OS Wayfarer

We soon realised that our visit to Dublin was going to be dominated by the celebrations of Arthur Guinness signing his 9000 year brewery lease on the 24 September at 17:59, 250 years ago.  The revellers were out in force and our quest to find a quiet Irish Pub was a waste of time – it was crushed standing room only both inside and outside the Pubs.  We did find a strange but reasonably quiet bar which was telecasting the brewery celebrations – with the ageless Tom Jones belting out his four-decade old hits – and where the 1^st mate had a complimentary pint of Guinness. We ended up in the Temple Bar area at a Thai restaurant for a nice dinner and an equally nice bottle of wine.

Before picking up our car and heading south to Gorey we took the standard On Off Tour of Dublin – every city seems to have them these days – which was very enjoyable. We joined the 23 stop trip at stop #7 and were fortunate to have a most entertaining driver/commentator (a changeover occurred at stop 23 for the final six stops and the new bloke was a bore). The first fella had the strong Irish accent – you know couldn’t say 33 1/3 to save himself – and all the corny wife and mother-in-law jokes – but knew his stuff. On the tour we saw Trinity College, the President’s house and the light in the window to welcome home the Irish traveller, the Molly Malone statue, McGuiness brewery, Old Jameson distillery and many other sites. We enjoyed the ride.

After a taxi ride to pick up the car and lunch at a nearby pub we were on our way.  Our first B&B of the trip was at Gorey and despite a nice cup of tea and pikelets on arrival, dinner that night and breakfast the next morning it was cramped and old and was the worse B&B of the trip.

Our next destination was Blarney and enroute we stopped at Ferns Castle and Tapestry. We had a very interesting hour long free tour of the castle remains and saw the 25 Tapestries depicting the history of the area. These tapestries represented not only tapestry skills but good project management skills. Disappointingly, there weren’t any tapestries on sale so we had to settle for post cards and a really good poster depicting life in the castle during its hey-day.

Of course a trip to Waterford must include a trip to Waterford Crystal. We managed to escape with six red wine goblets and two whisky tumblers – to be engraved and shipped to Oz.

Blarney Castle: The grounds are like a botanical garden and really beautiful; unfortunately the house was closed for the season; the 1^st mate chose not to ascend the castle and I turned back half way  after getting stuck with my backpack and not realising there was a separate path for descending from the top; we had a very nice dinner at the local Blarney Castle Pub; the B&B here was a big step up and run by a very slick Irish business man; overall Blarney was just a big tourist trap and a bit overrated.

By now we were really into the endless green hills and valleys so typical of Ireland.
We stopped briefly at a small town called Kinsale where we were looking for “Cara’s Cottage” (a self catering cottage that we considered renting during our planning).  
Although we couldn’t find the cottage we did find the nearby “Spaniard Hotel”, a haunt of yachtsman and local fisherman, and a reminder of the Spanish who came to assist the Irish rebels in their fight against the English.
We would like to spend a week at Kinsale – we liked it.

The Ring of Kerry:  For us the highlights of this drive were the Ladies View & Moll’s gap – I had a confrontation with two big tourist buses driving up these ranges, needless to say I had to back off;
and the area between Waterville and Cahersiveen looking out to Valentia Island.  

The three landscapes in order: Ladies View; rugged coastline near Waterville; and a wonderful view of Cahersiveen.

Unfortunately, we were too late for the Peat Bog museum at Glenbeigh.

Half way around the Ring of Kerry we realised that we had totally underestimated the time required to do justice to the southern part of Ireland – we’ll just have to come back!

The find of the day was the Telephone Box in Kinsale - It was "Green" of course!