Wednesday, November 16, 2005

This time it's all happening - 2

And so we continue...
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Anyone with any idea of how things like this normally turn out can’t have failed to guess that after a trip to the playpark (see, it’s started already), a run up to Millford to visit a butcher (for food, not social purposes) and a lovely drive up through the Fanad peninsula, we’d arrive at a particularly scary version of what we would come to christen “Static Hell.” The (very) few touring vans on site had been there so long they had grass growing up the wheels and sure wasn’t that Tony Robinson and his crew digging a test pit in that Sprite Marauder over there?

A pint at the near(ish)by pub and the driving rain did little to raise our spirits or make us feel any better about staying on the site. Thankfully the owner hadn’t been about yet so we’d not paid and decided just to leave.

Another hour or so of driving in deteriorating conditions brought us to Downings, scene of a happy childhood holiday with my granny and my wee sister. Downings has a lovely beach. We had lots and lots of rain. Not an ideal combination. Especially not when married with our awful (sloping, near the main road) pitch on The Site Where All Belfast Stays. The place was mobbed, we were tired, the meat took ages to cook, Ben was cranky, it kept raining, we wanted to go home. A walk on the main drag revealed only the smell of chip fat (a café-de-movealong right outside the campsite walls) and about 400 – well off – boy racers in BMWs and Audis.

Did I mention the rain there too?

So it was that we made some tea, ate some chocolate, packed Ben off upstairs to bed and reached a decision. Gone would be our plan to follow the coast right around and down through County Donegal, into Sligo and so on down the west of the country. No, it was time for decisive action. That’s how, by six o’clock the following evening, we were over 300 miles and two thirds of the length of the country away, parked up in Mountshannon, County Clare.

Looking now at our “trusty” Michelin map, the journey we made that day now seems like sheer madness. There was no immediately obvious route to take and it had taken us a good hour or so after sending Ben off to bed to decide where to go. From our previous trip together, we knew that we really wanted to end up back down in the South West – Kerry, Cork and the like. Those may be the tourist cliches but cliches tend to exist for a reason and whilst there’s no denying there’s much beauty and spectacle (not to mention history and some great cafes!) elsewhere in Ireland we just wanted the comfort of the familiar.

That same map d’Irlande now screams at me that we missed out on Tory Island, Dawros Head and the Glengesh Pass as we edited out much of Donegal and proceeded instead back to Letterkenny, through Ballybofey and down into the seaside delights of Bundoran for a mid morning pit-stop. Wet seaside resorts hold a certain appeal for me, perhaps it stems from spending four years living in the faded grandeur of Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland as a youngster coupled with trips to Blackpool, Scraborough and doon the watter to Rothesay.

Bundoran (“the place of the cakes on the door” in Irish) merited a couple of pages in our Rough Guide, extolling the virtues of its pubs, clubs and surfing. To be honest it was really only a few days later we came to the realisation that the Rough Guide series is aimed at gap-year studenty-backpacker types. It’s not the best tome to consult to find some of the quiet bookshop/café type places we were to discover on the road. We did get a scented candle for the bus though. “Always take a smelly candle with you when you travel,” says Gail’s pal Yvonne. Good advice but living in NYC as she does, I hope she doesn’t extend this maxim to her trips uptown on the Metro. You never know…

Letterkenny – Ballbofey (N13) – Donegal (N15) – Ballyshannon (N15) – Bundoran (N15) – Carrick on Shannon (R280) – Longford – Roscommon – Athlone – Ballinasloe – Portumna.

This was the route I’d written down the night before. Tellingly, there are road number omissions, demonstrating, I suppose, a real lacking on my part in the journey planning department. The first few bits – to get us to Bundoran – clearly worked and from there, during our tea and sandwiches, Gail took over:

Bundoran (N15) – Sligo(!)N4 – Boyle (N61) – Tulsk (N61) – Roscommon (N61) – Athlone (N6) – Ballinasloe (R355) – Portumna – RIGHT(!) 4 miles, R353 – LEFT R352 14.5 miles.

Somewhat more exacting I think you’ll agree, but at least the were some common points! Looking at the map again as I’m doing now, anyone would be entitle to look at my route and say, “eh?” It does look, in retrospect, a bit wiggly and definitely sticks far too closely to those wonderful (sic) B-roads (“R” roads in the Republic). Even just typing all those place names makes me want to fire up the bus and hit the road again.

The long haul south from Bundoran started ominously enough when, after an extensive 12o’clock news bulletin on the London bombings on RTE1, the DJ kicking off the next show (the yet to be fully discovered and appreciated by us John Creedon) with the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset,” which just seemed very odd. I’d hesitate to say crass but it definitely jarred somehow, though the darker side of my sense of humour appreciated it then as now.

Approaching Sligo, we were wary of the traffic reports which had foretold of horrendous delays due to resurfacing works, new road builidning and sheer weight of holiday traffic. We’d even considered turning off and making a 20odd mile delay round a windy road past Lough Gill and the mystical Isle of Inishfree, because of course, a world-renowned beauty spot is just bound to be a quieter and quicker option in the height of the holiday season.

As we stopped for some more cheap petrol (the equivalent of about 64p a litre) a mile or two outside the city, a white transit van pulled up. Nothing unusual there, it being a petrol station and all. With the engine still running, one of the passengers wound down the window and shouted over to me “are you looking for a bargain?” I replied in the negative but not because I wasn’t looking for a bargain, to be frank I’m always looking for a bargain, even if (especially if) it’s something I don’t need. No, on this occasion I’d decided against the wisdom of entering into negotiations with a scary looking bloke in an unmarked van less than 100miles from the border. Mind you, if he’d had something really good…

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