Hi All,
We travelled down the coast and visited ….lots of places (Editor: This just goes to show why I SUGGEST you write the blog on a regular basis because the muscle between our ears isn´t getting used much and WE forget so let me help you)
We travelled across to Wexford where after seeing locals wandering towards a sports ground David asked a lady what was on and she said it was a Gaelic football game .We briefly contemplated going but the skies looked rather ominous so we decided to give it a miss. If it had been a hurling match we probably would have gone regardless of the weather. We started driving up the east coast of Ireland on a narrow hedge bound coastal road and saw a rather amazing sight. A
We continued on the County Wicklow and discovered that it one the most used film location in Europe. Some of the films that have been shot in the County include Braveheart, King Arthur and the series Ballykissangel .It was a pretty area but not breathtaking.We even stumbled upon a town called Newcastle.
wind farm about ten kilometres offshore from Arklow, a town about 70 kilometres south of Dublin. It a rather impressing rising from the sea.We even discovered that Ireland has long stretches of sandy beaches and the brave can even go swimming with a wet suit.We stumbled upon a camp grounds nearby and contemplated stopping for the night but it was extremely windy which is why they put the wind farm there I guess. We have since read that the area around Arklow is one of the windiest locations in Ireland.Dried the tent on a partially constructed road. Perfect for laying out the tent and drying. Sometime the process only takes about 30 minutes and it is quite a relief to have the full range of sleeping options. Car, tent and if necessary hostel or hotel. (Editor: park bench ,tree, barn , cemetery etc etc)
We visited Wicklow and asked at a petrol station where the meeting of the waters was located in the county. The attendants said that they had heard of it but… Luckily a customer overheard my question and gave me directions and it was about 20km away. Time to get to know your local area boys. My father believes that we have family links to the location so I was curious to visit. It certainly was a pleasant spot with the meeting of two rivers and was the inspiration for Irish poet Thomas Moore to write his poem of the same name ´the meeting of the waters´.
Dublin.
We only had a GPS coordinate to get to the caravan park. It was something different and we just followed the most likely road until the distance for the target point started increasing and then turned around and aimed in the correct direction again. Worked well and we actually only had one wrong turn before finding the signs to the caravan park and that was only about 1km way!
Quite a pricey caravan park. 21 euro per night for 2 person, car and tent. Then another 1.5 euro per person for 8 minutes hot water in the shower! Work it out in Australian dollars. One saving grace was a wifi connection and the wild rabbits around the tents.
The weather in Dublin was quite odd. We woke up to a beautiful sunny morning. It was cloudy by the time we reached town and by lunch time it had rained, been sunny again, rained again and looked like settling in for the day only to clear again. This continued for the day and into the evening. Unstable weather and this is summer! The weather forecast has regularly been 18-24 deg C.
A tip. Don´t leave home without your umbrella even if it is sunny and no clouds in view. Today we have a lovely sunny morning but the weather forecast is for storms and possible flooding. Might be hard to believe for a novice but we have seen how quickly the weather changes around this area.
Here is an interesting fact. There are 100 golf courses within 10km of Dublin. I thought that the Scottish liked golf but from what I have seen in our road trip the Irish have taking quite a liking to it. They also have pitch and putt places all over the place as well.
Off to town to see if we can get some cheap river dance tickets for tonight and some new shoes for the other hobo.
Bye,
David and Vanessa
