Mum and I flew into Dublin from Berlin with aer lingus and their suitably green colored planes and uniforms!
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| the little micra! |
Our rental car for the week is a little red Nissan micra and it has been really easy to drive, even on the tiny (and I mean one lane, no verge and rock walls either side) roads we've come across so far on our trip. We rented a gps as well, and it's proved a godsend (mostly!) in us knowing road names when the signs are missing.
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| Outside the stallion's boxes |
We set off from the airport bound for the Irish national stud. We walked around as the stallions were being led to service, paddock or stable; the mares and their super cute foals were put to bed for the night and listened as the tour guide made many euphemisms so the language would go over the head of the kids on the tour. It was an interesting insight into the peak of the industry.
From Kildare we drove across to our accommodation for the night, at Galway. Some of the roads are being re-done at the moment, and our gps was very confused so we had a bit of a detour along the new motorway to Limerick before correcting up to Galway.
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| Green, rocks and sheep! |
On our drive we lots of animals; sheep, goats, some cows and horses; but what struck me was the green-ness of everything and the use of rock everywhere - road side fences are rock walls, everyone has rock wall driveway entrances and even a proportion of stone houses!
We pulled into our bnb for the night, found an Irish pub and awoke to Marian's (our bnb hostess), huge irish breakfast. The irish make interesting brown bread! Marian had a good chat with us, she's the president of the local flower association (you should see her garden!) and has a daughter studying in Adelaide. Everywhere we go we are told that the person's son/daughter/relative is living in Australia at the moment, I think the unemployment realities of Ireland are pushing people elsewhere.
We set off in the little red micra for a day of driving around the Connemarra. It was a drizzly day, so we just stopped quickly at lots of different places, but spent most of the day in the car.
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| Friar |
We stopped at an old Franciscan Friar, which was down a one way 'lane' (if it can even be called that!) and wandered through the ruins.
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| In the Friar - note the burial plaques on the ground, some from the 1970s - a strange wish to be buried in the middle of a Friar I think..... |
We encountered some interesting roads on our journey, with one lane streets so little even the micra only just squeezed through, and blind corners that you hoped had no one coming the opposite direction. If we didn't have the gps we would have not had a clue! Although, it did take us down some interesting paths!
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| Some of the pretty views along the way |
The towns over here are so little and quaint, with barely two pubs marking some, others are larger with one or two main streets, but a fabulous laid back attitude in all, I've really enjoyed having a walk along (usually on a quest for a bathroom!).
The scenery has been more barren than we had expected, with mountain after mountain covered only with tufts of grass between exposed rock and greenery only in the lower areas. There are sheep and cute little lambs everywhere, which may explain the lack of vegetation.
We had a lamb pie for dinner, just to try to even up the balance a bit (joking Chloe!)
Day Three:
We hoped to get to Cliffs of Moher on our way to picking up Jess, my friend from Melbourne who's teaching in London and currently has school holidays, but just ran out of time. We went through some towns close to the area and had a pretty good view of some of the cliffs as we went, there seems to be spectacular views at every turn here, it's pretty amazing.
We picked up Jess without any problems and headed out to the Dingle peninsula, had a very mediocre soup at a cafe in Glin (you win some, you lose some!) and traversed the Connor Pass on our way to Dingle.
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| View from the Connor Pass |
The Connor Pass winds up through mountains, on a very little and at times quite precarious little road. Once at the top we pulled over and hiked up to the top of the hill for an even better view, but mainly just to get out of the car!
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| The one lane road for both direcctions of traffic - Connor Pass |
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| Fungie, the Dingle dolphin...... hmmmmm..... |
We drove onto Dingle, which is a cute little fishing village out on it's namesake's peninsula. We wandered down its streets, had a look in some of the gift stores, marvelled at the cutest little cheese shop (Simon you would be in heaven!) and had a coffee down on the dock area.
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| More at dingle |
We drove back from Dingle to Killarney where we met our next bnb hostess, Greta, who was also very lovely and settled in for the night.
Day four:
After discovering that Jess likes horseriding, we looked up on the Internet a few places to ring and found one with availability for us in the morning (hopefully before it started raining again), so we were all set for a day of driving around the ring of Kerry and taking in some pretty special scenery as well as a trailride to start the day.
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| A roadside stop along the way - incredible! |
Another hearty Irish breakfast under our belts (or expanding jeans!), we drove through some pretty incredible forest, lakeside and coastal views to get to our horses.
Our leader, Caroline, was a pretty typical horsey person, blunt, upfront and reasonably cautious. She relaxed a bit when we she could see we could ride. Mum was on a lovely plodder of a Clydesdale, Murphy, Jess had the piebald Clancy and I had the cheeky Gillipurn (spelling, who knows!)
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| The beautiful boys! |
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| Me on Gillipurn |
Our ride consisted of walking along the roads to get to the beach area, through a few inlets and sand dunes and a spell along the beach. We had some nice little trots with our horses flicking each other with their tails, or even kicking out in annoyance if one invaded the others personal space and I had a nice canter along. The scenery was spectacular, with mountains surrounding the deserted beach, and cute holiday homes dotted along the coast. It will be an awesome memory of the trip (even if we did have to wash our clothes again that night!)
After the excitement of the ride we drove around the Ring of Kerry and witnessed some pretty incredible views. Caroline had recommended we travel to Valentia island and we had a lovely lunch at Portmagee on the coast there.
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| Scenery along the drive |
In the afternoon we came across the ruinous Ballycarbery castle, the place where Jess was held against her will awaiting rescue from her future fantasy husband on a white horse(!), and a stone fort dating from early AD, that was closely guarded by a herd of heifers (Jess asked them politely to move, but they must not have heard; although, she swears one of them gave her the evil eye for the rest of her walk!)
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| Stone fort |
By the time we made it back to the bnb we were pretty zonked! Another long day of driving, but some great sights seen.
According to my trusty travel companions I must report on the fabulous Irish stew we had for dinner, sitting at the bar at Murphy's pub, and the rather large pint of bulmers I had that made for an interesting walk home. The end. (Jess and Mum's thoughts on the matter will receive no comment!)
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