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Published: April 29th 2008
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Hello from Ireland.
We have been touring around the Emerald Island for the last couple of weeks, knocking a bit of rust off our van Bert (due to the very bumpy roads). We dropped in on some more of Sandra's relations Hugh, Peter and Clodagh for some welcome home cooking before sailing out of Holyhead, north Wales.
We landed staight into rush hour traffic in Dublin, and immediately got very lost and rather frustrated with the traffic queues (especially as we had arrived without a map). Thank god for Jonny White, our cellphone and his map, who in 20 minutes had talked us to his front doorstep 😊
Jonny took very good care of us over the following couple of days, giving us the run of his apartment, entertaining us in the evening, and letting us help clean out his pantry prior to him moving house on the weekend.
Dublin provided weather which was pretty typical of our stay in Ireland - cold, windy and occasionally rainy. We did the usual tourist sites, focusing on the cheap/free ones where possible (we are refusing to pay to go into churches these days), and Simon managed to claw back
a good portion of the entrance fee to Jameson's Distillary by being selected for the whiskey tasting portion of our tour 😊
We also really enjoyed our trip to Kilmainham Gaol, an interesting example of victorian prison science (effect of sunlight, fresh air, isolation and silence on prisioners) with a background of history chronicaling the fight for independance in Ireland via the people held there.
We started driving north and took a brief stop in Belfast to do a bus tour of the city and hear a little bit of history of how the troubles affected the area. The guide kept going on about all the wonderful glass buildings going up, which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago due to the bombers. There is still plenty of evidence of the troubles in town, from the 50 foot high "peace line" fence separating rival neighbourhoods, to the sectarian murals of the republicans and unionists in different parts of town.
On our way to Belfast, Bert had a bit of an episode, with the end of his muffler starting to drag along the tarmac of the motorway. Never fear - we were carring some plastic coated wire to
tie up grocery bags, which had him bodged back into safe(r) working order in a jiffy.
The wire stayed on with no further problems for the next couple of days as we had to wait for a garage to open the following Monday (this occurance happening on Saturday) - during this time we drove all around the northern Irish coast and by the time we found the mechanic the muffler was in two separate pieces!
The mechanic we found was really good and fixed Bert for a very reasonable price, but did give us a hard time about Bert's age and how he had to fabricate a adapter to fit an off the shelf muffler to our non standard vehicle..... but now all is as good as new.
From Belfast we took the scenic coastal road around to the Giant's Causeway, a unique geological rock feature where all the rocks look like really long hexgonal paving stones (photos attached).
We also had a couple of really nice scenic camping sites in this area - pitching up for the night overlooking the sea. We did "rough camp" a couple of nights in nice looking picinic areas -
the first of these was great, but the second drove home the requirement to be completly out of view (if possible) of the road, as we had people driving past honking their horns at us at all hours......
Once Bert had been repaired, we headed to Derry to check out the Bogside murals (photos attached), then headed down the western coast to Sligo. Here we visited the megolithic cemetery - central stone tombs surrounded with stone circles in various degrees to preservation. These where a bit boring at first (it felt like we were just wandering around in a stoney field) but the ones we came across last made the trip worthwhile.
We then headed further down the coast and spent a day driving around the Connemara region. This was quite deserted, windswept and very like central Otago. We checked out some bogs and peat areas as well for which the area is renowned - lovely.
The following day we headed down to the Dingle pennisular to visit the cliff of Moher. These were quite impressive, with rows of cliff outcrops dissapearing into the distance (although they wern't white as we were for some reason expecting).
After this we headed towards the Rind of Kerry - meant to be one of the most scenic areas of Ireland. Unfortuntely the day we were there it rained all day! So everything looked rather rain soaked and misty - you will have to imagine the amazing scenery from the rain soaked photos - just like we had to. We did however find a few ruined castles and cool stone forts to visit before heading to Cork.
Just out of Cork we visited Blarney and its famous castle where we had to do the tourist thing and kiss the Blarney stone. This involved handing upside down out over the castle ramperts to kiss the stone - and obtain the "gift of the gab" (if not already present!).
We are currently awaiting our overnight ferry to (hopefully the warm and sunny) France, where we land at Roscoff.
We will update you further once we are set up in France.....
S&S
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