Howdy Folks,
Last time we left you we were preparing for our whirl wind two day drive around Scotland. So off we went, commandeering Ryan and Leanne’s ‘Bote’ (Ford Transit van-spanish for boat), armed with a road map and Myf’s razor sharp navigational skills, we hit the road - destination - lovely Loch Lommond.
On the way we dropped into Stirling for some breakfast and a tour around Stirling castle. The castle was pretty awesome, as far as castles go, and we spent the best part of the afternoon exploring the grounds, the great hall and royal chambers (I think Myf was daydreaming about being a 15th century queen, ruling from her throne with an iron fist!)
That afternoon we drove up to Loch Lommond which was nothing short of breathtaking and to make it more spectacular the YHA we stayed at, overlooking the Loch, was an old castle like structure in itself! After a good feed and a early night we hit the road again deciding to head over to the west coast to a little sea side town named Oban. This was one of the most picturesque drives of our trip so far. The narrow road from Loch Lommond, (a two hour death defying tango of pot hole infested, single lane chaos, inhabited by precariously balanced semi’s and impatient european sports cars) was framed by huge mountains crowned in mist and cloud and plummeting valleys occupied by sheep (with tails!) and series of larger and smaller (than Loch Lommond) lochs each one as stunning as the last (except for the smelly one, which wasn’t so stunning, it was just smelly). In Oban Grant had the best scallops he reckons he’s ever had in his life. We then drove back to Shirley-Ann & Robin’s ready to leave for Ireland the next day. We flew to Belfast via EasyJet (of TV series fame where everyone wears orange and lots of passengers get upset) after the horrors of Heathrow we were expecting the worst but it was probably our best flight yet, we arrived into Belfast to be met by aussie ex-pat Danny, Grant’s cousin’s brother-in-law (we’re stretching the limits of family relations as far as they’ll go, we know), who together with his wife Louise and her brother Charlie and their dog Jack Black had very kindly agreed to have us stay, even though they’d never met us. Little did they know we’d be staying for two weeks! (Although to be fair we didn’t know we would be either). Danny, who is a sales executive for DeWalt power tools does a lot of travelling around in his trusty Volvo ,Vanessa, so we jumped in with him on one of his trips down south to the Republic. After getting stuck behind a lot of tractors we ended up in Mullingar for the night at a swanky hotel. Danny invited some clients for dinner, three (perhaps just slightly crazy) hilarious and super rich, farming folk who run a machinery hire business. Myf had the best pea & truffle wonton soup she’s ever had in her life and Grant ended up drinking with Danny and the crazy Irish farmers until the wee hours. Danny seems to think it was a bit slack on his behalf that we spent the day in the car, the night in the hotel and then just went home again without really seeing any “sights”, but it was kind of nice to just have a day off from rushing to all the must see places of interest, besides we got to see a fair bit of the Irish countryside. The next day we headed north with Danny, Louise and Charlie to see the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge and the Giants Causeway and then we drove over to Carnlough a pretty coastal village on the coast where Louise’s family own a pub and where we stayed for the weekend. We really tried very hard to understand what everyone was saying to us but there’s only so far nodding and smiling will get you before people start to catch on that you’ve got no idea what’s going on. It was Louise’s birthday on the Tuesday, so on Monday we drove to Sligo and checked in to the biggest hotel we’ve ever been in, which was situated on the very un-PC “Mental Hospital Road”. On the way to Sligo we drove through Enniskillen, where Myf’s Mum’s family originated, and some of her relatives still own the newspaper there, the Impartial Reporter, so we stopped in to pick up a copy, Myf was too shy to say who she was but got to see the big oil painting’s of her distant relations on the wall in the newspaper offices. After Sligo we drove back to Belfast and the next day we did a bus tour around the city and got to check out some of the murals, the “12th” had just been so there was still bunting and flags up. Belfast is obviously much more peaceful than it was but we got a sense, at least in some parts of Belfast, that the tension was still there just bubbling under the surface. It still feels like a bit of a warzone but they are doing a lot of work to regenerate and redevelop the city. We had intended to hire a van a do a bit of driving around the country sleeping in the back, only to discover that the van we wanted to hire, although the website said it was available was actually unavailable and we were unable to get any reasonable accommodation (on our rapidly decreasing budget) in any of the places we wanted to visit, so we had to scrap that plan and break the news to Danny and Louise that we’d be staying another week. But that was cool them and us, we didn’t mind at all getting treated so well and paid (or at least tried to pay) our way by cooking up some feasts. We went to Belfast castle, Galbally, the ‘hidden valley’ where Louise and Charlie’s dad grew up in 50’s and 60’s and Portaferry, where we saw yet another castle! And after another big night in Carnlough pub we witnessed one of the biggest socials that goes on in Carnlough, The trashy car boot sale! Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to beautiful Ireland, Danny, Louise, Charlie and Jack this morning, we’ll miss them. We will definitely miss Charlie’s movie downloading efforts since Grant got to watch Transformers AND the new Simpsons movie. And we thank them all for introducing us to ”Soupy Norman” (strange Polish sitcom dubbed in Irish, very funny). We saw a bit of Dublin today mostly just the city, Trinity College and the book of Kells
It is now Tuesday night and we’ve arrived in France and staying in bare minimum Formule 1 hotel out of town at Beauvais until we head to Gay Paris tomorrow.
Love
Grant and Myf
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