Strangford, Co. Down

12th November: For our next trip with Pádraigín, we headed to the southern parts of Co. Down. I grew up in Bangor, north Down, but it’s a large county and I haven’t ever spent much time in the southern part of the county. We drove through Downpatrick, where St. Patrick is buried, to Strangford, on the shores of Strangford Lough. This is a pretty fishing village and we watched the small ferry leave Strangford for Portaferry across the lough. 

We had the most delicious and filling chowder for lunch in The Lobster Pot and were intrigued to see that a photoshoot was taking place in the back rooms of the pub. Upon investigation, we found out that this was linked to the new Game of Thrones prequel! Once the team had finished up, we were able to take a peek at some of the costumes used in the photoshoot – here are some below. ‘Winterfell Castle’ is located just outside Strangford (‘Castle Ward’ in real life!) and the Lobster Pot and the nearby Cuan pub are both used regularly by cast and crew of GoT.

13th November: We took another trip in the ‘slider’ tram up to the Kennedy Centre for lunch at our favourite café, Greggs, and to get sorted with a sim card for the MiFi device in for our van. This MiFi card is what will enable us to become digital nomads and work from our van no matter where we are. Genius! A MiFi acts like a WiFi hotspot. We can have up to ten devices tethered to it, so it’ll be good for our phones, laptops and tablets. We are contracted with EE through the UK and have unlimited downloading and also unlimited roaming! It remains to be seen what will happen to this once Brexit occurs but, for now, we are sorted and ready for the road.

We had lots of hugs and said our goodbyes to Pádraigín before hitting the road south towards Dublin Port. Next stop … Wales!