Ireland is so different to what I
thought I would be like….I really don’t know what we were expecting to see but
perhaps a Leprechaun, a pot of gold & a guy playing the fiddle on every
street corner would have been more like it.
Kathy made it safely (Paul's Mum)
and joined us in the motorhome. Being that Kathy is Irish, she of-cause
was the brunt of all our bad Irish jokes and got the daily ribbing about being
Irish.
We started our journey in Holyhead
(Wales) and got the ferry to Dublin. It was really
exciting taking ‘wher’dmadaygo’ on the ferry for the first
time.
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Dublin is so much smaller in reality considering
it has such huge stories to tell (civil & political) and such big successes
like U2. It’s population according to Lonely Planet is 1.5m, not sure how
true that is but non-the-less it still isn’t that big. I guess from that
they mean the central area, but it’s not much bigger than Adelaide and you can
easily walk around and see it in a day.
We discovered the art of drinking Guinness in Dublin
which was fun...it's so much yummier if you gulp instead of sip and tastes 100%
better. But I reckon the Guinness family is a bit smart with this logic
as it then means people drink more, get drunk quicker and buy more
Guinness....so not to silly those Irish folk after all!
‘The emerald isle’ rained 12 days straight at
the beginning of our trip and by rain I don't mean sprinkle, more so torrential
down pour and August is supposed to be summer. We did get a little more
lucky later into the trip and got a few lovely days of sunshine, around
18degres and even got to wear just a t-shirt and jeans.
After Dublin we drove to Connemara National Park and stayed right
on the beach in a little village called Renvyle. The beach was just so
amazing but being that it was quiet isolated was pretty basic. The first
night we had the most amazing sunset & weather system set in and around the
mountains, which was just so spectacular and our last day we were hit with a
really full-on weather front which lasted another 4 days and followed us south
towards Galway and Doolin.
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| Renvyle Beach, Connemara National Park |
Didn’t think much of Galway. Doolin is home to the Cliffs of Mohr, which are just amazing. They are huge like the great Australian bite and so dramatic with the green fields, full on weather and clouds and wild, wild winds. They have a bit of trouble with people jumping off them, so if your ever doing the daily cruise around them you might get to see a bit more than you expected or become part of the ‘recovery mission’ – yucko and very sad!
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After that we followed the coast
south to Killarney and hired a car for a few days and did the Ring of Kerry,
Blarney Castle & Cork. It’s a really nice spot so ended up staying 2
days longer than we initially planned & even tried our hand at 'fly
fishing', of cause not without much frustration and a lost 'fly' hook up
a tree.
Paul caught 1 small trout but we
threw it back as it was too small, but really excited to have got one in our
first go. Paul's really into it now and always looking for the next possible
fishing spot.
We thought it would be all pubs with
singing, dancing & carrying on, drinking, jokes, laughs, cheap and
cheerful, but in fact found it to be dodgy pubs, grumpy people, bad fast
drivers and expensive. That's not to say that we haven't enjoyed it, but
was just so different to what we imagined. I didn’t think much of the
cities, but really enjoyed the countryside & National parks.
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