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Published: October 21st 2013
When we were booking our accommodations in Ireland we wanted to get part of our time in some smaller towns and tonight will be one of them in a town we had never heard of before and nor could we initially find on the atlas page until we searched more closely.
Our night’s sleep was a good one which might have been partly down to the long day we put in to get from Lewisham to Athlone but it was also because of the very comfortable bed although we did miss our pillows that had been with us for over 6 months. To anyone wanting to take a little advice on taking a lengthy journey such as this we certainly would recommend that you find a pillow that you are comfortable with, even testing it out in the shop, and buy it early in the trip.
The day is starting later than what we have been used to with our journey further west and it was well after 8am before there was appreciable light in the sky so it difficult to get motivated to get up and get going.
By the time we emerged the car park of
the hotel was virtually empty whereas last night it had been quite full and even given that a few of them where in for the bridge classes going on in one of the hotel’s lounges it seemed like most of the other guests staying had got on their way.
Before we got in the car we decided to walk back down town to get a better look at the River Shannon that flows through the centre and look a bit more closely at the place in the daylight.
We had passed a shopping mall out closer to the N6 highway we had turned off to get to the town last night but this appeared to part of the expanded town while were the hotel we stayed in was the old centre of the town. The streets were narrow and more suited to one way traffic although no one locally had obviously thought this was necessary as yet.
At an intersection of the main street there was a memorial to people who lost their lives in the battle with the English to gain their independence and we had to remind ourselves that of course southern Ireland is a
country that is completely independent of the UK even though the north east corner is still part of the UK. And therefore we can expect to see memorials relating to those times rather than to WW1 and 2 as you do in the UK.
With the temperature at 15C and the air feeling much milder than it felt in England we set off in the car for a short distance on the N6 which is part of the 4 lane highway that runs east/west from Dublin to Galway. It is a fabulous road, wide and with very little traffic but like most highways it just cuts through the countryside and you don’t get to see the local towns.
So we turned off a few kilometres out of Athlone onto the R355 and drove south to Portumna where we hoped we might find a supermarket to buy some lunch. The countryside we passed through was green and fertile looking and for a change we noticed that cows and sheep were being kept outdoors rather than in barns as we found in Europe and for that matter in the UK too. The grass appears to be a more vivid green
that we have been used to and even more so than we recall the colour of pasture land is in NZ too. It might be the light or perhaps they just grow really green grass in Ireland!
Portumna is near the top end of a large ‘lough’ or lake and was the largest settlement we passed through after turning off the higway. Initially as we walked down the main street it didn’t seem we were going to find a supermarket here and nor was there a bakery although every other type of store appeared to be represented. Then as we were just about to turn and walk back to the car we noticed the Super Valu sign and were relieved to find the supermarket and they had all we wanted to make up what we hoped would be a boot lunch a little further down the road if we can find somewhere to stop with a view of the elongated Lake Derg.
Serena’s Gaelic accent wasn’t improving as we get deeper into the centre of Ireland. We can’t recall there being as much signage in Gaelic on our last visit here 4 years ago. As NZ has often
followed a lot of things Ireland has done in the past the day could soon come when we have all the road signs etc in both English and Maori in NZ. We realise that this is already happening but we don’t think it is quite as wide spread as the dual language is in written form as it is here in Ireland.
Along the rural R352 running beside the lake where we could see paddocks of peat with the telltale signs of recent diggings and piles of it being left to dry. Another giveaway was the numerous signs on power poles advertising the fuel for sale. We had already noticed a different smell in the smoke that came from house chimneys in Athlone.
At the small lakeside village of Mountshannon we turned off thinking we were taking a road down to a jetty on the lake but found it was into a group of new holiday houses. Almost all of them were unoccupied now that the summer season was over so we felt OK parking outside one of them on the water’s edge to have our boot lunch. We thought that we might not get another boot lunch
on the BBA V2 now that autumn is well and truly making its presence known but the air temperature is up at 18C and we didn’t want to let the opportunity pass.
Though it was pleasant down at the lakeside in the sun it was time to keep moving and we returned to the road heading towards Limerick and hoping that the GPS would quickly guide us around the city.
We were now in County Clare territory and there were yellow and blue flags and banners on just about every house in villages and at farm gates that we passed. They were supporting the local team in a Gaelic Football final which was either coming up or had past, we weren’t sure. But they a certainly a patriotic crowd in this county of Ireland!
Being on the road almost every day for the past 7 months you get to notice how road works are managed and we would have to say that they do a lot of ‘shovel leaning on’ in Ireland!
Beyond Limerick the N21 took us further south west to our night’s accommodation in Abbeyfeale.
We didn’t have a street address for the
B&B and we assumed that it would be on the main road that ran through the town which was probably 3km from one end to the other. This might suggest that the town had a sizeable population but when you took the main street away there wasn’t a lot of housing behind it.
We got to the southern end of the town and drove past the last light standard and house thinking that we had missed the B&B when we suddenly spotted the sign directing us to it a few metres ahead.
We were greeted by the owner Noreen and listened closely to her broad Irish accent so we got all the instructions we needed about keys, breakfast etc. She suggested a walk in a park across the way if we needed some exercise and that there were a number of places in town for dinner when we got hungry.
Our room is very well appointed and there is a comfortable bed and we just hope the pillows are OK.
We took a walk in the park which gave us the exercise we needed making the most of the continuing dry weather even though the sky had clouded over as we have progressed further south west during the day.
It was a 1.5km walk back to where we found the first pub that was serving food and found plenty of options on the menu that would satisfy our appetite. So enjoying our second night on the Guinness we ordered up cod and chips for Gretchen and a steak and Guinness pie and chips for me. Gretchen keeps saying that all this good eating will change when we get home!
We walked a good bit of dinner off on the brisk march back to the B&B bringing to an end our first full day in Ireland.
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