Dingle dangle scaredycats...
“The park is packed to the feckin’ rafters!” shouted the loudest Cork-man in the world into his mobile, though to be fair with a voice like that he’d have been perfectly understandable without the phone. Inasmuch as one can understand a thick Cork brogue, like.
A peaceful night gave way to another scorching morning and we were glad of the “put your ice-packs in here” facility on offer in reception which would allow us to keep our fridge cool for another day or two. I use the word fridge in only the loosest sense – it’s a cuboid and it’s white, there the resemblance ends. Returning from reception I did a bit of an aural double take – hearing, then dismissing, then convincing myself that yes, that young lad sitting outside a caravan was playing “Moonlight Shadow” on a penny whistle. I would normally have had a chuckle to myself but I feared the emergence of a worrying pattern – three nights earlier, in Downings, we’d been treated to a fairly tuneful “Raindrops keep fallin’” on the harmonica. It’s good to know the traditional music scene is alive and kicking from North to South.
Packing up, we set off for the delights of Tralee. Okay, we set off for the Spar in Tralee. Bread, milk and the usual essentials and we were off again. We managed to sneak past the Blennerville Windmill and Steam Railway without Ben noticing – otherwise an expensive pit-stop would most certainly have been in the offing – and pushed on along the North side of the Dingle peninsula towards Aughacasla and Castlegregory. Rough As… was little use but Le Michelin promised blue tenty shapes and the (rapidly proving indispensable) “Ireland 2005 Caravan and Camping Guide” showed the most splendidly sun-kissed photo of a quiet and peaceful sounding site called the Anchor Caravan Park, near Castlegregory itself.
That reminds me; the “Ireland 2005 Caravan and Camping Guide” was sourced by my dad, from the Irish Tourist Board in Glasgow. He’d had to go in for it because on the day I went, it was closed. There’s nothing unusual in that but I only found out it was closed after I’d managed to locate the offices. St. Vincent St. in Glasgow, not a problem. I was born in the city and have spent around 21 years there all told. Into the foyer, check the brass plaques – “Irish Tourist Board/Bord Failte – 7th Floor.” Into the lift – check the buttons: G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Confusion. “Alright pal? Y’after the Tourist Board?” “Yes, actually, I was.” “Mind now, it’s the Irish Tourist Board – there’s nae 7th flair, go tae six and walk it.” There’s nothing quite like setting the tone for how a nation is perceived by others, is there? Some people would have been annoyed but I rather like it – I think it’s a stealth anti-tourism strategy, perhaps the hostels of Temple Bar and the B&B’s of Killarney are so full to bursting that it’s now an active policy to prevent all but the hardiest and most resourceful tourists from finding their way to the Emerald Isle.
Digression again. It’s some sort of compulsive disorder. “Multiple digressions, I’m afraid, I don’t know there’s much more we can do for him…”
Anyway, the site was pretty well full but the kindly chap, on seeing we had a fairly small machine with us (we’d already passed somewhere in the region of three and a half million full-size-driven-by-muppets-motorhomes) found us a spot near a gap in the hedge, ideally placed for access to the washing-up facilities and the freezers. How we love our home comforts.
First on the agenda – forsaking the customary on-arrival cuppa – was, if I recall correctly, a trip to the beach, to which the site had its own private access! How exclusive. By the time we’d slapped on more Ambre-Solaire (okay, it might have been Superdrug’s own label) and stuffed a few things in a beach bag, the sweat was pouring off us. A lovely image I know, but it’s hard to convey how unseasonably warm it was. I say unseasonable in the full knowledge that it was July and, technically, not a kick in the shirt off high summer, but we’re talking the West Coast of Ireland here. What happened to all that “wettest country in Europe” rubbish? My stealth anti-tourism strategy theory begins to look less of a fantasy…they’re keeping it all to themselves. No wonder the sites were full of native Irish types, they’ve been telling us for years that “there’s more inches of rain per year here…blah de blah,” yet I now know it to be untrue and the 33degrees celsius on the campsite thermometer on our second morning backs me up! I would have had photographic evidence of this but the camera melted…
The beach was a fitting rival to Banna Strand, a good few miles of golden sands stretching all the way round to Castlegregory itself and beyond. We collected – as is our want – a bucket load of gorgeous pearlescent shells, abalones I think, and some lovely black pebbles, worn smooth by the tides into – wait for this – a 3D parallelogram and a Stanley knife shape. Maybe the sun was getting to me.
