on Medium on Jan 13, 2023]

It’s 2023, a new year and one when we begin our journey to start a family through surrogacy and I am so fucking scared. My anxiety has me imaging a humungous mountain ahead that we’ve to climb and all I’m thinking is ‘How the fuck are we going to get to the top of that?’ Last year, we did a fair bit of research to understand how we might want to start a family and surrogacy was what my husband and I settled on as our best (chance) option to realise a shared dream. So naturally, for me, I became obsessed with learning about the surrogacy process, how long it takes and how much it costs (A new house anyone?). There’s going to be up’s and down’s and I’m glad I have someone to support me through it. But I still can’t shake this scary feeling, this anxiety or is it trepidation for what we could have – a child of our own? RM x @greentothebone@mastodon.ie Blogging about a surrogacy journey my husband and I began in 2021.

This past week was ‘I&D Week 2023’ at my workplace. The yearly event held during Pride month showcasing talks, exhibitions and events around Inclusion and Diversity, with a Parade of Culture taking place midweek. There is also a big outdoor party with a musical special guest (this year it was Tom Grennan) and free alcohol. One of the events available to attend is called the ‘Power of Storytelling’, and consists of employees telling their personal stories virtually to people who sign up. I was given the opportunity this year to tell my own personal story, ‘Surrogacy Journey’, a 3000 word essay I wrote chronicling everything my husband and I have done to realise our dream of having our own family. I’d never done anything like it before as it was way outside my comfort but was emboldened to sign up.

A bit of background as to why, is that over the past few months I’d begun reaching out to my company to find out what supports they give to employees who use surrogacy to help start their family. With there being no surrogacy legislation in Ireland, I didn’t expect much but the Assistant Human Reproduction bill 2022 was close to being brought before government so many companies had begun to offer enhanced benefits, including time off that aligned with Maternity and Adoptive Leave. A post on our People (HR) website in October 2022, ‘…. benefits are getting even better in 2023’ offered a generous financial support. That assistance was amazing but those other companies offered 26 weeks paid time off to bond with a child. When I asked the HR Team if they had any plan to offer the same, I was sent a email advising I’d be entitled to six weeks Non-Birth Parent Leave. I wanted to highlight the importance of the journey my husband and I were on, and maybe recognise the need for extended leave.

Determined I began to engage with two advocacy groups, the Pride group and the Parents group, to highlight surrogacy. Many people I’d spoken too were enlightened about the process and the journey someone needs to take to start their family with the help of surrogacy. Along with all the work my husband and I had been doing, getting time off to bond and look after a baby was paramount to us. The ‘Power of Storytelling’ events I attended in 2022 were stories from brave and courageous people who sought solace with an inclusive audience. I’d be doing the same so I wrote an essay with excerpts from stories that I have written over the past couple of months. The story began with us in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and seeing an Irish gay couple with their baby, born via Surrogacy. The middle section was a timeline of events up to the point we travelled to Canada and then finished with us disembarking from our flight in Dublin, and seeing that same couple with their baby meeting their family who were hugging and kissing them at Arrivals area.

Over 120 people signed up to attend my virtual event, over two days where I read the essay aloud and took questions. I absolutely loved it and have received so many well wishes from colleagues and many compliments too on my storytelling ability. It’s important to note that I left out any mention of ‘Surrogacy Leave’ from the essay, since it isn’t legislated for in Irish Law. A person did ask a question if I’d get time off, equivalent to adoptive leave, with me saying no but the hope it will be soon either via a bill being enacted in law or our company stepping up. I felt more comfortable with it being addressed this way then using the event as a soapbox for a political statement.

Time will tell if I can avail of any extended leave but importantly I was able to share our very personal story with so many people. People who may be struggling with starting their own family or know others who are but now know there is hope.

