Tory Bush Cottages

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Tory Bush Cottages

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.

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

10/03/2026

An unusual photo of Tory Bush Cottages taken earlier this morning, usually rainbows are to the south east of the cottages, out over Tollymore Forest Park, as the sun settles in the west in the spring or autumn evenings.
This morning there was a light drizzle as the sun rose gently over the lower slopes of the mountains so the rainbow appeared behind the cottages.
During the summer the sun is generally a bit two high to create a rainbow,(unless up really early in the morning or late in the evening) as generally "To view a rainbow, your back must be to the sun as you look at an approximately 40 degree angle above the ground into a region of the atmosphere with suspended droplets of water or even a light mist. Each individual droplet of water acts as a tiny prism that both disperses the light and reflects it back to your eye.".

20/09/2025

An unusual weak rainbow I saw last night just as the sun was going down over Tory Bush. It wasn't even raining, a rainbow is caused by sunlight being refracted in raindrops, i.e. split up in to colours and reflected back to the observer, most people can create a small rainbow effect on a sunny day by standing with their back to the sun and making a fan of water with a garden hose.
Usually rainbows are a broad arc, but this one was a very high arc caused by the sun being very low behind me and just about to set.

Checkout this link to learn more,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow

"Rainbows can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind the observer at a low altitude angle. Because of this, rainbows are usually seen in the western sky during the morning and in the eastern sky during the early evening. "

Though as I said it was not raining where I was standing there must have been some 'water' in the air out where the rainbow was formed possibly in the form of mist, spray, or airborne dew.

Perhaps what I saw was a 'Fogbow',

A fogbow is formed in much the same way as a primary rainbow. Light in a fogbow is refracted and reflected by fog (water droplets suspended in air).
Because the water droplets in fog are much smaller than raindrops, fogbows have much fainter colors than rainbows. In fact, some fogbows have few detectable colors at all and appear mostly white, with a reddish tinge on their outer edge and a bluish tinge on their inner edge."

04/08/2025

People use the term Windfall often without knowing the origin of the word in particular in the phrase ‘Windfall tax'. Remember the talk of a ‘Windfall Tax’ on the energy companies on the back of their profit increases following the beginning of the Ukraine War when energy prices rose dramatically. These companies were benefitting from something that was not of their own doing or endeavours.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60295177

This morning I looked out of a cottage window at an apple tree we have and saw the apples blown off by storm Floris and it got me to think of the proper origin of the word, windfall.

The term "windfall" originally referred to fruit or timber blown down by the wind, making it available for anyone to collect or gather, not necessarily the owner of the tree or the orchard. It was first used way back in the 1400's in its proper sense i.e. items blown down by the wind yet as early as the 1540s, "the term took on a figurative meaning, referring to any unexpected acquisition or lucky gain".

I think we only have two apple trees at Tory Bush and this one was moved within the last two years or so, it had started to tip over in its previous location, so I am pleased it has apples at all, albeit they are as bitter as anything, I wonder if they had had the chance to ripen a bit more would they have gotten any sweeter.

21/06/2025

Initially I found the BBC News webpage headline a bit confusing until I realised it was referring to Ollie Pope an English cricketer.

I knew some of our religious leaders can be a bit behind the times but the thought that they were still listening to Wham and Madonna was a shock and only now moving on to Shania and the Spice Girls absolutely incredulos. Good job they had not heard of the 1991 R.E.M hit, 'Losing My Religion'

26/05/2025

I saw this headline on the BBC News webpage and it took me a while to realise that Octopus was something other than a real octopus but an energy supply company in England.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3v552q0nk9o

What is it with businesses naming themselves or their products after everyday items, a travel company called Kayak, a computer company called Apple, a telephone company called Orange, etc.,
check out this Ronnie Corbett sketch,

https://www.google.com/search?q=ronnie+corbett+apple+sketch&oq=Ronnie+Corbett+Apple&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyBggBEEUYOTIKCAIQABiABBiiBNIBCTEzMjE5ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 =ive&vld=cid:7801a3e9,vid:kAG39jKi0lI,st:0

Apparently the 5 Golden Rules to Follow when naming a product are,

It should be readable and writable. ...
It should be unique. ...
It should be short, punchy and memorable. ...
It should look good written down and sound cool to say.
It should evoke an emotion, feeling or idea.

Interestingly, Kodak was one of the first of these short punchy business names, the company was set up by George Eastman in 1888, but rather than call it the Eastman Photographic Film Company, he made up the name "Kodak", chosen for its simplicity and ease of memorisation.

15/05/2025

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0l2z54w

I am sure most readers of this page know that the Oak timber used in the Titanic came from Tollymore Forest Park, including the Grand Staircase. The attached photos show the 'stumps' of the harvested Oak Trees in the forest, some of which may have been the very trees used for the Titanic.

BBC Sounds has produced a very good 6 part Podcast on the Titanic presented by actor Paul McGann (the 8th Doctor Who) who has a family link with the Titanic in that his great-uncle Jimmy was a 'coal trimmer' on the Titanic.
A trimmer supplied the coal to the boiler stokers in such a manner that the coal was moved evenly so as to not affect the balance of the ship, important given that the Titanic went through 600 tons of coal per day!!

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/james-mcgann.html

The Podcast is in my view excellent and shows how a series of unfortunate incidents lead to the sinking of the ship, the high loss of life, and the important part the weather conditions played in the sinking.

It also says there was in fact two grand staircases a fore and an aft staircase, the aft was slightly smaller and only went between 3 decks..

13/05/2025

Yesterday I was talking to some folk about the two tunnels in the Mournes, most knew of the first, Binnian Tunnel, which carries water from the Annalong River into the Silent Valley Reservoir The Commissioners didn’t want to build a second reservoir in Annalong Valley because of the geological condition of the rock in the valley.

I explained that there was a second tunnel constructed around the northern edge of the Mourne Mountains to carry the water pipeline from the Mournes to Belfast. This was actually constructed before the Silent Valley as the Belfast Water Commissioners had already been abstracting water from the Mournes prior to the construction of the dams.

The visible remains of this tunnel are the 'ventilation shaft' on Drinnahilly, and the remnants of a second shaft at the change in gradient between Millstone Mountain and Drinneevar, which I think may be marked on OS maps as 'sheepfolds'. The reason there is only the remnants of this second tower, which was once a substantial structure as seen in the accompanying photos from Newcastle Main Street, is because on completion of the tunnel the land owner, Lord Annesley, had the tower blown up as part of an ongoing dispute with the Belfast Water Commissioners.

For more info on this check out this page from about 10 years ago on the excellent History of Newcastle, Co. Down Facebook Site.

17/09/2024

Okay, it's just not funny, leave it back and not a thing will be said!

Address

79 Tullyree Road
Kilcoo
BT345LD

Website

http://www.torybush.com/

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