I don’t usually go in much for hot, sunny weather, even less for sunbathing. I prefer my beaches a bit blustery and wintry – that way there’s always an excuse to nip back to the camper van for a brew – but we spent a great couple of days here. Swimming (actually swimming, none of yer paddling about nonsense here) in the warmer-than-our-local-pool waters and avoiding “hooj jellyfish” as Ben had taken to calling them.
Behold the delights of the setting sun…
We ventured into Castlegregory on the second day, lazily taking the van as we reckoned the mile and a half each way might be too much in the desert-like conditions. Checking the mileage en route, our instincts were proved correct as it turned out to have been the well known “Irish miles” – two and three quarters each way! I love Polaroids, the soul of the picture really seems to be there, and I reckon you can almost feel the heat in the one from outside Ned Natterjack’s pub where I enjoyed a fairly bland but welcomely refreshing pint of Guinness whilst waiting for Gail to get her hair cut. In a hairdresser’s of course. Reading that back I perhaps gave the mistaken impression that “Ned’s” doubled as a bar & barbers. Sorry. That was in Dunmanway.
We were greeted by another glorious morning as we packed up, ready to head towards Dingle. Our second night on the coast had been notable for being the second successive evening on which the late, great Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” had been, to be frank, crucified on the radio. On two separate stations. By two separate artistes. First up we had the toe-curling combination of Simon & Garfunkel featuring James Taylor on – I think – Kerry FM, whilst on day two we were treated to Makeo Parker (“James Brown’s right hand man” the DJ assured us) whose rendition could best be summed up as unique.
The journey west took us in the direction of the Conor Pass, which is apparently a notoriously hellish road but which the Rough Guide decided was “steep.” En route to Cloghane, we were tuned to the Tom Rooney Show. Well, we thought it was the Tom Rooney Show, then we thought, days later it was the Tubberdy Show. Though we wondered, every time we heard it, why callers kept referring to “Tom” as “Ryan.” Unable to catch it properly we wondered if perhaps it was a dual-presenter show. I’m ashamed to confess we were well into week two before we understood that we’d been listening to (and thoroughly enjoying) the Tubridy Show. Tubridy? What kind of a name…?
Anyway, old Tom Rooney had to take a back seat in our thoughts as, for the first and surely last time ever, I got to experience the thrill of being a jet pilot whilst still driving the bus! I’d love to say that we were zooming along at Mach1 but alas, the only thing we had in common was a quick bit of what’s known in the trade as “bird strike.” A flying creature of some sort took it upon itself to zoom across the road, about a foot from the ground, right into the path of our VW badge. There was a sort of “whump” and we continued on our way, pulling into the next available patch of land. A quick inspection revealed a long, leathery wing stuck to the bumper and confirmation of our worst fears – we’d mown down Dingle’s last surviving pterodactyl.
“Cheese, Dairy, Pate, Seaweed,” read the roadside sign outside Brandon. Surely further inspection was merited but we felt it best to leave well alone. Some things are better that way. Tom (Rooney) was chatting to a lady who was on for a phone in quiz. She very eloquently described herself as a social engineer. Tom/Ryan probed further and she informed him that hers was a wide-ranging remit, encompassing planning, logistics and transportation. Clearly, felt our host, she was being coy, nay cagey. The penny dropped when she made mention of “domestic engineering” and it was only then Ryan was able to remark on the wondrous Irish propensity for the gift of the gab that turned a housewife’s “job description” into a short extract from a management handbook.
With the Atlantic glinting in the mid-morning sunshine we pushed on towards the already-seeming-like-perhaps-not-a-good-idea-really approach to the Conor Pass. As with those signs in Applecross at the Bealach na Bo, we were told in no uncertain terms that bringing anything over two tons up this road was a no-no. Slowing down to hum and haw we decided that the stress of worrying about whether we’d make it without some sort of assistance would outweigh any pleasure to be had in doing so. It was a case of Conor? Pass.