I’d just sat down after buying a package of chocolate pretzels and three small bottles of Canadian Maple syrup from the Relay gift shop across from our gate in Terminal 3, at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. The incoming Aer Lingus flight from Dublin was pulling in after having just landed and an announcement came out over the tannoy from the gate crew calling on young families to get ready to board the plane and I glanced up to see two men with what looked like a baby in a carrier. ‘Harry!’ nudging him, ‘Gay couple with a baby!’ and I gestured with my head in their direction. He looked and said he recognised one of the men who he saw changing a baby on the changing table in the toilet earlier. We said to each other they must be bringing their baby back home after a surrogacy journey here in Canada although we didn’t know this at the time. Still watching them, we saw them take a family photo at the gate before going through and later I would see this photo re-posted on the @irishgaydads Instagram story a few days later.

We’d flown to Toronto earlier in the week to attend an appointment at our fertility clinic on Bay Street, to draw blood and collect our semen samples for analysis and freezing. It was the first tangible event on our surrogacy journey we’d undertaken so we were both excited but also nervous. The previous thirteen weeks had been dominated by email exchanges with four of the five companies we had to deal with, sending money, signing forms, GP appointments to get medically cleared to travel to Canada and more, so this trip felt like the real start to our surrogacy journey. A day after our clinic visit we got the good news from them that everything was ok which was a sigh of relief and meant we could enjoy our stay. I’d been pushing the ‘project’ aggressively when we began at the end of February and with himself working alot too, we were both tired so needed the break.

On top of the earlier update we got some more good news by email from our coordinator at the Surrogacy Agency with the subject ‘Surrogate Wants to MEET YOU!’ It was such a surprise that this women wanted to connect with us so soon because we had only pre-approved her surrogate profile, on our way to Dublin via bus from Cork earlier in the week. We were both so happy with all the good news and hoped to meet her in person but understandably it was too early in the process for that to be organised in time. We would eventually connect later in the week over FB Messenger and a Facetime call to begin to build a relationship.

The rest of our stay was lovely, a day trip via Amtrak train to Niagara Falls was amazing although the area around the falls were not what I had expected and visiting Casa Lomo to see where they’d filmed a scene for the 2010 romantic action comedy, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was a treat. A walk around a Wolfgang Tillmans (photographer) exhibition at AGO, the Art Gallery of Ontario, one evening was a wonderful surprise but the rest of Toronto, though nice, was too much city from what were used to. A doppelgänger stand-in for New York in many America made TV shows and movies, had a few million people living in and around it but sure it wasn’t Cork, like. This had been our first trip out this way, a first to North America for himself, so we missed the opportunity to visit ‘big country’ Canada, the mountains, lakes and forests further inland which we’ll save for a later trip. Anyways, our kids will be half Canadian so we’ll be out this way for the rest of our lives.

Back in the airport, our seat row had been called so we achingly arose from our seats, it had been a long day, to make our way to the gate entrance with our backpacks and passports open on the photo page. All checked and ready to board, we walked down the sky bridge to the awaiting Aer Lingus plane. I was looking ahead of us to see if I could see the couple we saw earlier and there they were in the two window seats, close to our middle aisle seats, with the new born in one of their arms. I whispered with a smile under my mask as I passed them ‘Hello dad’s!’ and gestured to himself to where they were. Throughout the flight we could see people going over to the couple, smiling and the stewards being very attentive to the new family. When landed a few hours later in Dublin we were racing to get our connecting Air Coach bus to Cork but we managed to steal a few minutes to see the moment the new family came through the arrivals gate of terminal two. It looked like a group of people were waiting to welcome someone, it was 6AM so a bit of odd to see anyone at this hour but a screech of joy from someone who looked like an expectant granny was heard as they came through the automatic doors. We stuck around a bit eating some food before our bus journey but it was so wonderful to see this couple at the end of their journey and us hoping to be them this time next year if everything works out — two men and a baby.

Oblivious.

August 28, 2022 – On our wedding anniversary we rented a punt (a long flat bottomed boat) and were gently guided along the river Stour in Canterbury, England. I had taken a number of photos on the day with my iPhone and with my Leica M6. When I eventually did get the roll of Fuji 200 from that day developed, about a week later, I was absolutely blown away by this shot. I remember being lent back in the punt because it is so shallow in depth, that we had to lie back for fear of tipping it into the river and focusing on the far end of the river to get a leading line into my frame. I was completely oblivious to the two people on the riverside, perfectly lit by rays of sunshine and they are completely oblivious to me as they are looking at their phones.

