13.11.14

Dia duit from County Kerry

We have been in Ireland for just over a week and a half and we are loving it. The traffic is only heavy near the cities and it is similar to driving in the South Island where at times we are the only ones on the road. There are lots of places to get off the road. The people are great, very welcoming and quick with a joke. Buying a train ticket is like experiencing 5 minutes of informal stand up. At our campsite on a farm near the Giant’s Causeway we arrived around 4pm and the owner gave us dessert left over from Sunday lunch.

To continue from the last blog where we said we were going to walk from Looe to Polperro in Cornwall. What a great walk with places on the way for a cuppa and great views of the coast. With ‘small diversions’ it ended being close to 17 km. Polperro is a small fishing port where cars not permitted, smugglers’ caves are still evident. Even weeding the steep banks around the harbour and houses is done by ‘gardeners’ abseiling down the sides! 

Looe at very low tide.

Kapiti coast? No ...but 1/2 way to Polperro!

Entrance to Polperro at last!

Typical Polerro Street.

He'd also worked in Napier!!

After this the weather packed in for the next few days so we visited Plymouth, Torquay and Exeter in the rain. Still it was fascinating to briefly see these towns.

A splendid Drake looks out over Plymouth Hoe.

Marg checks out Portsmouth in windy and cool conditions. 

We started our drive north and had a great couple of days in Cheltenham staying with friends from Colin’s teaching days at Ellesmere College when we spent a year in the UK in the 70’s. Lots of catching up and we were totally spoilt. On the Monday we were heading North to Newark-on-Trent to get some minor things done on the van when it wouldn’t start. After phoning all the numbers we had been given it turned out that Fiat UK had not loaded our details into their database. 

So after 5 hours someone came and got Peedie started and said we weren’t to turn the engine off between Cheltenham and Newark! So we said goodbye to our friends and drove the 2 hours to Newark without further problems. Weren’t we wonderfully placed for a breakdown!

Beautiful Exeter cathedral.

A surprise in Newark! Who knew about this???

Remains of the 1216 castle in Newark where King John was poisoned (?) and died….dead he did!

The complex where we purchased Peedie from has its own campsite with a TV lounge, good internet, heated swimming pool and a sauna. So we had plenty to do for the 2 days while they were working on putting a new starter motor into the van and fixing some of the listed items of warranty problems. We started to head over to Holyhead to catch the ferry to Dublin staying a couple of nights at the stately home of Chatsworth near Bakewell on the way. After Castle Howard we are aware that if there is a caravan park in the grounds of a stately home you get a huge discount on admission to the house and gardens. Our visit coincided with Halloween and Chatsworth goes all out with lots of things for the kids such as finding all the spooky things in paintings in the house. During our visit we were bumping into witches, zombies, ghosts and vampires, which was fun. The gardens really impressed us with all the modern sculptures. The campsite was full of families as it was half term holiday and the kids came around trick or treating to the caravans and vans.

Welcome to Chatsworth House, enough room for all!

We stayed late!

Chatsworth cascade, Queen Victoria was impressed apparently …and said so!

Top of cascade and 'Halloween'. 

Wow! But all gone and a garden is in its place.

Marg in Halloween coal tunnel, all of the kids just loved it, so did we. One family had to go through it 5 times!!

Tunnel info'.

The Serpentine (river) hedge.

One of many sculptures in the grounds.

Remarkable one piece marble sculpture…..veil, wow!

We would recommend anyone visiting the UK to visit various historic sites join the National Trust (UK) as it’s saved us many £s in entry fees. Join through NZ Historic Places Trust.

The ferry crossing was ok even though there had been a storm the night before. The Dublin campsite was about 20 minutes west of the city - one of the “HoponHopoff” tours picked us up from there each day. What a great city! We only had a couple of days and managed to visit lots of places. Trinity College has an amazing old library with 2 stories of books. It is also home to an elaborately illustrated set of gospels from 800AD, “The Book of Kells”. The exhibition covers everything,  about similar books, explaining details such as what all the dyes and inks were made from.

 Our own and personal double decker in Dublin! We were the only passengers 
into the city.

One of Trinity Coll library alcoves.

More of the full view of Trinity Coll library.

Ahhh, Dublin…. 