Hurtling back towards Castlegregory, eager to make up time, we turned off after Aughacasla – bless you – and would our way up the steep curves of the N86 through the splendidly named Camp. It’s worth pointing out that there was no campsite. Just thought you should know, I mean there’re spas aplenty in Bath and loads of cakes in Dundee so I reckoned the same should follow if you wanted to park a van or pitch a tent here for the night.
It’s always a pleasure – okay, as I type this I’ve done it three times EVER – to pass through Anascaul, familiar to me from a Christy Moore song, (“Don’t forget your shovel”) featuring the line “Enoch Powell gave us a job, digging away to Anascaul” and – according to the Rough As… familiar to others (at least Dan Foley’s “shocking pink bar”) from “a host of postcards, and the South Pole Inn, so named by local man Tom Crean, a veteran of Scott’s Antarctic expedition.” So there you are. We’d – okay, I’d – actually put Anascaul, which incidentally is a pleasant looking in a kind of sleepy, dare I say, Ballykissangel sort of way, wee village, onto the camping itinerary. The extravagant sounding Fuschia Lodge somehow not making the final cut, such was our eagerness to dangle about a bit in Dingle.
Dangling was the operative term, though squelching might equally well have been applied, such was the vast amount of sweat soaking through our t-shirts by the time we hit the tourist Mecca of the South-West. My goodness it was hot. Busy, too, judging by the difficulty in finding a parking space. Once again, what can I say but: pesky tourists! In the four years or so since our last visit, Dingle had changed enormously. At the risk of stealing an entire chapter from McCarthy’s Bar, I’d say it’s the fault of that dolphin, Fungi. He and he alone seems to be responsible for the vast and bewildering array of both new-age-mystic style boutiques and gullible-tourist-attracting hellholes purveying, as Pete would have had it, their assorted Paddywhackery, Shamrockovia and Leprechaunalia. In the searing heat we settled for the only sane option – a trek up a very steep hill and a nice cup of hot coffee. Ah, bliss!
A peaceful night gave way to another scorching morning and we were glad of the “put your ice-packs in here” facility on offer in reception which would allow us to keep our fridge cool for another day or two. I use the word fridge in only the loosest sense – it’s a cuboid and it’s white, there the resemblance ends. Returning from reception I did a bit of an aural double take – hearing, then dismissing, then convincing myself that yes, that young lad sitting outside a caravan was playing “Moonlight Shadow” on a penny whistle. I would normally have had a chuckle to myself but I feared the emergence of a worrying pattern – three nights earlier, in Downings, we’d been treated to a fairly tuneful “Raindrops keep fallin’” on the harmonica. It’s good to know the traditional music scene is alive and kicking from North to South.
Packing up, we set off for the delights of Tralee. Okay, we set off for the Spar in Tralee. Bread, milk and the usual essentials and we were off again. We managed to sneak past the Blennerville Windmill and Steam Railway without Ben noticing – otherwise an expensive pit-stop would most certainly have been in the offing – and pushed on along the North side of the Dingle peninsula towards Aughacasla and Castlegregory. Rough As… was little use but Le Michelin promised blue tenty shapes and the (rapidly proving indispensable) “Ireland 2005 Caravan and Camping Guide” showed the most splendidly sun-kissed photo of a quiet and peaceful sounding site called the Anchor Caravan Park, near Castlegregory itself.
That reminds me; the “Ireland 2005 Caravan and Camping Guide” was sourced by my dad, from the Irish Tourist Board in Glasgow. He’d had to go in for it because on the day I went, it was closed. There’s nothing unusual in that but I only found out it was closed after I’d managed to locate the offices. St. Vincent St. in Glasgow, not a problem. I was born in the city and have spent around 21 years there all told. Into the foyer, check the brass plaques – “Irish Tourist Board/Bord Failte – 7th Floor.” Into the lift – check the buttons: G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Confusion. “Alright pal? Y’after the Tourist Board?” “Yes, actually, I was.” “Mind now, it’s the Irish Tourist Board – there’s nae 7th flair, go tae six and walk it.” There’s nothing quite like setting the tone for how a nation is perceived by others, is there? Some people would have been annoyed but I rather like it – I think it’s a stealth anti-tourism strategy, perhaps the hostels of Temple Bar and the B&B’s of Killarney are so full to bursting that it’s now an active policy to prevent all but the hardiest and most resourceful tourists from finding their way to the Emerald Isle.
