Home from our first big trip

We arrived home at 10:00 pm from Wales. We had travelled 2100 in Ireland and another 525 miles in England and Wales to and from the ports. We stayed at 25 sites many of which were wild. An excellent holiday with exceptional weather for Ireland and some magical locations.

Dublin crossing

There was a bit of a panic catching the ferry as I initially went to the wrong port but managed to get to the City Terminal just in time. After a rough crossing with pots flying everywhere and injured crew, we arrived at Holyhead in one piece. Rosemary insisted on having a greasy breakfast but then she does not get seasick. Made our way to a CL, Hendre Glyfedd Farm, near Barmouth for the night. We have now covered 2370 miles of which 2100 were going around island with our fridge.

Arrived home at 10:00pm the next day with 2625 miles on the clock.

Wicklow and PowersCourt

We left our free night in the car park and drove over the Sally Gap to Roundwood where we had our last lunch in Ireland and walked around PowersCourt house and gardens. The house has been burnt down but the gardens are in very beautiful setting and interesting with a pets cemetery that has a cow buried there!

The Shanklin campsite that was to be our last stop was closed down so we had to find an alternative and stayed at another expensive site called Camas Valley near Dublin where we had a rather late BBQ on our last night.

Ballykiss Angel (Avoca)

We had a drive round to nearby Avoca which is the film set for Ballykissangel TV series. Almost going home now so we bought some presents and then went to the GlendaLough Heritage centre which is an old monastery near the Wicklow Gap  scenic drive. We did a circuit of the Wicklow Mountains, very nice scenery and much used by film industry from Westerns to Game of Thrones, then back to the monastery. We had a free night in car park with a number of other motor homes, its a favorite spot with foreign tourist apparently, where we met some folks from Kirby Muxlow, near our home village.

Dublin Day

We carried on to Dublin and parked right by St Stephens Green in the centre of the city. It all seemed very busy and crowded after our days in the country and we did not want to stop long. We took a short open top bus tour and had some lunch by the river, a few bottles floated by. As soon as we had found and photographed the statue of Molly Malone we departed for the most expensive site of the holiday €22 at Roundwood
. Just supply and demand  - nothing special!

Round the Mountains

Its independance day. We drove round the mountains but could not find anywhere nice to park so continued down towards Dublin. We had an Irish roast Sunday dinner at the Clyde Inn, Arrascarron then stayed overnight at North Beach, Rush. Greece won the European cup, Diesel was 84p/litre in NI.

Mountains of Mourne

We walked down the river to Tesco before leaving Antrim and Rosemary bought a new top for £2 from a Hospice shop. Then we set off for the Mountains of Mourne which really do appear sweep down to the sea. We visited the NT place at Musselburgh nr Newcastle and found a site recommended earlier at The Rock amenity centre. The owner of the CCC CS was very friendly, only charged £8 per night including nice views of the mountains. We were on own our again.

Glenariff Visitor centre

We stopped off at Glenariff forest park on the way towards Belfast. We walked the 3 mile round trip down the waterfall trail to the tea rooms where we had tea and then the shorter route back to the car park. The tea rooms is a favorite haunt of Joe Dunlop, a famous(?) TT rider. We went through Carne on the way to Antrim and stopped in a site on the banks of Loch Neagh, the biggest loch in Ireland. More like an inland sea with the waves rolling in!
We had a visit from an army patrol walking round the site fully armed with machine guns, looking for goodness knows what. Then we spotted the army HQ fence within mortar distance of our site and it all made sense. There are a lot of flies here despite the wind and rain. It was £12 per night including corrugated iron toilet block.

Giants Causeway

We checked out the River Roe where there were a couple of fly fishermen perched on the rocks. The Antrim coast and its seaside resorts were very run down compared to Southern Island. We stopped at one for fish and chips and the owners were very envious of the investment that has been put in by the EU. They were really pleased to hear that we had traveled all the way round the coast and were bothering to stop there. It was not much further to the Giants Causeway, at least there were plenty of tourists here, to look at the amazing rock formations that make up the causeway. It looks like very old giant size block paving.  Its only about 20 miles from here to Scotland and the temperature shows it. Been getting noticeable cooler particularly at night. We walked up the cliffs for a better view then back down to the NT car park where we started to read about it in the visitor centre.   We have covered 1855 miles to get here.

We also visited Musselden Temple and stopped overnight at a Watertop Farm The owner, Paddy McBride,  has written a small booklet about the history of the farm which we bought for a couple of pounds.