Chateau de Chesny in Vatan to Callan, Ireland

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Today is a travel day from the Chateau hotel to Callan in Ireland. Despite being closer to Paris than Montcaret, we still had to be up early and be left the hotel by 7am which meant missing breakfast. Even though it appeared that we would have plenty of time, the hotel proprietor suggested we allow to get across Paris because of the traffic or any problems. How right he was! We encounted thousands of cars leaving Paris with congested motorways and thought how lucky it was that we were going the opposite direction. That soon turned out to be rather premature. The route to Charles de Gaulle airport goes right through the middle of Paris on a 3 lane motorway but builds up in the centre with merging traffic coming in from other directions. We ground to a complete halt and eventually found that a vehicle had caught on fire and they had closed all the lanes bar one. How insane, when there was holiday traffic. There was one burnt out vehicle sitting in 3 lanes all alone. Once past the bottle neck we were off again. By this time, Lindsay was starting to get a little stressed. He was even more so as we neared the airport looking for the correct lane for Terminal 3. He shot off to Terminal 2, missing the only off ramp! Finally, back on tract and on the route to Terminal 3 we got ourselves thoroughly confused by all the instructions that Pugeot had given us. A close up diagram of buildings and hotels finally sorted it out and we duly arrived. Hoo-bloody-ray!! While the GPS will get you to the airport, it didn’t get us to the Pugeot base.

So, onto the plane to Ireland where I think we were checked, rechecked and checked again before we even got on the plane. We flew Aer Lingus to Dublin with very mediocre service. I have picked up Jo’s bugs so wasn’t feeling very well so didn’t really see a thing except landing in Dublin. From there it was quite straight forward to get the car and get going south – except, the GPS wasn’t up to date and had non existent road intersections. That was soon turned off and we just followed the map and Breda’s instructions to Molassy Cottage. We seemed to be well into back country roads finding the cottage but duly arrived, unpacked and then headed in Callan to stock up on groceries since it was a Saturday night.

Molassy Cottage is quite lovely. It is thatched and completely renovated in every detail. There is absolutely nothing missing, it is neat and tidy, extremely comfortable, off the road up a little lane and very quiet. It is certainly a change from the haphazardness of Montcaret’s setup. It is also lovely to see English and hear English (Irish version) being spoken again after 6 weeks in Europe.

Breda and her son, Shane turned up in the evening to make sure all was well. Breda is a delightful friendly Irish woman and sure can talk! Her son, Shane is also lovely. He is mad on farming and animals and wanted to know all about farming in NZ from types of cows, how much they cost, how much they produce, how many cows, what the setup is, raising calves, bobby calves, pigs, etc, etc. He would be only 11 or 12 I think but what a wonderful kid to discuss farming with. Not many people care to converse about farming but here was a young lad who did.

We really like the feel of Ireland. It feels almost like NZ in some places. Paddocks, cows, hedges, green-ness farms and rolling countryside. It is also a bit cooler that Europe at present so it was more comfortable to be in too, although they are all complaining about it being too hot!

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