What a vibrant place! It’s like Dingle on steroids. Having parked in the railway station car park we wandered into town to find a restaurant. Galway is known for its music scene, food and bars. Being a Friday night, of course, all the notable restaurants were fully booked. We had found a Portuguese restaurant on Google that got good reviews so we booked a table. We arrived there to find that there were doing a special three course set menu with paired wines. It all sounded delicious.
Wednesday, May 13 started off horrible with more lashing rain and extremely windy. However, we were not deterred as we wanted to drive the Slea Head Drive. This is done clockwise as that’s the way the buses go and the roads are extremely narrow. Of course, you had some numpties who decide to go the other way and create chaos and bedlam. It’s a 24 mile loop from Dingle so we needed to drive around 20 minutes to get to the start. We also used the drive through Dingle town to decide on where to stay the night when we had finished as we fancied a meal out and some proper Irish music in a pub.
First stop was Ventry Beach, which was lovely but strangely had an Irish warship anchored in the bay. This was followed by some quite dodgy tourist attractions. Dun Beag Fort had collapsed a few years ago, the Famine Cottages weren’t bad but the Beehive Huts were a rip off.
Yet another peaceful night in Dora and we awoke on Sunday, May 3 in the car park of Camus Farm to stunning views across the fields. We left relatively early for us at 09.10 as we had booked a ferry trip to go round to the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse at 14.00 from Baltimore and we wanted to visit a few places on the way. First stop was the Drombeg Stone Circle that was created around 150BC with an altar stone that is aligned to where the sun sets on December 21 (Winter Solistice). Next, we saw the waterfall at Leap village. According to legend, many people escaped the law by disappearing into the dense forest around Leap.
Wednesday night at Charles Fort was a bit blustery as we were high up but it was still a peaceful one. We left around 09.30 on Thursday to make our way down towards Old Head of Kinsale to visit the Lusitania Museum. The sinking of the Cunard passenger ship in 1915 by a German U Boat was instrumental in the USA joining the First World War as there were many Americans on board. No one survived. The ship sank very quickly when a second explosion occurred soon after the first. At the time it was thought the U Boat had fired a second torpedo. The more likely reason is that it was carrying ammunition for the British Army! The museum itself is in the old Signal Point that had been established during the Napoleonic Wars to warn of imminent attack along the west coast of Ireland. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty miserable so the views weren’t great!
Our Irish adventure has begun! We left home on Wednesday, April 22 at 13.30 hours, slightly later than planned, and drove to Fishguard via Birmingham to check on Liz’s parents’ flat. This all took a bit longer than expected so we didn’t get to our overnight stop until 20.30 hours. The stop was The Harp Inn at Letterstone, about 15 minutes from the ferry port. We were meeting up with Maria and Jane, who also have an Adria Twin called Arty, as travel companions. The inn was a great stopover with 5 designated places for mohos with water and electricity if required (SfS:S38630S). Sadly, the food was mediocre at best and even the Abbots ale was off!
Dora The Explorer 