To the Other Side of Ireland

Today we left Dublin for the other side of Ireland to visit Anita's cousin Paul who lives in County Galway. After our breakfast we walked down the road to Budget to pick-up our hire car. This time we got a 2008 registered black Astra that had dome a mere 114,843 km - that is correct, over 100,000 km. The pre-departure damage check took quite a while because, as you can imagine, it had had a rather hard life - it looked a bit like it had been dragged through a hedge backwards...

Once we were away from Budget, we went back to the B&B, collected our bags, checked out and set off. As we weren't planning to be driving for long in Ireland, we hadn't bought any road maps and were just depending on the basic map provided by Budget. It was OK but with very little detail given for Dublin itself, it was a bit of trial and error before we were heading off where we wanted to. We avoided the Motorway (no scenery) and took the quieter roads to Trim and Trim Castle. Like most old towns, Trim was walled town. What makes it different is that the vast majority of the walls still exist today, at times dividing the modern town itself.

It was in Trim that we were first really struck with a big difference between Ireland and the UK - Ireland is colourful! All the houses are painted in bright colours, usually quite different to the one beside it and the architectural details are picked out in a contrasting colour. Trim Castle dates from the 11th Century and, although a ruin, is a fascinating place to visit. A lot of work has been done to restore the Keep so that guided tours can be conducted. The guided tour was fantastic and well worth the extra 1 Euro they charged...

The main street of Trim - coulourful and tidy

The Keep of Trim Castle with some of the other ruins in the foreground

The main entry gate to Trim Castle - uphill to make it that much harder for raiders

 Sheep Gate - still in original condition

The South Wall and the Barbican Gate

It was getting on in the afternoon when we left Trim with Athlone as Paul had suggested that we visit the monastery in nearby Clonmacnoise on our way over. Being used to using the small scale road maps we had in England, we had misjudged the distances on the larger scale map we had. Ireland is in fact reasonably large, especially when you are traveling on the slower rural roads. We dropped on to the Motorway to get to Athlone quickly and discovered we still had over 150 km to go to Galway. The monastery would have to wait as we didn't want to get to Paul's place too late.

By the time we got to Ballinastoe, we were bored with the Motorway and decided we had enough time for some more scenery. We headed off on the rural roads again, driving through Mount Bellew and Horseleap to Tuam. We were now in the vicinity of Paul's place but the only problem was that his directions assumed we would be coming up from Galway, not coming the other way. Still, we only made one false start before we found our way to his house in Carrownaherick West.

Paul's Castle in Carrownaherick West

After a wonderful home-cooked dinner, Paul took us out to Campbell's Tavern, his favourite pub. It was Irish Music night at the pub and the place was packed at 10 o'clock. Most of the entertainment was provided by a 3-piece band of fiddle, flute and guitar and this was supplemented by, even now and then, one of the locals singing a song. It was absolutely wonderful and easy to see why Paul loves living where he does.