A Little Trip To Cork

Earlier this month I spent a little under a week in the gorgeous County Cork. It was a much needed break for me and my partner and I used it as a bit of an excuse to take some time away from social media and bookstagram. 

Of course that doesn’t mean that I completely switched off my bookwormery. 

It turns out that Cork is a goldmine of wonderful bookshops – everywhere we went I managed to find wonderful independent booksellers. It’s probably a good thing that I only had hand luggage otherwise I would have come back with a lot of new books. 

Whilst we were there I was reading Being Various, a collection of short stories from Irish writers, including Sally Rooney and Wendy Erskine. A review of that will follow shortly.  

Below are a few bookshops you need to check out if you find yourself in this stunning part of the world:

Vibes and Scribes 

This place is a bit of a Cork institution and is actually two bookshops. One focuses on new books whilst the other (located a few doors down) is full of second hand gems. I loved the layout of both shops – you could feel the passion that had gone into the design. There was a great selection of Irish authors and the prices were incredible – loads of great paperbacks were 3 for 15 euros. I walked away with another Faber Short Story – this time Paradise by Edna O’Brien (again I promise a blog post to follow on this incredible collection of stories).  

Kinsale Bookshop

We actually stayed not far from Kinsale which was the most delightful little town. It’s a bit of a foodie heaven but it turned out that it had some lovely bookshops too! This was one we visited on our first day. It was cosy and welcoming with slightly uneven floors and loads of charm. Again there was a little section for Irish writers and we picked up a book of Cork Folk Tales from their fantastic local interest section. 

Prim’s Bookshop: Bibliotherapy

Books can be therapy right? This delightful and quirky shop in Kinsale could well be the cure to most of life’s ills. 

Bantry Bookshop

Bantry was probably one of the best places we discovered – this is a little gem of a place. So many lovely little indie shops (including Forest and Flock, an emporium for Irish crafters and artists). I loved this little shop which had a very tempting box of 50 cent books at the door (I still regret not picking up Astray by Emma Donoghue for a mere one euro). 

Oh and one last one … Poet’s Corner 

I didn’t actually get to go to this beautiful little book exchange/cafe in Kinsale as they closed over November but I’ve read nothing but good things about it, and it looked super cosy. 

Did you like this post? Should I just stick to the reviews?