The Gathering of the Clan-No Not like Highlander

After arriving in Dublin, looking around for a while and sampling some Irish food, we heeded south the county cork and the town of Youghal where the clan of mills reside. It’s in the south of the country and we travelled through some spectacular landscape. It’s not often a place lives up the the exact expectations you have but so far Ireland is doing just that. The drive was about 3 hours and along the way we passed through quaint little villages and countryside filled with stone walls and sheep. We stopped in Waterford where the famous crystal is made. We couldn’t find the factory and as we were on a time schedule to visit the family we just kept going.
We arrived in Youghal around 5, checked into the bed and breakfast and waited for the family to find us in the bar. We weren’t there long when the daughters came in looking for us, as we were the Bly ones there’re it was easy for us to be recognized … But they still managed to say “oh ya it is ye.”
Ye is a great word. It’s the Irish equivalent of you but cooler.
So we followed these strangers into the countryside, onto the back roads, out into the fields and to the skinny single lane roads with stone walls lining them, deeper and deeper we went into the unknown, they’d said we’d never find it and they were not wrong, later in the evening Johnny was to announce they were getting zip codes next year… No wonder the gps didn’t work.

The gathering of the clan was a great success, they just kept arriving, the cousins the second cousins the aunt the great aunt the second cousin once removed. It was so easy and comfortable even being in a room full of strangers, we were family and the stories fairly flew of those gone but still so vibrant in the mills history.
We ended the meeting with a huge family photo and the promise to keep in touch.