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Published: August 13th 2010
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Slea Head
Lentil before she broke down on us While working at the O'Connors we thought we'd use our weekend to do a little bit of sightseeing while we were in the area. We had heard that Dingle, a seaside town on the Western most tip of Ireland was a good spot to visit, so off we went! World Cup fever could be found everywhere and Ireland (while sorely disappointed about losing the qualifying match against France) was in full swing. We were all keen to see Germany vs. Argentina and headed into a local pub to catch the second half as soon as we arrived. We settled into a cosy spot and it soon became apparent that there were some fervent Germany supporters, so we cheered alongside them, particularly when Germany ended up winning 4 goals to none. As Dingle is a pretty popular spot for visitors, it wasn't surprising that we we hearing various different languages inside the pub, but there was one that really caught my ear. Before long we had worked out that actually what most people were talking was Irish....no, not English with an Irish accent, but full blown Celtic Irish, it was quite cool. So it happens that in the West of Ireland there
The Offending Hose!
Nick looking rather happy after finding out it was only a perished hose are quite a few Irish speakers, many who speak it as a first language. To add to the authenticity, everyone drank Guinness!
We decided to take a drive around the head, being the actual most Western point, take in the sights of the rugged shoreline, then find a caravan park of some description. The head is called 'Slea Head', which is about as unfriendly as it sounds; the scenery and the weather are incredibly rugged as the head is subject to Atlantic winds. The roads were windy and very narrow so we were thankful we never came across an oncoming bus. We soon noticed our van was overheating a bit which we figured was due to climbing hills etc, although I did think it was a bit strange that the van would overheat in probably the most freezing cold part of Ireland. Soon enough the needle on the temperature gauge was making it's steadily up to red, so we made the executive decision to stop in the middle of the road. Once we stopped we could hear something boilling violently. We looked at each other with a sense of dread. Making it look like we knew what we were
Skimming Stones on the Beach
The Irish summer does not exactly present swimming opportunities, but at least you can skim stones doing, we got out and opened up the bonnet and sure enough the water bottle was a bubbling little pressure vessel looking like it was going to explode. Looking under the van it appeared there was a leak....oh great! We were surrounded by farmland with not a farm house in sight, so there was nothing to do but wait until it cooled down and head off again, topping up with water every 200 metres which is exactly what we did. We drove down an old lane and stopped in at a pub to see if anyone knew a mechanic. It was a long shot on a Saturday night and it almost worked. A guy who “knew a lot about cars” according to his wife, went out to have a look and said, judging from the leak, “'s yr fookin heetr matrx like” which is English Irish for “I think it's your heater matrix”. I think nearly every sentence contained a profanity (friendly though) and always, always ended in “like”. This is apparently the way you talk in Ireland. Either way, it was a leak and there was no chance of getting it seen to so we continued our way to
Sign on a shop Door
It's Irish for "Back in 5 Minutes" a caravan park, again stopping every 200 metres to fill up.
Thinking it was going to be impossible to get a good Irish Catholic mechanic out on a Sunday morning we were pleasantly surprised when local mechanic Sean Cavanagh turned up, identified a leaky hose, taped it up and told us it would be good enough to get us back to the farm to organise the part. For a moment it looked like the part didn't exist, as upon contacting Renault they had no idea what we were talking about. Thankfully, this was just a case of 'spare parts guy doesn't know much about engines', and we got the hose within a matter of days.
The next challenge was to fit the hose which we are very proud to say we did ourselves. Of course fitting a hose isn't exactly challenging, but hey, it's a start on the way to being a home mechanic. We also discovered that working on your own car gives you that feeling of smug self-satisfaction as you remind yourself “hey, I could have paid 150 Euros for getting that done but I did it myself for only 20”.
So it turns out Lentil is a bit mental after all. We didn't get to see much of Dingle and surrounds but things don't always go to plan when you have an old, second hand van do they? We didn't quite have journey we were hoping for, but got an adventure of a different kind.....and now know a little bit more about working on cars. Hopefully we won't need to call on this skill too much in the future.
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Maria
non-member comment
Cool article. Sounds like an interesting time. BTW the sign on the shop doesn't say back in 5 minutes, it says that only 5 people are allowed in the shop at the same time!