Via VSCO

This photo was taken, on the 20th of December 2019, of John as he was about to take a photo of the entire team at work for Christmas Jumper Day. As he began to direct those present and encourage those arriving late to move in, bunch up, someone began to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and everyone joined in a chorus of song that surprising John on what happened to be his 40th birthday. Everyone clapped and cheered, and a little bit embarrassed, John went right back to directing everyone so he could take the photo. The image above is at the moment where he’d settled the group, they’re all in frame and he’s raising the camera to his eye as everyone smiles back at him. Unfortunately, John passed away the following year, in September 2020 when we were all in lockdown. Due to the restrictions we weren’t able to congregate to mourn his passing at the funeral. Almost two years later, when were allowed back into our office those who knew John began to talk to one another and mourn his passing. A few of us felt there needed to be an epitaph placed in the office, a plaque, or inscription, so I offered up this photo which I had taken. I printed it, put it in a frame and set it on a shelf in a central display area in our office so people could see it and be reminded of him. I didn’t realise the photos significance when I took it but it shows John as we remember him, camera in hand taking a photo and although his back is to us in the image, those who knew him will know it’s him. The people smiling in the photo is us, the ones left behind, who miss him. :(

A cheap flight from Cork is always an opportunity to explore a new country / city and at the beginning of April we went to Carcassonne in Southern France. Well, we’d played the board game of the same name many times, himself more than me and it was a place we both wanted to visit. Getting there was super easy with an early morning bus ride from Evergreen Rd, just a ten minute walk from the house and a fifteen minute journey to Cork airport. We flew over southern England, on to Paris and then directly down south to land at Carcassonne (CCF) two hours after our delayed departure from Cork. We stepped off the plane and were through passport control in five minutes to a waiting bus, the service only runs when a plane is arriving and we were dropped off at the train station in Carcassonne a half hour later.

It was too early to check in to our BnB so we walked around a bit to get our bearings. A stroll toward a central square to grab a pastry and browsing the local shop windows, we wanted to find out where the castle was, the one from the game. As we were going in the direction we needed to go via Google Maps we found the local Tourist Office that had expansion packs of the board game in the window so we quickly popped in to take a look. It was cool to see that they’d the game on display and on sale as many people mightn’t know about it. Anyways, after finding out which direction we needed to walk to the castle, the first sight of it was quite magnificent as we crossed a bridge and rounded back across the Pont Vieux bridge, then toward the city centre.

Our accommodation was close to the train station, so we found it quite easily and fumbled with the main door access code to get inside. Up six flights of stairs to our top floor apartment with a view of the street we’d come in on and we settled in to relax after a long day of travelling. The next day was when we’d visit the Cité de Médiévale Carcassonne, take tour of the castle itself and walk along its battlements. We both absolutely loved the experience and I took some of my favourite photos that day which I added to my portfolio on VSCO. The food was lovely too in the main square of the Cité where we sat outside amongst American tourists enjoying pizza and lasagne, and had some ice-cream before we headed on home for the evening.

We’d found out the day we arrived that our train to Montpellier had been cancelled due to the pension reform strikes so we needed a plan B to see our friend Betty on Thursday. I found a local car rental company, Free2Move, who rented spare cars from car dealerships in the area so we needed to get to a Citroen dealer in an industrial area close to the airport. We walked to the dealer location because we were not sure if any buses were going that way and managed to get there at 11AM and then drove two hours down the coast to Montpellier. We’d a little hiccup before we parked up where we missed our turnoff from the tolled motorway so ended up driving twenty minutes further before coming back to park in a multi-storey next to the train station. Harry was a bit miffed at the error but as we settled into walking around this new city he started to feel better.

