3

This is who we settled on, after failing to get along with Meteor. 3 Ireland are a little challenging for passers-through, as they refuse to sell you pre-paid Internet without selling you an insanely expensive USB modem as well (we’re talking 70-something Euros for the entry-level modem).

However, it was a friendly 3 attendant who proposed the solution we are implementing: Go ahead and buy the modem, then you have 14 days in which to return it. It just so happens when we decided to go with 3, we only had about 12 days left in Ireland, so it’s just fine with us — we’ll drop into Wexford on our way out. We bought the really expensive model. This strategy would presumably work longer-term as long as you were able to find a 3 store within the 14 day period, and another different store to buy a new modem for the next 14 day period. Still, screw you, 3. Get a clue.

3 Ireland have a different pre-paid scheme to the UK — it’s more time-oriented, with top-up packages in 1 day (€5 I think, with 500 MB quoto), 1 week (€10, 2 GB quoto), and 1 month (€25, 10 GB quota). In their infinite wisdom, they only offer top-up vouchers in increments of €10, so if you were after the €5 or €25 package, you gotta fork over an extra €5.

Their coverage and service quality isn’t fantastic, but neither is 3 UK, or any other carrier I’ve ever been with, to be honest. It’ll do.

Incidentally, although the attendant in Galway warned me against using anything but their modem on the network, my iPhone works brilliantly with it. I just put the SIM card in there, enabled tethering with Ben M’s brilliant profile generator, and all is well.

Meteor

This was a tricky one — Originally, Meteor’s PAYG plan seemed like a reasonable choice. €1 per day with a 50 MB/day limit was restrictive, but at least they don’t force you to buy a modem you don’t want.

However, firstly, 50 MB gets you nowhere, and secondly, their coverage and quality are absolutely appalling. Where 3 gives perfectly usable 3G, Meteor give you flaky/unusable EDGE or GPRS. Outside major urban centres, you’ll get GPRS which may, if you’re lucky, load a page of Google search results. You won’t be able to load images or even post to Twitter, though, I found. Awful. Steer clear.

Local broadband countries

The Ring started out a little underwhelming, after some of the sights we’d seen already in this rather spectacular part of the world. We briefly stopped in a town called Cahersiveen, which was creepily quiet and empty, with lots of shops closed down. Not finding anywhere we felt like having lunch, we moved on and stopped in Waterville, apparently once home to Charlie Chaplin’s parents. We splurged on $40 worth of fish and chips, which were very satisfying, which was a relief given the significant financial outlay. While not as desolate-looking as Cahersiveen, we still found Waterville oddly empty, and it was bizzare to see a ‘fun fair’ set up beside the road, one or two rides dejectedly spewing diesel fumes while being ridden by one or two people. Weird.

With the day getting well away from us, we decided it was time to go on the hunt for a place to stop for the night. I picked an arbitrary road and drove for a little while; We found an absolutely fantastic place to park, a spot on the side of the tiny road on a cliff-ette beside the water, strewn with colourful wildflowers and with a view over the surrounding mountains.

We watched the sun go down, a contained explosion of orange peeking through the dense cloud layer, above the distant mountains.

On our second day, the Ring of Kerry picked right up. The road wound up above our waterside overnight spot to reveal a great view over the area:

Further along, the stunning views kept coming.

We stopped by the road for lunch (our tried and true staple of toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches, done in the frying pan), and continued into Killarney National Park.

Along with the beauty of the landscape, the number of tourists grew, leading to the frustrating inevitability that whenever we wanted to pull over to take a closer look at something, any place to stop was taken up by other cars. While trying to turn Nettle around after failing to find a park at one such place, I casually drove her into a rock fence, putting a dent in her back left side, which left me quite mortified and distressed. Damn!!

Anyway, we drove on and made one quick stopover to take a peek at Lough Leane:

We found a parking area with room for us to stop in, and went on a couple-hour walk along a track we found, which led to the quite pretty Torc waterfall. Lots of loud tourists and sandflies, though!

We pulled into a nicer car park around the corner and parked up for the night. Bulmers cider, chocolate, pasta and Alias.

Next day, we visited the town of Killarney, which turned out to be a bit cheesy and touristy for our liking. So, our ferry booking approaching, it was time to start heading eastwards, leaving Kerry.

So, leaving those naughty motorhomers to their criminal activities, we found ourselves an alternative park in a lay-by perched over the beach with a great view.

The next day, we drove into Dingle along a rather spectacular road, winding along the coastline. We pulled over quite a few times along the way to enjoy the scenery.

Arriving in Dingle, we walked around the colourful little town for a while, in the mist. Lots of craft shops, among other things. Katherine found us some cushions for Nettle, with much glee.

We set off down the peninsula, following that great craggy coastline that spoils us so. We stopped over to visit a pre-1200 AD ‘ringfort‘ (or ‘bee hive huts’), piles of loose stones comprising huts and fences. Man, what a gloomy existence that must’ve been.

With the hour getting late, we decided it was time to stop for the night, so we pulled over in a lay-by beside the road, overlooking the water. This wild-camping thing is just brilliant:

We set off again the next day…

…and found Slea Head just around the corner, a little sandy beach with surprisingly turquoise water framed by crags, and a rocky point, leading back to green fields dotted with sheep.

