Tory Bush Cottages

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Tory Bush Cottages

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Self Catering Cottages in the Mourne Mountains region of County Down, Northern Ireland The houses are all WiFi enabled with Freesat TV , video and DVD.

Tory Bush Cottages are a cluster of traditional country cottages in extensive mature grounds with spectacular views of the Mourne Mountains, yet only 4 mile from the lively resort of Newcastle. They are an ideal location for, hill-walking and cycling; bicycles to hire on site and make a great base for touring County Down and indeed all of Northern Ireland. Each house has a large living room with an open fire and an adjoining kitchen with all modern appliances. One bedroom is en-suite and all the beds can be used as singles or doubles. The cottages are managed on strong Environmental principles, and have been awarded Silver Status under the Green Business Tourism Scheme. There are two pet friendly houses on site with secure gardens.

08/10/2026

"Against all odds", was the theme of the The Woodland Trust tree of the year competition and a tree from Newcastle Co. down has won, and by winning I mean not just winning tree of the year in Norn Iron but Tree of the Year for the whole of the UK, beating a tree in Scotland struck by lightning and one in Surrey with a English Civil war cannonball lodged in it

A "bendy" wych elm has been crowned the UK's Tree of the Year 2026 - the first time a tree in Northern Ireland has won the title. Check out the the link below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c69wzr9qr7qro

Also checkout the Woodland Trust page where there is a great Drone video of ' The Bendy Tree' on Central Promenade showing Newcastle at its best. On the video you may notice an old stone wall, this is the remnants of the boundary wall of the Castle, that gave Newcastle its name if I am correct, also by that wall there is a horse drinking trough which I think was installed by a charitable person to provide drinking water for the seaside donkeys on the beach in the early 20th century, however as all the best documents say, 'citation needed' on this latter point.

https://www.facebook.com/thewoodlandtrust

We're the UK's largest woodland conservation charity 🌳

05/09/2026

I am beginning to think I have a thing about Rainbows, this perhaps my third post on the topic.

This is a photo of a double rainbow I took yesterday evening from the garden of a cottage at Tory Bush. The interesting thing about double rainbows is that the order of the colours of the second rainbow are the reverse of the primary rainbow.

At least I don't think I am as 'crazy' as the famous "Double Rainbow" guy who's reaction on Youtube to seeing a double rainbow became an internet sensation with almost 52 million views. To make it 52 million and one, check out the link to the video below, stick with it all the way through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI

02/09/2026

Don't Sit under the Apple tree with anyone else but me!

I deliberately placed this renovated garden seat in front of our sole Apple Tree in a nod to the song, "Don't Sit under the Apple tree with anyone else but me!", popularised during the 2nd World War by Glenn Miller and the Andrew Sisters, check out the Youtube video below.

The song is a plea by a serviceman to his girlfriend to have no 'dalliances' whilst he is overseas. Paradoxically the song was written in 1939, 2 years before the US entered the war as a 'plain' lovesong for a stage show but was modified on the US war entry by changing the end of the chorus to "...till I come marching home"

We all have certain standout lifetime memories and one of mine is hearing a busker singing this song in the Covent Garden Piazza back in the 80's, paradoxically when I worked nearby in a Covent Garden Fruit and Veg shop selling amongst other things Washington Red Delicious apples. I am not sure if my apples are Washington Red but they are delicious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK_uQCB6ly8

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CHRHbdjaxdw

21/07/2026

https://solvingprocrastination.com/ Was going to buy a copy of this book but think I will put it off until Christmas.

The definitive source to understanding why you procrastinate and how to stop.

27/05/2026

I saw this van in a car park in Newry recently promoting a Monaghan based window cleaner, apparently they have branches in New York and London, but the ladder work in New York was just a bit too much, a 3 stage extension ladder was just not good enough for all those skyscrapers and London was a bit too far to come home at lunchtime hence mainly concentrating on Monaghan.

I seem to like these vans with witty promotional lines, search earlier posts for a delivery company van in Belfast with the strapline, "to Finaghy and beyond" , and an earlier post of an oven cleaning company van with a group of seagulls on the roof rack as though it was the seagulls that did the cleaning.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1235229033162426&set=pb.100063818580897.-2207520000&type=3

19/04/2026

View this morning from top of the steps leading to our Eco-Loft, does it follow 'the rule of thirds', one of the critical rules of photography. Mentioning 'photography' reminds me of an experience I had recently involving a computer generated voice.

There are loads of Facebook content and Adverts with a 'synthetic' voice, presently there is a Stena Line advert I hear, about travel from NI to Scotland, when listening to podcasts which is definitely not human, it just expresses no emotion, (mind you it could be one of our local politicians). I am guessing these items are either written in one language and then disseminated to different markets using 'auto-translate' or else they just too miserly to employ a voice-actor,- see AI is already dispensing with some jobs.

Any way, my experience happened when I was viewing a site on Youtube of 100 famous photographs, such as the Na**lm Girl during the Vietnam war - thankfully she is still alive and living in Canada, the voice over for the video stream was a monotone american male voice and on item it had to discuss the 'photographer' but instead of saying the word as we would it was split into two words to sound like, "photo-graffer", we say pho-tog-raffer

However having listened to the link below to the different UK/US pronunciations, there is a slight different of emphasis on parts of the word but not as blatant as "photo-graffer".

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/photographer

Address

79 Tullyree Road
Kilcoo
BT345LD

Website

http://www.torybush.com/

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