There once was a man called Michael Finnigan

The high winds over the last few days have made travelling a bit harder, blowing Springy with gusts making driving on the highway slow going and a bit hairy.

We were able to take a double decker bus to Dublin from the caravan park which was a massive bonus. It was interesting that only half of the top floor was covered making latecomers, like us, cower in the front top part until the bus took off. Cool, swirling winds and a light drizzling rain added to the experience.

Overall, Dublin was nice. It wasn’t fantastic. We may have had a better experience if the weather was better but it would be hard to say.

We first ummed and ahhed over what to see first and finally decided to walk to the Dublin Writers Museum. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to open for another 20 minutes, so we went to an art gallery on the same street to escape the weather. That one wasn’t open because it was Monday. While we waited, I visited a memorial across the road for soldiers who had died for Irish freedom. Once the museum opened, we realised it was going to cost us half of our daily budget and it didn’t look that great, so we moved off to see the Book of Kells.

The Book of Kells display had really picked up its game from the last time we visited. In 1999, you could just walk up and look at it siting under the glass. Each day a new page was turned, unfortunately, we had a rather boring page that day. This time there was more information displayed on the history of the book and others from the same area and time period, how the books were made, the style of writing and how they illuminated the books. You then came to the separate room to view the book (a much better page this time) with 2 leaves being displayed, one an illumination and the other a written page.

It was in the centre of the room with a short description to the left of the book. This would make you gravitate to the left to read the description, move to the right to look at the illuminated leaf (Ooh! Ahh!) then continue to the right to see the written leaf with the blurb after. This created a bit of an anti-clockwise spiral of viewing which would then fling you from its gravitational pull upstairs to view the long room with its thousands of ancient books. This was spoilt by buggers just pushing in to look at the book for 10 seconds and move away instead of just waiting in line like everyone else. It might be worth letting the Trinity College know about that….. Either that or re-assess my OCD-ness.

We also stood outside the childhood home of Oscar Wilde before looking for something that would appease Dee as she wasn’t very impressed with the weather. Luckily we found a lovely jewelry shop and a coffee/chocolate shop that put her in a better mood. After walking the streets of Dublin, we decided to hide in a café for 2 hours while waiting for the double decker buss to take us back to the caravan park.

The Carrolls have done well for themselves by almost cornering the entire market for Irish souvenirs and memorabilia. You couldn’t walk 200m without seeing one in the city heart.

Tuesday was a domestic day with showers, washing and drying in the morning and on the road at noon. A fairly straight drive enhanced with gale winds trying to push us into the next lane. After finding our next point of call, a pub called, ‘Lumpers’ we decide to do some shopping. This required all of us to drive and after a massive exploration of the local countryside (*NOTE! Use the GPS search for ‘Markets’ and not ‘Shops’*) we came back with the makings of an awesome dinner of spare ribs and cheesy vegetables (where the ratio of cheese to vegetable is 1:1).

We also started on Dee’s Napoleonic peasant outfit and I was doing the final fitting for Gene’s (hopefully finishing the sleeves soon). At some point in the last 13 years my little girl has grown up into a young lady………….

We woke to a beautiful, and dare I say, warm Wednesday morning. With no excuse about the weather, I took an hour long walk up the hills behind Lumpers. We saw walkers preparing at the carpark the following evening at 7pm for a 2-3 hour walk up the path. You would think it would be too late to go for a walk until you remember the sun doesn’t go down until 10pm. The path is named, ‘The Tain Way’ in memory of Cuculain, the Hound of Ulster, who stole cattle from another Chieftain. Honestly, it’s worse than us Australians glorifying a suicidal sheep stealer as the most patriotic song of our society.

The irony of the track that the Hound of Ulster is named after doesn’t allow dogs………….

After the walk (it had a fantastic view at the top) we travelled to Northern Ireland again in preparation for the early morning crossing back to Scotland and into England by the end of the day. We were distracted by a sign and visited the marvelous Irish Linen Museum. With the expected normal display stuff, there was a hands-on area and we were able to feel the various stages of linen production from the flax to the thread. It was very interesting. They even had B&W footage of workers taking the flax through the process that probably hadn’t changed for thousands of years. They also had the looms working with 2 weavers showing us what they were doing. Beautiful items with an amazingly complex loom that used punch cards to weave damask linens.

Thursday is also Dee’s birthday, so we’ll be celebrating it in 3 countries (Northern Ireland, Scotland and England). I did offer Dee a haggis birthday cake since we’ll be in Scotland but she wouldn’t enter the idea.

We have 3 days of driving south to get to Shrewsbury (an exciting prospect if you are a Brother Cadfael fan, as we are) and into Wales, Bath and Cornwall before we catch up with the other 95^th Rifles members on the 16^th for Waterloo.