We found the statues of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde and saw several of the plaques naming the places mentioned in Joyce’s Ulysses. Visited the main museum, which has an outstanding collection of Viking loot. Saw the post office where the declaration of independence was made in 1916 and saw the document itself at Trinity College library. Did a tour of the Guinness factory with a free drink at the bar on the top of the building with great views of the city. Sampled beef and Guinness pie. When we visited the remains of Dublin Castle there was some filming going on for something set in the 1800s.

Ha'penny Bridge, great story here! 

Oscar Wilde ruefully resting on his 'laurels'???

Supping a 'G' the 7th floor at the brewery. The founder signed a 900 year lease from the city on the land….and they agreed to a minuscule rent as well!

On our way north to Belfast we visited a Neolithic tomb Bru na Boinne at Newgrange. This has been extremely well restored with work on the outer curved wall - we were struck by the similarity with the tomb on the Orkneys, Maes Howe. To think 5000 years ago people travelled around these islands.

NewGrange Neolithic tomb - magnificent.

Entrance to NewGrange Neolithic tomb. 24 people only inside at one time.

Crossing the boarder into Northern Island was interesting as the only thing that marked it was a sign saying the speed limit signs were in MPH and not KPH. When we crossed back into Eire today there wasn’t even that and the only way we knew was that the signs were now bilingual. Compare this with every other border crossing into the UK! Even in Europe there is a sign with the EU ring of stars and the country’s name on it. It is also interesting to notice how the people in Eire refer to Northern Island. It is always something like up North or sometimes Ulster but never Northern Island.

Belfast was fascinating. We had a totally automated campsite (a human being came to do the cleaning) about 15 minutes by train North alongside the Belfast Lough (Bay). 

Belfast camp sunrise.

Lots of money has been poured in to restore this city since the Good Friday Agreement 1998. We took a bus tour of the city including going into West Belfast along the Falls and Shankhill Roads. The murals are very heart wrenching and seeing the peace lines (walls between Catholic and Protestant areas, some higher than the former Berlin Wall) and gates. What shocked us was the guide saying that these gates are still locked at night and in one area they remained locked all weekend. We saw the bombproof wall (5 metres thick) around the old courts of justice in what is said to be the most bombed street in Europe. 

Belfast, Stormont.

Protestant Shankhill.  

Catholic Falls Road.

Peace Wall, Barriers close at night and weekends………….

Belfast market. Fthr TED and company are alive and well!!

Had a great look around the Titanic Belfast celebrating the building of the ship in Belfast and following her story. Visited the Ulster Museum on a very wet Saturday. Great exhibition on The Troubles. We were reliably informed that a pub called The Bot (short for Botanical) would be screening the rugby NZ vs England so we squashed in there with students from Queens College. A great way to spend a wet afternoon.

One of the challenges with travelling in a van at this time of year is finding campsites, which are open. We can free camp but needing the heater going chews through the gas so we are trying to get electric hook ups when we can. So this is influencing our itinerary a wee bit. The other thing influencing sightseeing is that the sun is setting at 4.45pm with dusk starting at around 3pm. The compensation is that the dusk is the most beautiful soft light providing some lovely colours.

We headed up to the north coast and explored the area from Ballycastle to Bushmills. The main attraction is the Giant’s Causeway and from our campsite we walked across the road and joined the coastal walk of about 5 miles to the Causeway. 

On the way to Giants Causeway on our 10 km walk.

Great views on the way to Giants Causeway.

Coastal sights everywhere we looked.

Oona waits for Finn McCool…again!

 Finn finally on the way to see the beloved Oona!

39...….Steps??

Giant basalt columns.

This is a truly spectacular coast with ruined castles, Spanish Armada shipwrecks, sheer cliffs and interesting rock formations. We then headed south and with a couple of days of heavy rain we did not do much sightseeing but had a quick walk around the medieval part of Galway.

We are now staying at Tralee and have just spent today driving around the Dingle Peninsular. It was sunny and spectacular. 

Dingle at its best…cheers?? A drop ne'er passed our lips or the next day or the ne…!

Beautiful street view in this lovely town. See length of shadow………. at 10min after 2pm!!

Dingle peninsula. 

Dingle Peninsula - really great surf except for the rocks!

Dingle town has lots of galleries and interesting shops and had a great fish pie for lunch. We had read that this was a Gaelic speaking area and we overheard people speaking in Gaelic at the restaurant. Many of the signs on the Peninsular are only in Gaelic. There is a 8-9 day walk around this part of the world called the Dingle Way. 

Could be worth a walk in the future. Slainte´ from us!

Good night…………... Slainte´