Digression again. It’s some sort of compulsive disorder. “Multiple digressions, I’m afraid, I don’t know there’s much more we can do for him…”
Anyway, the site was pretty well full but the kindly chap, on seeing we had a fairly small machine with us (we’d already passed somewhere in the region of three and a half million full-size-driven-by-muppets-motorhomes) found us a spot near a gap in the hedge, ideally placed for access to the washing-up facilities and the freezers. How we love our home comforts.
First on the agenda – forsaking the customary on-arrival cuppa – was, if I recall correctly, a trip to the beach, to which the site had its own private access! How exclusive. By the time we’d slapped on more Ambre-Solaire (okay, it might have been Superdrug’s own label) and stuffed a few things in a beach bag, the sweat was pouring off us. A lovely image I know, but it’s hard to convey how unseasonably warm it was. I say unseasonable in the full knowledge that it was July and, technically, not a kick in the shirt off high summer, but we’re talking the West Coast of Ireland here. What happened to all that “wettest country in Europe” rubbish? My stealth anti-tourism strategy theory begins to look less of a fantasy…they’re keeping it all to themselves. No wonder the sites were full of native Irish types, they’ve been telling us for years that “there’s more inches of rain per year here…blah de blah,” yet I now know it to be untrue and the 33degrees celsius on the campsite thermometer on our second morning backs me up! I would have had photographic evidence of this but the camera melted…
The beach was a fitting rival to Banna Strand, a good few miles of golden sands stretching all the way round to Castlegregory itself and beyond. We collected – as is our want – a bucket load of gorgeous pearlescent shells, abalones I think, and some lovely black pebbles, worn smooth by the tides into – wait for this – a 3D parallelogram and a Stanley knife shape. Maybe the sun was getting to me.
I don’t usually go in much for hot, sunny weather, even less for sunbathing. I prefer my beaches a bit blustery and wintry – that way there’s always an excuse to nip back to the camper van for a brew – but we spent a great couple of days here. Swimming (actually swimming, none of yer paddling about nonsense here) in the warmer-than-our-local-pool waters and avoiding “hooj jellyfish” as Ben had taken to calling them.
Behold the delights of the setting sun…
We ventured into Castlegregory on the second day, lazily taking the van as we reckoned the mile and a half each way might be too much in the desert-like conditions. Checking the mileage en route, our instincts were proved correct as it turned out to have been the well known “Irish miles” – two and three quarters each way! I love Polaroids, the soul of the picture really seems to be there, and I reckon you can almost feel the heat in the one from outside Ned Natterjack’s pub where I enjoyed a fairly bland but welcomely refreshing pint of Guinness whilst waiting for Gail to get her hair cut. In a hairdresser’s of course. Reading that back I perhaps gave the mistaken impression that “Ned’s” doubled as a bar & barbers. Sorry. That was in Dunmanway.
We were greeted by another glorious morning as we packed up, ready to head towards Dingle. Our second night on the coast had been notable for being the second successive evening on which the late, great Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” had been, to be frank, crucified on the radio. On two separate stations. By two separate artistes. First up we had the toe-curling combination of Simon & Garfunkel featuring James Taylor on – I think – Kerry FM, whilst on day two we were treated to Makeo Parker (“James Brown’s right hand man” the DJ assured us) whose rendition could best be summed up as unique.
