And so to Britain...

An early morning start from the home of David and Nina Rice in Ashford and a whirlwind drive through the suburbs of Dublin revisiting the route that driver, Lionel used in his now pre-retirement days was thrilling. We saw the home that his family surrended to live in the wondeful setting that had been home for the gathering, we used a tolled underground tunnel and made it to the airport in great time, easily able to be two hours early for our flight to the UK.

The departures hall was packed with many aircraft scheduled to leave during the morning hours. Dublin International airport is an extremely busy place! Imaging our surprise when the counter for the small airline, FLYBE Airlines had just two channels and we waited in line for a record short time to book on our flight to Southampton.

Small airport or no, the security was still strong and we stripped off shoes and belts, opened computers and bags of make-up etc. and crawled through the process. In spite of all this in no time at all we found the food hall and enjoyed the breakfast we hadn’t had time have before we had left.

Another uneventful flight on the prop driven plane with all the care in the world from the flight crew saw us landing just an hour or so later at Southhampton. We filled in arrival cards and held them with our passports but in the airport found no one to grant us permission to enter or not to enter. We hoped there were no terrorists on the plane with us! We just walked in.

We gathered our luggage and walked out to meet a cousin of some sort! We weren’t sure if was first second or twentieth cousin and how far removed we had no idea but we were excited to meet Barry Smith.

Barry had spent a few years of his life writing “The Annuls of the Smith Family of Sligo” and in the process of his task we had become connected. We had looked forward to meeting this ‘voice on the telephone’ emailer for months. Barry took us to his beautiful home where we met his wife Sue and some of their four kids. This was to be our base for four days.

We had opportunity to have a look around the living history of Winchester, where Barry and Sue lived. The strong history and innate beauty was wonderful. A highlight of our visit was when the Smith's took the Smith's to Winchester Cathedral for a night of clasical music. kevin found the intensity of music of 'The Planets' a bit too much but we enjoyed more "Belshazzer's Feast".

From this base of the Smith's home we arranged to hire a compact little Black Peugot motor that has transported us across the UK. What is more Barry loaned us his Natsav GPS which made findng our way around the motorways, roads and little lanes much easier and most probably saved Val and I from the pressure of driving and navigating in a foreign land and the possiblity of a marriage crisis! The non-descript male voice commanded, “...in half a mile take the third roundaout exit...” and we found it did get us where we hoped to go.