It's here - our Grand Reunion Day has finally arrived. Weather is overcast but hopefully it will not rain until we at least get to the hotel for our "Hooley"! Our day starts with 3pm Mass at St Patricks Glen church which is a few minutes from downtown Maghera. This fabulous old church was built in 1830's and stands as a testament to the unwavering Catholic faith of the Irish people who were not allowed to worship in public for so many years. After Mass we are visiting the graveyard next to the church where we will have a little service of placing the rocks from Henry, James and John's graves onto their mother and fathers grave completing the circle of bringing them all together again. Then its on to Walsh's Hotel for an evening full of craic! Mary and Niall have organised Irish dancers and Music which I am very much looking forward to.
Yesterday was a day of preparation and I have to say how happy I am how everything came together so well. Mary and Adrian have done an outstanding job with organising the photographs etc, Lone visited the florist for the flowers and I was able to arrange the family tree printouts. We are definitely getting help from above. Frank and Leonie wanted to see Belfast so they had a great day touring around with Peter and Loretta doing the same thing. We all met at The Inn Castledawson for dinner at 7.30 pm with Mary and Adrian joining us too. It was a great evening and after dinner we got into a taxi to go to the Cross Keys Inn for some music and story telling. The Cross Keys Inn is officially the oldest thatched inn in all of Ireland so we were most eager to see it. The taxi took us way out into the countryside until we finally reached the Inn about 15 minutes later. It was the cutest little place and its history was displayed on every wall. Unfortunately the musicians had not turned up so we were able to phone the taxi to turn around and come back for us - very disappointing really as we were so looking forward to hearing the storytelling especially about the Leprachauns! This Inn was out in the middle of nowhere and guess who we met - two Aussies!!!
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