I’m reading Edward Rutherford’s big novel of +800 pages called Dublin published in 2005.

I’m a great fan of his writing and have most of his works which are all huge books that span many years all about the history of cities. It’s a great way to learn about history through fictional stories and characters in real life places and situations that happened in history.

Last night I was reading about a monk who lived at a monastic settlement in Ireland in the 800s AD around the same time there were Vikings.

The description of the settlement, the lake, the monastery and the Celtic crosses triggered a memory.

We went there!

It’s called Glendalough and it’s in the Wicklow County outside of Dublin.

There’s been many times that this place has been in my dreams – especially the lake (which for some reason I never took a photo but it’s the thing that I see – along with the Celtic crosses – in my dreams 🤔)

So tonight I took out my photo album from 2013 when Andrew and I spent eight weeks travelling around the UK, Scotland and Ireland.

I seemed to recall we went to such a settlement but I had forgotten the name of the place. It’s not surprising. Eight weeks of travelling and seeing a multitude of places and historical sights, you tend to forget some things.

I recall if was a beautiful and serene place (when you escaped the crowds) especially around the lake.

Looking through the photos in the album, I saw all the places that the book mentioned and that we had gone to this magical place.

At the time back in 2013, I pulled all the photos for the album, but I mistakenly thought that this settlement was outside Glasgow. I was mixing up Glasgow Cathedral, Roslyn Chapel and Glendalough with each other and incorrectly put them in the wrong order in the album.

Ooops!

So I grabbed a pen and wrote in the album 11 years later the correct place.

I flicked through the pages of the album while listening to the Irish pub songs by the Dropkick Murphys on our CD player and reminisced about our wonderful trip (and how young we looked).

We can’t wait to travel again soon when Andrew retires. 😊