the rest of the holiday

Cycling over what now ?

It was very pleasant to wake up with no cycling to do , but now with the cycling completed what will we do with our remaining few days ? the original plan was to walk carnitouhill irelands biggest mountain , that mountain was back near killarney (well the original plan was actually to do the walk in-between cycling days) , it was good weather but we knew it was a 2-3 day expedition to go back to do the mountain then head of to Dublin for our ferry from there on Friday , we opted to continue touring the towns sheila really wanted to go for a swim somewhere tomorrow also my knee was sore so we chose to head away from the hills it will give us an excuse to visit this part of Ireland again ,

after a bit of map studying and debate about choices of where to swim we settled on lough hyne which was a perfect decision, this lough ( pronounced the same as Scottish loch )is a unique sea lake because of an underwater shelf where it joins the sea , this underwater shelf causes unique tidal system where the tide goes out for 8 hours but only in for 4 ! apparently its really good to go night kayaking here as the lough has lots of bioluminescence ,but we arrived there midday in beautiful sunshine and had an excellent swim , it was just a shame there wasn’t anywhere near to stay the night

we drove to a typical irish village of this area called rosscarberry it was a lovely wee town and the birth place of michael collins an irish hero of these parts from the easter rising theres a lot of monuments around to their hero of there independence from english rule , i suppose where i was brought up michael collins was viewed as an irish traitor and i find it hard admire him which is strange as i suppose he is like a modern day wiliam wallace to the irish , unlike us scots they chose not to be governed from england and this man helped them achieve their independence ,whatever the politics its a lovely place and i had a bowl of soup and a guinness in the town square bar called Nolan's , there was some local information in this bar and it looked a pleasant short drive to a town called clonakilty that had a decent looking camp site ,we had a bit trouble finding the camp site and it was on a dairy farm so a it wiffy at times but it turned out fine we had a pleasant walk into town with lots of choices on places to eat for a small seaside town it had plenty bars and restaurants , we eventually chose a place called an sugan for dinner as it looked like it had a good selection of seafood sheila has turned pescatarian and I’m not far off it myself , i had seen some write ups about a bar in town called brewery bar which we went to next but it was just a ordinary wee town bar nothing special, we walked back to the odonnel hotel which is famous locally for having a monkey buried in its grounds it had came in an american bomber that had crash landed in town during the war , and there was a lot of memorabilia from it in the hotel ,they had a lot of folk musicians playing and singing in there and it was , mobbed we never stayed long and went to barras a much better band on smaller with loads of music stuff around the walls ,

a good night out like that always leads to a long lie in the morning , but we had no cycling to do now and also no mountain either , some time at a beach at the celtic sea the beach of choice ( there is plenty around here to choose from ) is called inchydoney beach a local blue flag beach , we had a think about where to go for the night as we were near cork and blarney for the popular tourist attraction of the blarney stone ,

we opted to give both those a miss and head to kilkenny ( no sure i like the name but they didny !) once we eventually arrived there we found the campsite easily ,well it would be more accurate to say sheila directed me right to the camp site reception like a well tuned sat nav , the camp site is called tree grove and the bloke at reception was helpful and good craic in fact this camp site became our favourite of our trip and we would have loved to have stayed longer , the walk into town was pleasant along a riverside path I ate ice cream in the sun en route ,

the medieval town of kilkenny is lovely with a castle and cathedral , the kilkenny brewery is right in the centre of town also which i would have loved to visit but we arrived to late for a tour ,we had a pub in mind called kytelers inn this pub was opened around 1300 by dame alice kyteler ,who was a bankers daughter who got rich by burying 4 rich husbands and was then convicted of witchcraft ,the pub its self was very nice inside and the menu hasn’t changed in 20 years the usual irish fare stew steak pie etc not really what me and sheila eat anymore but the fish and chips were alright if a bit over priced , when the band started up the singer asked various tables around where people were from there was about 30 people in and it seemed apart from us two germans and a Canadian couple everyone in there was american tourists !

