Ireland

I have been remiss in posting here in the last few days, fairly hectic but fun - so, a quick round up of our trip in Ireland. I will do a couple of photo dumps to cover this part of our journey.
We have found Ireland very green, lush fields, 4 seasons in one day, friendly people, fantastic roading system, still has very narrow, albeit sealed, lanes with large tractors. They pride themselves on having tidy towns and it showed.
Most of the country reminded us of Southland, the Dingle peninsula has rocky, mountainous terrain with many hiking tracks that are used extensively. Talking to one chap, Ireland is still very much territorial, dislike (he used stronger words) the English with a passion, each county are even wary of each other. Neil has worn his All Blacks jersey that did start conversation which was great. One chap we talked to had played rugby in the Taieri for a short time 30 years ago then was talking about a small town called Cromwell, when he found out we lived in Cromwell he was so excited! He wasn’t so excited when he found out my ancestor, Mary Moffat, married Oliver Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell is not a popular chap in Ireland 😆 He whispered “Don’t tell anyone else that in this pub”
We spent a bit of time researching cemeteries to find Diane’s ancestors to no avail unfortunately but found some other interesting sites along the way.
Compared to Great Britain the houses are more single storied, plaster cast homes. The farm sheds and houses looked to be modern but that took away some of the historical atmosphere we were used to.
We had an interesting drive heading to Cloghane near Dingle. We wanted to take some back roads and did we ever!! Over a mountain top on a single lane ‘road’ which was as close to the Skippers as you could get out of New Zealand but it was mostly asphalt. Imagine our surprise when we rounded a corner and came across Ireland’s highest pub “Top of the Coom’ 😆 we laughed and laughed and of course had to have a Guinness to celebrate getting there.
Our accommodation was the very colourful O’Connors Guesthouse, beside an estuary and camping ground which was popular even though it poured with rain. This is where we met aforementioned Irish chap, the Irish music started at 9:30, and the small pub was packed, such a great atmosphere to hear them all singing at the top of their voices. D&D weren’t so impressed when they could still hear them at 3 in the morning. We were up the top of the pub at the far end, lucky us didn’t hear a thing.
Cobh was a beautiful seaside town and St Colman’s Cathedral was one of the best we have visited.
Visited a couple more castles, I think Neil has done his quota 😆
We dropped the car in Dublin in a multi storey carpark with no clear signage and a hidden away office on the top deck - I went hunting and found a chap who was walking around the carpark who just happened to be working for the Sixt Car Rental company - it was all very random.
After settling in we walked to the famous Temple Bar, the oldest pub in Ireland - so expensive but worth it to hear the Irish music and soak up the atmosphere. Photos in next post
Dinner at our hotel entertained by our Spanish waiter who wants to go to Australia so was asking a lot of questions.
We enjoyed our journey with David and Diane, plenty of laughs, sharing the driving and navigating, which went really well I must say. Now for us, a week in Wales and D&D head off to England.Read more