County Wexford Coastal Day Trip

Sunday morning we headed out the door towards Wexford, which is south of Dublin, about 1 1/2-2 hours.  The only items on our agenda for the day, was to see an old lighthouse, which I had read usually had seals swimming in the ocean nearby, and anything we came across that floated our boat.  

Just north of Wexford and east of the coastal village of Curracloe, we stopped at a beach.  Here we spent about an hour walking down the shore collecting shells.  We had such a good time! 

 

Ballinesker Beach

 

mesmerized

 

 

Jack was scared of the ocean when he was little.  Now he loves to "play with it".  I'm guessing he's imagining it's a rush of football players coming at him!

 

         Finding the "perfect" seashell with Dad...or in Kate's case, the "800th perfect seashell"...

 

 

I have a frame with pictures of me and the kids walking along different beaches.  I think I need to add this one to that frame!

 

walking along the top of the sand dunes

 

 

After the beach, we headed down to Wexford for lunch

After we left Wexford, we came across these ruins from the road.  I'm not sure you can tell, but there is a house on the other side of these ruins.  It baffles us somewhat that there aren't roadside markers telling you what these ruins are.  Whoever lives in that house, probably owns these ruins. 

 

Literally on the side of the road where we saw the above ruins, was a ruin of a church with a graveyard.  Jimmy took this picture and really liked it.

 

We saw quite a few thatched roof houses.  We came around a bend upon this one.  It looked so cozy, it made you want to go inside and sit in front of the fire.  :)

 

After we left Wexford we headed south/southwest to "the hook".  This is Hook Lighthouse.  It is 800 years old and is the oldest operating lighthouse in the world.  We got here around 3-3:30p.m. and after trips to the bathroom and a look around the gift shop, we decided to skip the tour of the lighthouse and go climb on the rocks that surround it.  Now keep in mind, the sun sets here at 4:30p.m. and it's dark by 5pm, so we didn't have a whole lot of time to play!

 

Kate still looking for things to collect.....

 

Jimmy takes pretty good pictures, doesn't he?!

 

 

2 of my favorite things!

There were about half a dozen seals in the water.  They would pop their heads out of the water and look at us for a bit.  A couple of times we heard them bark.  The kids really got a kick out of them!

 

the sunset looked like a fire out on the horizon