we left and went to cleeres where i could get my lap top out and use the wifi to work on my blog , cleeres has a small theatre /gig venue at the back but a band were playing at the bar tonight by the look of the posters theres been a few reasonably famous acts played there over the years ,

we would have loved to have stayed longer but we only had one more night tonight Thursday and the ferry was early on Friday morning so we opted to drive up the motorway to Dublin and have a night out in dublin with a city centre hotel to end the tour , this turned out to be a wise choice we arrived in dublin around 14:30 and had to pay two tolls one electronic like the watford bridge that i will need to pay on line , and another two cash tolls , when we eventually found terminal 3 at the harbour ( its big harbour ) we couldn’t find anywhere to park the van! we had a search on the web and it showed no hotels near the ferry terminal at a reasonable price it was also hard to find any hotels at a reasonable price with car parking after a frustrating couple of hours driving around we opted to park the van at a street meter and pay 3hrs parking at 2.90 euros an hour that would pay it beyond the 7pm pay and display time , i double checked the bike padlocks and we grabbed overnight bags , I had a plan there was a big inn called the ferryman very close to where we had abandoned the van , it was cool inside and i hoped they would have a spare room and offer us a walk in deal ! the barman said he had to check about potential bookings could we wait half an hour ? 3 pint of guinness later he said they had availability and it was 120 euros ! i found another hotel walking distance called kildare hotel for 65 and we walked there it was fine and closer to the main party area of town , it would just mean a longer walk in the morning back to the van which i was worried about parked up a street with bikes hanging on a back rack ,

it was a short walk from our hotel to Grafton street , I’ve been to Dublin 4-5 times now and knew that Grafton street toward the hae’penny bridge and temple bar is where the party is , and i wasn’t wrong for a Thursday night the area was full to bursting with people out , we went to a bar called bankers for dinner and another two bars for beers the actual temple bar ( not the area ) was too busy so we walked passed took some photos at the bridge and went to the auld dubliner where there was a good guitarist singing ,and finished the night in ocalaghans where the singer had just finished ,

Every time i go to Dublin i always say I’m never going back as i always feel i get ripped off everything seems so expensive , but it worked out ok i suppose expensive compared to home definitely and more expensive than city prices at home , but not as expensive as it used to be , we had a good night out and it was a good ending to the trip but having now been all over Ireland i would say Dublin is nowhere near the best city in Ireland ,

I was worried about the abandoned van when we got up at 06:20 , the hotel gave us a breakfast picnic bag , and it was a short walk to the parking spot , thankfully the van and bikes were untouched , somebody could easily have stole the wheels or seats of the bikes ! but i worried unnecessarily,

we were one of the first cars to arrive at the ferry port at 06:55 the reception wasn’t even open yet , and we didn’t board the ferry until after 8 ,it was a much smaller ferry than the belfast one and very little on this ship to do the other ferry had shops and a cinema games room choice of cafes but this ferry had a bar and that was it , the breakfast and afternoon dinner were inclusive in the price it was canteen style which was surprisingly good , over 8hrs on this ferry watching daytime TV or sleeping was a bit dull the sea was surprisingly calm and the exit from dublin harbour was beautifull there was a flottila of tall ships sitting out at sea waiting to go in ,the the sea harr came in and i just opened up my macbook to type out this blog most of the sailing time

    whence we arived into liverpool the ship was delayed due to a lock issue apparently ! everybody was in their vehicles far too early it was cooking we sat for over 30minuits cooped up in a car on deck with the sun baking us ,eventually we took off welll started to the car in front of us broke down which delayed us again slightly , i was keen to get moving up the road it was around a 4hr drive home from liverpool and i was going to muscleburgh races the next day ,
   firstly though sheila wanted to see antony gormleys beach statues just alonmg from liverpool docks at a nicely developed beach in a district of liverpool called crosby , and they wer worth the fleeting visit , itwas worth the delay in the end we got home at 23:00 there was 3 sets of motorway closures with diversioins on the way home and a flash flood near the lake district which caused all 3 lanes of the motorway to slow to about 20mile an hour making us nearly 5 hours to get home
the circular route from home around ireland was complete the wee home on wheels bongo had done 1590 miles but it was a great wee adventure we were sad it was over , only one thing for it we went up to the bull for an hour to celebrate and i had a few pint of guinness