When I had my two weeks of summer holidays from my day service in Ballaghaderreen I went on a holiday to England for one week with my family from Tuesday 26th July to Wednesday 3rd of August. While I was there I took photographs of beautiful English buildings when I went on outings in Andover, Portsmouth, Southsea and Gosport.

This building is called Tony wood hairdressing with a clocktower. It is located in Portsmouth.

This house is a hotel in Gosport. This house was used as the officers mess of Grange airfield during World War 1 before it became a hotel.

I saw lots of geese at the river in Andover. I took photographs of the geese without going too close to them.

Fort Brockhurst is a palmerston fort in Gosport. This fort was built in the 1850s and 1860s to protect Portsmouth and it’s harbour against a French invasion. It is an English heritage property now. I took a walk in Gosport and took photographs all around it.

We went to the Portsmouth international kite festival on the 30th of July. I saw lots of big kites such as sonic the hedgehog, turtles, bears, fish and many more. I made an amazing video of an octopus kite flying in the air with the tentacles moving in all directions.

This ship was the first ironclad hull and it was the first ship to have rifled barrels on the guns so they could fire twice as far as normal guns. Historians believe it stopped many wars for years. It had a steam engine and was rigged as a full ship. I came across this ship on the way to Portsmouth on the Gosport ferry

These are photos of the stony beach in Gosport. We went for a walk around the beach after we had fish and chips in the nearby park.

This is the outside of the Museum of Navel firepower that is located in Gosport. There is a wide variety of exhibits ranging from the 18th century to present day.

While I was in Gotland, Sweden I went on many outings with my family to go on walks and look at all the beautiful scenery.

We went for a walk in a meadow called Boge Laxare in Slite. It is located close to my grandmother and step grandad’s house. Many trees such as hazel, oak, ash, birch, aspen and wild apple grow there. The whole meadow looked beautiful.

I enjoyed walking around Visby to get photographs of all the lovely buildings and alleyways. I also found some very old doors on two buildings. St Catherine’s church is in ruins. The construction of the church started in the 1250s and continued through the 14th century. It was never completed and it partially collapsed during the worship in the 1540s. 

We went on an outing to a cairn called Majsterrojr in Gotland. The cairn is about 33 metres in diameter and 4 metres high and it is dated to the early bronze age around 1800 BC to 1100 BC. It is surrounded with Bronze age graves, a burial mound with kerbstones and a line of stones that looks like the outline of a boat.

On the way back to my grandmothers house we saw a big barn with a thatched roof, a wooden carriage and a wooden boat.

We went on another outing to a beach called Hideviken. I saw the cement factory in Slite from a long distance over there. There are also lots of cliffs that surround the beach and there is a barbecue area where people can grill their food and relax.

On the first day we stayed with my great aunt called Karin for a day in Stockholm before we travelled to Gotland. She has a cat called Alfie. It took him a bit of time to get used to me and then he let me stroke him. He was shy at first.

My step grandad’s sister and her husband came to visit us in Slite and they brought their Maine Coon cat called Selma with them. 

I haven’t been to Sweden in 4 years before my holiday on the 19th of May to the 7th of June 2022. I went to Sweden with my family to visit my grandparents and relatives. I didn’t bother to bring my Canon digital camera with me because it is too bulky and it would have been hard for me to carry it around everywhere. I used my phone to take my photos in Sweden instead.

We flew with SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) from Dublin to Stockholm Arlanda. I chose the window seat on the plane because I wanted to take photos of the views of Stockholm and the scenery when we were landing.

My grandmother and step grandad live in Slite on the Swedish island called Gotland. We took a few walks around the beach and the park in Slite when the weather was very nice and sunny.

We also walked in a beautiful park in Slite when the weather was very nice.

There is a factory that makes cement in Slite. The name of the company is called Cementa AB. About 230 people work in the factory and there is a large number of subcontractors and transporters. There are a total of 430 people employed in the company. They produce different types of cement such as Construction cement for bridge construction, Bascement with a lower carbon footprint, Multicem for soil stabilization and Fast hardening cement for winter casting.

I helped my grandmother to cook meals often and these are two examples of dishes in the photos attached below. We made a rhubarb crumble and a potato gratin together.

