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After spending two relatively uneventful nights in Dublin, Mum and I were heading to Budget Car Hire to pick up our new travel buddy for the next two nights on our way to the Halloween festival in Derry - a dark blue little car that had four doors, four wheels, and was manual (I have no idea about cars...). Oh, I know that it had a diesel engine (brooom brooom!)! We were ready to begin our Ireland ROAD TRIP!
Mum had made a wise investment in a GPS navigation system, a nifty little gadget that proved its 40 Euro value instantly - I had been told that Ireland's road aren't like Australia's, but I never expected that the roads we drove on the majority of the time would be single car roads (we had to pull off to let other cars pass)! Only a small part of our trip was on actual highways. 'Nav Woman' (as she was aptly named) also provided us with some comedy along the way - she got incredibly cross when we ignored her navigational suggestions such as turning left 200m down the road instead of 100m (we're rebels!) and in her anal way would not cope well with road closures and signed detours. She would go quiet for a few seconds (like a brooding teenager), before huffily retorting 'Recalculating' and advising of a new direction. It was even better when her system would bug slightly, and her sensible instructions would turn into a scratched disco mix - 'R-r-r-recalculating calculating calculating. Tu-tu-turn... R-r-r-recalc-recalculating' (wikki wikki!).
Leaving Dublin, we headed south towards the tiny town of Wicklow, before heading west towards Kilkenny. We arrived in Kilkenny around 2pm, absolutely starving (what idiot embarks on a road trip without snacks?!). We had planned to park the car, grab some lunch, and have a wander around Kilkenny castle before continuing onwards to Galway. However, our plans were foiled by a little thing called 'no urban planning'. Where are the bloody carparks?! These medieval towns are so beautiful and interesting, but they are not pleasant to drive through (as evidenced by Mum's blood pressure upon leaving Kilkenny). The streets are tiny and winding, and it is difficult at times to know exactly where the road is leading. After doing about four tough laps in our little Ford up and down the main drag, we decided that parking was seemingly impossible, and we would have to sacrifice our stomachs for the sake of Mum's nerves. We begrudgingly trudged on west to Galway.
The people of Ireland are lovely, friendly people. Probably the nicest I have met so far on my travels (they could teach the French and Spanish a thing or two!). And this is no more evident than when they're in their cars. They are so patient and laid back! I suppose you'd have to be, considering their road systems aren't exactly top notch - Italian drivers would have a field day on their horns and waving their fists while driving in Ireland! And the number of tractors Mum and I saw putting along a main road would be enough to make a Spanish taxi driver's blood boil over! To begin with Mum and I weren't entirely sure if the road rules were the same in Ireland as they are back home. Every time we came to an intersection needing to turn right and there was another car coming in our direction, the other car would stop at the intersection and give way to us as we turned across their path. We thought that it must be a rule, it happened so often! We ended up asking the owner of our accommodation that night, and he just shook his head, smiled, and said, no, we are just polite people. We agree!
Before we left Dublin Mum had looked at hostel accommodation for Galway on the internet and had written down some directions to a hostel called 'Seaview Lodge Luxury Holiday Hostel' (sounded pretty awesome to me!). The main reason she liked the look of it was it had laundry facilities - having to re-wear dirty clothes for the last week had made clean clothes our main priority! The problem was, we hadn't actually made a reservation, as we were worried that we might decide to drive through Galway and stay in a different town. Mum had copied down the travel directions from the website as best she could, but seeing we hadn't made a booking the website didn't provide the actual street address - so Nav Woman was very little use in this instance. It also didn't help that there was a bridge closure on our path into Galways - we had driven for about 20 minutes towards the bridge, only to have to turn around and make a detour. We tried our best to follow the directions given, but ended up driving outside of Galway for about twenty minute before pulling over at a service station to ask for directions. The young blokes behind the counter laughed when I asked if we were close to Barna (where our hostel was). Turns out that we had driven north - Barna was about forty minutes south west from our current location. This information didn't help Mum's increasingly frazzled nerves... After what seemed like about two more hours of searching, Mum said, b***** it. Let's just take the next BnB we see! When we got to the front door, Mum inquired if they had a free room, and they did, and we took the room without hesitation - the owner was a little surprised when we declined her offer to see the room first! We didn't even bother to ask the price per night - Mum said she really didn't care, she just wanted a bed. Fair enough, as long as she was paying...
