For yours truly and himself the path to good holiday intentions have been
paved with hell. Despite the cluster headaches and the rain, not to mention
my extreme reluctance to plan anything involving enforced relaxation, we
managed to have a very good relaxing time - well most of it.

The drive down of about 340 miles took an hour and a half longer than
anticipated, ok the roads have improved from the old Drogheda car park but
unfortunately, getting out of Dublin involved bumper to bumper and I feel
nothing but sorry for the poor folks who have to do that commute twice a
day. While the main roads are magnificent, the same cannot be said for the
rest, some are like patchwork quilts of concrete and bitumen and the others
are just plain bad - I sure missed the comfortable seats of Fat Tony 1 (BMW
535i) compared to the arse-numbing experience of the VW Touareg especially
when doing bouncy bouncy along the Irish country road.

I had nearly forgotten, I say nearly as just getting over the Newry Dundalk
border jolted my memory, just how ahem unique the Irish motorists are. The
queue for the Toll Plaza was like the fecking dodgems and I have never seen
as many head on collision near misses as I have in the last week - mostly
caused by locals overtaking on blind bends - how do I know they were locals?
the car registration places denote the county KY (Kerry) C (Cork) and the KY
's had my legs like jelly by the end of the trip.

Those of you who have driven in the Republic of Ireland will be aware that
the hard shoulder is used for overtaking i.e. the slower car moves in to the
left to enable the faster car to overtake - not all roads have this and for
those that do the hard shoulder often runs out without warning. It would be
a good idea but unfortunately "local" drivers tend to sit about 12 inches
over the dividing line when driving normally and not all (very few actually)
like giving way to non locals. Of course, many of the roads we travelled on
were only really wide enough for one vehicle and the lane huggers true to
form, hogged the whole road - scary biscuits when you have a great big coach
bearing down on you or worse still Billy Whizz in a Winnebago or Cecil Slow
in a camper van. My role as the navigator was much required during the 5
hour Ring of Kerry drive which I have subtitled Chariots of Ire.

We felt really sorry for the German family in their rented Ford Focus who we
came upon standing at the side of the road with their car blocking the path
of all vehicles coming or going. They had been there for 2 hours waiting for
the recovery truck having wrecked the passenger side wheel and the steering
arm whilst narrowly avoiding a collision with an oncoming van. They hadn't
even a warning triangle in the vehicle and we were able to give them one of
the two in our car we exchanged wry smiles with the stranded tourists over
that irony- I wonder how much longer they had to wait.

But notwithstanding all the driving woes, our house was wonderful with more
than everything we needed with the harbour quite literally at the bottom of
the garden and the most stupendous views all set in tranquil surroundings an
almost deafening silence that was hard to get used to at first - but we did.
(Iwill put a couple of pics up on photo wotsit and some panoramas once
himself has stitched them together)

We did some driving but nowhere near our usual 1500-2500 miles and just took
in the sights and sounds of Kenmare, Kerry, Killarney and other stuff like a
Seafari watching the common and grey seals which was wonderful. We came upon
a farriers competition in Castletownbere where I was enthralled by the
strapping muscular stallions and the horses were beautiful too :o). They
were in competition to make a horseshoe from scratch within a time limit -
they only got 10 seconds each to measure up the foot that had been dressed
by a famous Horsey lady all the way from America. It was a great afternoon
indeed watching the young bucks taking on the old hands in this dying art in
the days of mass produced shoes which are finished to fit as opposed to made
to measure.

We had a couple of good meals out and a couple of not so good ones but
mostly we cooked for ourselves. We found a fantastic bakers shop The Bread
Crumb in Kenmare, the baker was a German lady and himself fell in love with
her flap jacks, Florentines and muffins (chocolate to die for) and the sour
dough bread was delicious. We didn't do pub stuff but did spend a lot of
time sitting out in the sun in the evenings.

We got 2 glorious days weather (hence the tan) and 5 sunny days and a couple
of days rain. But to be honest the weather didn't matter, I really enjoyed
doing nothing. We seldom had the telly on and while I didn't read any of A
Spot of Bother, we did take turns to read to each other from A Short History
of Nearly Everything which was really good.

I enjoyed it all so much I may even plan our next holiday - I did say may :o

Soozle