I went to my grandad and step grandmas house in Stenkumla for three days. They have a Jack Russell called Charlie. Luckily he kept still when I got photos of him.

We stayed on Gotland for two weeks and than we went to the mainland on the ferry from Visby to Nynäshamn on the 4th of June. I got some photos of the views of Visby when we went outside on the ferry. The last three days in Sweden were spent in Stockholm before we flew back to Dublin.

Stockholm city has beautiful architectural buildings. We walked around a lot in Stockholm and we enjoyed the beautiful weather there.

This is a narrow alleyway in Gamla Stan (Old Town).

This is Molins Fountain in Kungsträdgården park in central Stockholm. The bronze sculpture on the fountain was designed by Johan Peter Molin in 1866. The sculpture contains the ocean gods called Aegir and Rán with their nine daughters. They are all listening to the river spirit Nix playing his harp. Molin put six swans at the base of the sculpture because critics called this fountain an object of luxury and he decided to placate them. The public could get drinking water from their mouths.

We started harvesting our potatoes that we planted in two of our potato beds on St Patrick’s day on the first week of August. We had three potato beds in total. While the potatoes were growing in April and May we covered the potato beds with some old poly tunnel plastic each evening to prevent frost damage from the late spring frosts.

The two varieties of potatoes that we have grown in the potato beds are Purple Majesty and Sarpo Mira. They both taste very nice. The Purple majesty potatoes are the best variety I have ever tried. They have a very strong flavour.

Here is a dinner that I made one evening with my Purple Majesty Potatoes. It is Purple mashed potato with some salad and sausages. My dinner plate wasn’t like this before I have gotten over my limited diet problem with my autism. When I was a child I only had mashed potato on my dinner plate but It wasn’t this colour.

We also gave small bags of potatoes to some of our friends and family so they could taste them too.

During the first week of September we harvested some potatoes that we didn’t plant this year. They grew in our onion bed this year which was last years potato bed. The two varieties of potatoes that we planted last year were Maris Piper and Kerr’s Pink.

We harvested lots of onions as well as potatoes.

During the third week of October we harvested our Sarpo Mira Potatoes from our last potato bed. I don’t think that we have to buy anymore potatoes for a very long time as we have so many now.

We are storing our boxes of potatoes in the dark tunnel surrounding our roundhouse because if we leave potatoes in the light they will produce chlorophyll and turn green. They wouldn’t be safe to eat then.

Yesterday I decided to go on a beautiful outing to Queen Maeve’s Cairn which is located on Knocknarea Mountain in Strandhill, Co. Sligo with my family because the weather was lovely and sunny. We parked our car at the Knocknarea Mountain Car Park. As we were climbing up Knocknarea Mountain I enjoyed looking at the view of all the beaches and scenery in Sligo. It took us about 40 minutes to reach the summit to see Queen Maeve’s Cairn. The distance of the walk was 1.2 km. I saw everything very clearly in the lovely weather. On the way down I had to walk very slowly with my camera because I didn’t want to drop it.

In this photo there is a view of Strandhill Airport and the Runway.

Queen Maeve’s Cairn is a Neolithic passage tomb that is about 55 metres wide and 10 metres high. This passage tomb was probably built between 3,200 and 3,500 BC. It is estimated to contain 30,000 tons of stone.

We were planning to go to Strandhill Beach after we have been to Knocknarea Mountain but there were a lot of people there so we decided to go to a different beach to stay safe from COVID 19. We found a beach which is located at Streamstown near Ballysadare. I enjoyed having a picnic and looking at the mountains there.

On our way back home we went on a road to the Ox Mountains to take a look at all the scenery. There was a river that we have decided to stop at to get out of the car for a bit. I took some lovely photographs of the rocks and stones at the river.

I really enjoyed our outing. It was my very first time to visit Queen Maeve’s Cairn and Streamstown Beach.

On St Patrick’s day my stepdad and I have decided to plant potatoes in beds in the garden. St Patrick’s day is a very good day to plant all sorts of potatoes.

These are the purple majesty seed potatoes

These are the Sarpo Mira seed potatoes.

We planted 8 potatoes in each row about 15-20 cm apart in four rows on a bed.

We had so many potatoes so we decided to plant the rest of them on this empty bed. It took us a couple of hours to plant our potatoes.