There was a local protest relating to the pension reform strike so there were loads of Gendarmerie around escorting the crowd and it was just after seeing this that I found a nice little coffee shop, Astére Coffee, where I got a nice little oat flat white. Betty had recommended a nice place for us to eat so we headed there, to Broc Café and we both ensured we had a good lunch to set us up for the rest of the day. A stroll around the adjacent Botanical Gardens was lovely and helped himself recharge a bit before Betty met us off her tram. The next few hours was spent catching up, eating pastries and crepés, drinking teas and coffee, and we had a lovely late evening meal at another one of Betty’s recommended restaurants. Unfortunately, I’d had a headache all day that I wasn’t able to remedy and it turned food poisoning shortly before we needed to leave to drive back to Carcassonne.

The drive back from Montpellier was arduous but we made it back before midnight and packed the car right around the corner from the apartment. I ended up taking a shower before going to bed and woke up the next morning somewhat worse for wear but was able to take part on the that days proceedings. Although I wasn’t feeling the best, himself had planned a trip to two local tourist sites but before that we went to Carrefour to grab some breakfast. I told him about my memories of hyper-marchés from when my family went to France on summer holidays in the 90’s. They hadn’t really changed and still had everything under one roof. A short drive through local vineyards, up into the hills and we arrived at Latours so we could hike up to Les Quatre Châteaux de Lastours. The hike was easy and the views when we got to the castle were lovely and after about two hours we’d made our way back down to our car so we could go on to our next destination.

The Gouffre Géant de Cabrespine is one of the biggest caves in Europe and we made a choice last minute to see it. The drive further up the hills from Lastours through a small French village with vineyards surrounding was quintessentially French but everything was closed due to it being Good Friday. A twisty road and a steep enough ascent up, and we arrived at the small information office, and entrance to the cave. Through a heavy steel door, smell of mould in the air and we emerged into the belly of the mountain, and the cave opened up in front of it. I didn’t expect to see what I saw when I entered as I gazed up at the ceiling one hundred feet above us. It was another two hundred feet of so below us to the base of the cavern so it’s immense size humbled me. A hour of walking around as we listened to an audio tour via the digital device around our necks and a single headphone. We marvelled at stalactites and stalagmites, all that I remember learning about in primary school. It really was a super experience and one we’d definitely repeat if ever we were in that area again.

We’d walked a considerable amount after leaving the Gouffre Géant de Cabrespine so we drove back to Carcassonne, grabbing some food from the Carrefour we’d been to earlier and then dropped the car at the Citroen dealership, only after we’d went to the Cité de Médiévale Carcassonne viewing point for a photo of the citadel. The walk back from where we dropped off the car was tough as we passed a car crash where a woman was stuck in a car that had been turned upside down. There was many around the place where the crash took place so we walked past on but kept speculating how the person in the car was as we heard multiple emergency services vehicles sirens behind us in the distance. With sore feet and legs we made it to the apartment, and slowly crept up the six flights of stairs to relax for awhile. A quick walk to see the citadel by night was all we did for the rest of the evening as well as immersing ourselves in our silicon obsessions.

There was a few hours available to us in the morning before we needed to checkout so we aimed for the local Saturday market a few blocks from our accommodation. We followed older shoppers as they strolled to the busy outdoor market full of stalls of all types of food from local produces. Himself loved it, as he always does and I couldn’t help taking as many photos with my Leica as I could before running out of film. Since we’d touched down in the city we hadn’t seen many locals around but this market was bustling with people shopping and bartering fruit, veg, meat and bread. It was a wonderful way to spent our final few hours in a lovely city. After that we checked out of our apartment and bid farewell to Carcassonne but we were lucky that our bus went through the city and then via the Cité de Médiévale Carcassonne so we were able to see so much more before eventually reaching the tiny airport. Our flight departed on time and we arrived into Cork before 4PM, to get our bus home. Both of us had a super trip and would consider going back to Carcassonne again.

Note: Although we brought the Carcassonne board game with us, we never played a game because we did so much and we’re too tired each time we returned to our apartment accommodation.