The next day we drove along the west towards Donegal, which was a beautiful, coastal drive. Mum and I were really getting into the swing of this whole road tripping thing, so it was a lot less stressful than the day before! We arrived in Donegal in the early evening and checked into a hostel we'd found in my Rough Guides book. Mum really wanted to get some Guiness pie - she was getting rather p'ed off that every Irish pub we came upon didn't serve it. I suppose that'd be like going to an Australian restaurant and expecting them all to serve pavlova for dessert, right? After dinner I performed a little surgery on my boots - after months of rough terrain (those cobblestones are such a b****!), weather and packing, my poor old, beautiful boots were a little worse for wear. But being the resourceful, cheapskate backpacker that I am, I administered a little DIY shoe repair! And it came up a treat. First I got out my black Nikko and coloured in all the spots where the black vinyl had worn away. Then I got out the super glue I had purchased earlier that night and attempted to make my boots a tad more waterproof by gluing the tip of my worn boot and along where the boot joins the sole. Genius. Let's hope that it works!
We got up early the next morning, ready to tackle the Cliffs of Donegal (actually, I suppose tackle isn't really the correct word - gingerly view?) but when we got to the car, the screen had frozen over! Nuts! We had to really work the wipers and squirt the heck out of the window washer for about ten minutes before the screen was less accident inducing.
The Cliffs of Donegal were amazing - Mum's driving antics were even more amazing. The Cliffs of Donegal are basically these really high, sheer cliffs down into the ocean, which is fine, except that to see them you have to drive along this crazy road that is about 5m from the side of the cliff. Mum is not very good with heights. She is very, very, VERY scared of heights. So the drive along this crazy road was very, very, VERY entertaining for me (sorry Mum!). We ended up parking the car part way along and walking to the end of the cliffs. There were these insane, bad-ass dare devil sheep that made grass eating into an extreme sport - they would merrily munch away less than a metre from the edge of the cliff. I wonderful how many sheep mysteriously disappear from the flock every week... The drive back was quite interesting - Mum kept looking down the cliffs while she was driving, which did not help the situation. I had to keep ordering her to just focus on the front left corner of the car, but she insisted on scaring the wits out of herself by looking down, which made me giggle a bucket load!
Next on our vertigo inducing list of things to see was the Giant's Causeway. I really can't explain what exactly this is - you'll have to check out the photos to really get it. But anyway, it was really, really great. While it still involved cliffs, this time we were walking at the bottom of them, which was a relief for Mum's (again!) increasingly frazzled nerves! We were going to check out the Carrick Rope Bridge (this awesome rope bridge that is suspended between the mainland and a small island) but we were running very short on time - we had to drop the car off at the Belfast Airport, and catch a bus to Derry that night. We decided to give the rope bridge a miss, and head straight to Belfast.
Lucky for us there was a direct bus from Belfast Airport into Derry, which made life a whole lot easier. The driver Tim was a great bloke - so up for a chat! He was trying to continue our conversation over his shoulder while driving towards Derry, which I suppose was a little frightening. But what was really great about the bus trip was that the entire bus joined in the conversation and started chatting with us. The our and a half trip went by so quick because all of these lovely Irish people around us were so keen to hear where we were from, and to share with us their ideas of where to go in their city. Like I said before, Irish people really are the nicest people I've met.
By the way, Mum and I saw snow on the side of the road on the way to Belfast - woooo hoooo!!!
Talk to you soon!
Love Hayley x
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