The journey west took us in the direction of the Conor Pass, which is apparently a notoriously hellish road but which the Rough Guide decided was “steep.” En route to Cloghane, we were tuned to the Tom Rooney Show. Well, we thought it was the Tom Rooney Show, then we thought, days later it was the Tubberdy Show. Though we wondered, every time we heard it, why callers kept referring to “Tom” as “Ryan.” Unable to catch it properly we wondered if perhaps it was a dual-presenter show. I’m ashamed to confess we were well into week two before we understood that we’d been listening to (and thoroughly enjoying) the Tubridy Show. Tubridy? What kind of a name…?
Anyway, old Tom Rooney had to take a back seat in our thoughts as, for the first and surely last time ever, I got to experience the thrill of being a jet pilot whilst still driving the bus! I’d love to say that we were zooming along at Mach1 but alas, the only thing we had in common was a quick bit of what’s known in the trade as “bird strike.” A flying creature of some sort took it upon itself to zoom across the road, about a foot from the ground, right into the path of our VW badge. There was a sort of “whump” and we continued on our way, pulling into the next available patch of land. A quick inspection revealed a long, leathery wing stuck to the bumper and confirmation of our worst fears – we’d mown down Dingle’s last surviving pterodactyl.
“Cheese, Dairy, Pate, Seaweed,” read the roadside sign outside Brandon. Surely further inspection was merited but we felt it best to leave well alone. Some things are better that way. Tom (Rooney) was chatting to a lady who was on for a phone in quiz. She very eloquently described herself as a social engineer. Tom/Ryan probed further and she informed him that hers was a wide-ranging remit, encompassing planning, logistics and transportation. Clearly, felt our host, she was being coy, nay cagey. The penny dropped when she made mention of “domestic engineering” and it was only then Ryan was able to remark on the wondrous Irish propensity for the gift of the gab that turned a housewife’s “job description” into a short extract from a management handbook.
With the Atlantic glinting in the mid-morning sunshine we pushed on towards the already-seeming-like-perhaps-not-a-good-idea-really approach to the Conor Pass. As with those signs in Applecross at the Bealach na Bo, we were told in no uncertain terms that bringing anything over two tons up this road was a no-no. Slowing down to hum and haw we decided that the stress of worrying about whether we’d make it without some sort of assistance would outweigh any pleasure to be had in doing so. It was a case of Conor? Pass.
Hurtling back towards Castlegregory, eager to make up time, we turned off after Aughacasla – bless you – and would our way up the steep curves of the N86 through the splendidly named Camp. It’s worth pointing out that there was no campsite. Just thought you should know, I mean there’re spas aplenty in Bath and loads of cakes in Dundee so I reckoned the same should follow if you wanted to park a van or pitch a tent here for the night.
It’s always a pleasure – okay, as I type this I’ve done it three times EVER – to pass through Anascaul, familiar to me from a Christy Moore song, (“Don’t forget your shovel”) featuring the line “Enoch Powell gave us a job, digging away to Anascaul” and – according to the Rough As… familiar to others (at least Dan Foley’s “shocking pink bar”) from “a host of postcards, and the South Pole Inn, so named by local man Tom Crean, a veteran of Scott’s Antarctic expedition.” So there you are. We’d – okay, I’d – actually put Anascaul, which incidentally is a pleasant looking in a kind of sleepy, dare I say, Ballykissangel sort of way, wee village, onto the camping itinerary. The extravagant sounding Fuschia Lodge somehow not making the final cut, such was our eagerness to dangle about a bit in Dingle.
Dangling was the operative term, though squelching might equally well have been applied, such was the vast amount of sweat soaking through our t-shirts by the time we hit the tourist Mecca of the South-West. My goodness it was hot. Busy, too, judging by the difficulty in finding a parking space. Once again, what can I say but: pesky tourists! In the four years or so since our last visit, Dingle had changed enormously. At the risk of stealing an entire chapter from McCarthy’s Bar, I’d say it’s the fault of that dolphin, Fungi. He and he alone seems to be responsible for the vast and bewildering array of both new-age-mystic style boutiques and gullible-tourist-attracting hellholes purveying, as Pete would have had it, their assorted Paddywhackery, Shamrockovia and Leprechaunalia. In the searing heat we settled for the only sane option – a trek up a very steep hill and a nice cup of hot coffee. Ah, bliss!
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