The poor scooter is feeling quite neglected. We left it shut in the Tandy garage today and took the 402 bus into Galway town as bus stop conveniently located just outside the campsite. We were very, very happy to see sunshine and blue sky when we woke having an unobscured view of the sea through our bedroom window. No need to shut the curtains, nobody can see in. The bus dropped us in Eyre Square so we made a quick note where to catch our return bus as we are not really very accustomed to catching buses, we usually use the scooter. We like Galway very much. A lovely, lively city. Never seen so many buskers and all but one, who sang or rather wailed as though tone deaf, were producing some excellent music. We became ... read more

A little disappointed when we woke, after another night of heavy rain, that the better weather forecast for the morning had not materialised. Clouds still hanging low over everything and sun just plain playing hard to get. We left campsite at 9 am, just as reception opened, as we wanted to fit in visits to Killarney and Dingle en route for our next campsite in Tralee. Delighted to discover that this Ring of Kerry coastline is in fact quite beautiful from this point onwards and we had some stunning views as we drove along. Also pleased to see that the many tour coaches which go round the Ring do so anticlockwise and therefore opposite to us. Wherever there was a viewpoint there were also 3 or 4 coaches pulled over spilling out their passengers all armed ... read more

No chance of an umbrella today as far too windy so quite obvious that it was going to rain. It started at 6 am, I know this because when you sleep in a motorhome you hear every drop on the roof. We left the Blarney campsite at 10 am and it rained all day, all the time, hard and relentlessly until 7pm when we did get a few minutes of respite. Today was a scenic drive day. Ha ha. Nothing scenic about a view you can’t see for the raindrops on the windscreen, waves of rain lashing across the road and clouds so low you drive through them. We started off on the planned route which was through Cork then down to Kinsale, reputed to be one of the prettiest villages in Ireland. It did look ... read more

Today’s drive started with a lovely scenic route along the Copper Coast. Some beautiful views as we drove along of cliffs and deep inlets. The sea looked surprisingly calm and there were patches of blue in the sky which looked promising – “enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers” which my mother always said meant it was going to be fine. Alas, must have been too big a sailor, not enough of the blue as a big black cloud came and gobbled it all up. There were a couple of interesting places en route to Cork, Dungarvan and Youghal but didn’t stop because of the dratted rain. When we got to Cobh (Cove) we had a minor moment of panic when Bob couldn’t find his wallet and we wondered if it had ... read more

10/06/2012 Heading South (and it’s not raining !) As soon as we left the campsite we looked for fuel, as the Tandy tank was pretty empty. It is frightening to pay €100 for a few litres of liquid gold but at least our mpg is quite good so won’t need to fill up again for a while. Once away from the city we took the Old Military Road, R115, through the heart of the Wicklow Mountains. This leads over a quite wild moorland area of mainly peat bogs – we could see all round us, where the peat sods had been cut out. The road surface was pretty awful so we didn’t do this stretch of the trip very fast. The next section of the drive was also slow in places as we were taking the ... read more