Mash, Baked and Chips are NOT 3 food groups

The Irish are famous for their potatoes, god they are. Sadly though, they're obsessed with them, and we're not really liking them...where are the delicious potatoes I remember from Europe?

At one meal you can be offered mash, chips and get a baked potato. Do they realise? How do these ancient habits get so stuck? How could they not grow more things during the Famine, if the potatos kept failing? They want to be seen as so modern, but if you're eating that much very plain potato, can you really move forward?

We talked about this today as we drove back from the Donkey Sanctuary at Lisarow, and then stopped for tea and scones in a ?cafe/restaurant that's been going since the 17th century. And they're still cooking the same food there too! Bacon in great slices, cabbage in watery sauce, the roast is out, but I can give you mashed turnip and bacon.. All this at 4 in the afternoon. We laughed at what people were eating in the middle of the afternoon. Update: we later learnt that in farming country, this is often the time for the one big meal.

All we wanted was a good coffee and a nice cake maybe. Queen cakes are cute - a little cup cake, with a bit of jam on top. Good for the boys.

Ah the Donkey Sanctuary - a refuge for all those old donkeys who were decommissioned by the tractor after the war. The owner grew up nearby, went off to England for a while, then came back and happened upon old, mistreated donkeys in the Irish fields. During the Boer War, the English had paid 5 pounds and a donkey for an Irish horse, who were strong and well-bred. The farmers re-worked their farm gear, ploughs and traces and the like, for the smaller donkeys and put them to work, with great success in small fields.

After the tractor, they got put out into fields and often abandoned, until they were rescued and brought here, where they are nurtured back to health, and, the friendly ones, put up for adoption. Beautiful Jerusalem cross donkeys, grey ones, white ones. Did you know that a male donkey mating with a female horse makes one kind of animal, a female donkey with a horse - the result is called something else?

Nadine and I both had tears in our eyes at the trees planted, the benches set in memorial, for people who'd loved donkeys, kept donkeys, were being remembered here by their families. Yes, it's fundraising too, but great initiative and care too. What a funny country.

And in the landscape as you drive, there's another ruined castle, grey stones standing overmossed, reaching out above the growth and decline of centuries...and another....its golden age really was very long ago.