First steps into Ireland

We did it, got the cassette out! Life is good. Let’s hit the road.

The Welsh farm the TV crew took us to

I didn't mention that the TV crew turned up again did I? The day we bought the rig. In fact as we were completing the deal and before we even drove it for real. They wanted to film us going to some farm they had found. First though we needed fuel but got lost on some tiny narrow, tree lined Welsh lanes, they then told us it would take about 3 hours of filming but we were too stressed out and left. They paid for a tank of fuel and persuaded us to come back the next day to finish off and we had fun pretending that we were really camping in a farm yard next to some VERY noisy sheep!

Picturesque farm house

The road led us thru Wales to the Isle of Anglesey for the ferry to Dublin in Ireland but not before we had the Grandkids over to give their approval of our rig.

These sheep are LOUD

Having explored it from top to bottom and found the 5 secret compartments in it they expressed their satisfaction, ate everything they could lay their hands on and wished us well on our journey. They also insisted that they would come and camp with us for a night or two when we get back this way on about 4 weeks time!

Grandkids. Almost as noisy as the sheep!

They found "Their" place where they could hide away

The ride to Anglesey was uneventful and led to our first “Pub Stopover”. In UK there is a movement amongst pub owners with big parking lots that will let motorhomes (MH) stay the night if the MH owners buy dinner and/or drinks in the pub. There is a Facebook page for finding these places and the Valley Inn came up when we searched.

Tucked away for the night in the pub parking lot

The Valley Hotel.

The food was good (and the beer) plus it was only 3 miles to the ferry to Dublin so we could take our time the next morning when we had to get to the dock by 8,.30am to load onto the boat.

Driving up to the ferry in Holyhead

About to enter one of the 8 car decks

Not many people in the US have experience of car ferries, most being just a small vessel for maybe 20 or so cars.

Not so this vessel, which had 8 car decks and was the size of a smallish cruise ship. It was stuffed to the gills with large trucks and many cars.

Jammed in with the trucks

Very plush inside and fast. Crossing the Irish Sea in 3 ½ hours.

A clean modern ship

We were soon off and driving into a campground on the West side of Dublin Camack Valley CG where we had made reservations at for the next 3 nights. We were using our phones to navigate as it turned out that I hadn’t loaded the Ireland maps into the GPS!

Camack Valley CG outside Dublin

It was fortunate that we made reservations as we didn’t realize it was an Irish National Holiday weekend and the campground filled up rapidly.

Even better the Hop on Hop off busses that gave tours of the city actually came to the campground at 9.30am every day and returned at 4pm.

Hop on Hop off busses

We explored the city from the comfort of the bus then next day took in the places we decided we would like. Dublin Castle, the Temple Bar district and St Patricks Cathedral.

St Patricks

A Temple Bar pub. Lots of draft beers.

Dublin Castle

Goodness know how many miles we walked but we certainly slept well!

We got to know the new motorhome more and got more systems working, reading the manuals and puzzling out how things really operated. We were on an electric hookup which made things easier.

Time came for us to move on, having now loaded the proper maps into the said GPS! I picked a waypoint between Dublin and Kilkenny to ensure we stayed on smaller roads rather than Interstates (Motorways in UK and Ireland).

After travelling for about 20 miles down some very narrow back country roads the GPS informed us that we had reached our waypoint and should turn around and go back! Apparently the waypoint I picked and the one the GPS picked were not the same! Still it was a pleasant spot and we sat and had a snack and a drink in a little park by a stream while I got it navigating to where we really wanted to go!

Completely lost but in a very pretty place

Where we really wanted to go wasn’t on our GPS map! It was what is know in Europe as an Aire, which is an undeveloped camping place where you can dry camp free or very cheaply. This one was right in the center of Kilkenny and cost 10 Euros a night. It had a dump station and water supply available too. We found it on an app I downloaded :- Searchforsites

We learned some more about the rig when we had to run everything on gas instead of electric. We never did get the refrigerator to run on gas. It seems like some evil entity designed the ones over here and as a result you have to light the gas side of the fridge manually. When we had a rig 5 years ago we never could get that fridge to light and this one seems no different!

But we explored Medieval Kilkenny, the Castle and Cathedral. We are getting quite good at this walking thing!!

The Medieval streets in Kilkenny

Still fuming at the darned fridge I searched online for solutions but only came up with similar sob stories, then my mind cleared and I remembered a discussion in the US suggesting that spiders might build webs in the burners of fridges there. We found a computer store, bought a can of compressed gas and with the fridge TURNED OFF I sprayed around the burner are in the back of the fridge. Shazam! It lit three clicks later.

We finished our tour of the pubs OOPS I mean the tourist spots in Kilkenny and packed up for our next destination.

Kilkenny Castle

Cathedral Church of St Canice Kilkenny