You either hate it or love it, just like the veg extract - Ryanair offer unbelievably cheap travel to a vast number of close and far European destinations and as long as you accept and play by their rules all should be fine and as expected . . . The first Ryanair experience was when I flew to Limoges, to shoot a wedding at Chateau Ribagnac and I was clobbered for £60 extra on the way out and €90 on the way back and I was on a fixed fee deal and couldn't charge the client! As you can imagine, one learns very quickly and even though I tried to ditch a few items for the return flight, I still incurred their rath!
Our next flight with Ryanair was to Krakow, Poland and using the hard won experience we as a family, packed carefully to avoid the dreaded excess baggage and successfully avoided any charges. As you all know, I always like to give credit where due and I must say, that all Ryanair flights, so far have been on time, and I hope this continues as I fly to Belfast on Friday to see Muriel and install a new iMac for Frank Senior. Cost of the flight with hand baggage only (a first flight experience!) including taxes, surcharges and bending over levy is £11.98!!! We all remember in the 80's, if we secured a return flight to London/Belfast for £150 with BA or BM, we thought we had a bargain! Times have changed for the better - flight wise anyway! We have since traveled with Ryanair a number of times to Belfast and Limoges and as we now know the rules, flights have been on time and (thankfully) uneventful.
The best bit of this weekend in NI will be a personal drive back through the Mournes on the Saturday - watch for (hopefully) some spectacular images.
A quick note about the lead picture above . . . this was the original Quaker School in Northern Ireland, sited at Brookfield, between Lisburn and Moira and as you can see. it has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. When I shot this last year, I disturbed an old boy and his yappy dogs, who lived in one of the adjacent houses and he was able to give me some background information. This house was in fact the Head Masters' residence with the adjacent house in almost as bad repair as the school behind. My Grandmother's family attended Brookfield as staunch Quakers, with my Father and his two brothers attending Friends School in Lisburn as Brookfield closed and transfered to Lisburn. My Father showed me Brookfield many years ago and the sight of its tower on the hill stuck with me through the years and it has taken a couple of trips back and a few infuriating U-Turns on the main road with Muriel to finally track it down - it was worth the effort.
Like valleysite.co.uk, Brookfield could be so much . . . a little bit of vision and a sh*t laod of money could restore this courtyard and old school to something special.
Unfortunately, according to the old boy I talked to that afternoon, things may have deteriorated too far, floors have collapsed and the roof is shot. As with my bigMAC recently, I hear the phrase, "uneconomical to repair" and another priceless (to some of us) piece of history, quietly disappears. Such a pity but not unexpected as the Quaker community in Northern Ireland have other things on their mind but, still a missed opportunity.
I might take a detour to check on the disrepair of Brookfield this weekend as I feel it won't be around for too much longer - such is progress . . .
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