Funny to think that if the weather here was any more palatable, the place would probably be transformed by condos and resorts — as it is, there are just a few farm houses. Unspoilt. Hooray for the rain!

It being quite early, there was not another person in sight; we had a breakfast of tea and toast parked overlooking Slea Head’s beach.

We finished our driving tour of the peninsula, making our way back to Dingle.

We found a park just outside town, and walked in once evening had set in looking for a pub to enjoy some live traditional music and Guiness. We wandered into the first one we saw, and had ourselves some homemade-style apple crumble for dessert, and an Irish coffee (actually, yuck. Whiskey in coffee is not for us!).

We got ourselves a couple of Guinesses (there’s our Vegemite replacement right there) and two musicians started up — a man playing guitar who looked like he’d just walked off the farm, and a young lass with a fantastic lilting singing voice. They were brilliant.

Meanwhile, we met another patron who introduced himself as Patrick, and lived in a village outside nearby Limerick (he was visiting Dingle, and was going to hitch-hike back home the next day). We shouted him a pint and chatted (sorry, shared craic) for a while; he suggested a few places we shouldn’t miss on the Ring Of Kerry, our next destination.

And that was it for Dingle — we excused ourselves and walked back to Nettle to sleep, then drove off the next day.

We drove through County Clare, the county from which Katherine’s mother’s ancestors came, and characterised by strange purple hills which upon closer inspection were covered with purple rock. The abundance of stone in the area has led to a vast number of pretty stone fences being built, marching over the terrain.

We stopped briefly in a cute little village called Ballyvaughan, and drove on and upwards through rapidly changing weather, finding ourselves in impenetrable fog by the time we reached our destination, the spectacular Cliffs of Moher.

Being unsure of the local area and unable to find a viable alternative, we parked in the ludicrously expensive car park, felt our way through the mist to a parking space, donned wet weather gear and walked doubtfully to the cliffs. Oh, dear.

Done with the head-in-a-wet-plastic-bag Moher experience, and done laughing at our misfortune and that of our fellow tourists, we huddled back in Nettle and decided to wring every last cent of value from our parking space and stay the night, with hopes the fog would clear up. No such luck — while visibility had improved to about 20 metres the following day, it still wasn’t quite enough to see anything but the hand-rail. Having seen hand-rails before, we decided to cut our losses and move on.

We drove downwards through the fog, which cleared up as we descended, and on towards Shanagolden.

Shanagolden is a little town in County Limerick from which my great-great-etc-grandparents Michael Bourke, an agricultural labourer, and Catherine Kelly, a dairy maid (of all things!) lived. My aunt Sue tells me Michael and Catherine left Co Limerick in 1838 (some reports say they eloped, some say they were married in Ireland) bound on the ship Aliquis for NSW, Australia, seeking a better life in the colonies, with assistance from their landlord Thomas Spring Rice of Mount Trenchard and Sir Richard Bourke, of no apparent relation. They eventually settled in Pakenham and had no less than 15 children.

So, after an overnight stay in a nearby forest, it was a different Michael and Katherine that drove into Shanagolden on an ancestor hunt. Passing an elderly fellow on the street and wondering if he knew anyone I’m related to, we walked around the town, and visited the town cemetery. I was delighted to see several headstones with Kelly names on them — Denis and Bridget Kerry, aged 81 and 84, both passing away in 1981, and their sons Michael and Jimmy who died in the ’90s’ 59 and 69; Ellen and Daniel Kelly, who died in ’67 aged 69 and ’81 aged 80, respectively, and Patrick Kelly of 71 years who passed in 1993.

We spoke to a barkeeper in the local pub, who laughed and told us there were tribes of Kellys all over town. She suggested an older cemetery on a nearby hill we should visit, and suggested that we find an elderly fellow named Dooney (or similar) Kelly who lives in town, who may know something useful. By her description, I realised we had passed him in the street earlier, but we didn’t end up finding him.

We had great success in the other cemetery though, in Knockpatrick on the top of a hill with beautiful 360° views. We found a host of Kellys — the most notable being Catherine Kelly who died 1897 aged 66 years, by her age possibly a niece, or younger sister or cousin of our Catherine Kelly.

We also found a number of Bourkes, which I found particularly exciting, given that Bourke remains my family’s name. We found a sizeable tomb ‘erected by Mr Peter Bourke of Foynes Island’ (from which Michael Bourke originated), ‘for himself & Family on August the 9th 1829′. There was also a headstone naming Mary and Nora Bourke Foynes, who died in 1923 and 1935 aged 22 and 3, and their parents James and Mary Bourke, who died 1954 aged 86 and 1965 aged 88.

With my ancestor hunting bug satisfied, we headed back to Nettle who was leaning alarmingly to one side where we’d parked her, and drove on towards Dingle.

That little piece of housekeeping complete, and bellies rumbling, we walked along the promenade and through some residential streets, crossed a bridge over a particularly fast running stream in which swans battled the current, and into Galway’s pedestrian zone. There was a festival atmosphere which we’d remarked on as soon as we drove into the city, the colourful alleyways teeming with people, buskers on every corner, and pub clientele spilling out into the streets. One busker had a large tray full of sand which he had shaped into two eerily-lifelike sleeping dogs. Neat.

One final little errand, I ducked into a Three store and bought a pre-paid Internet kit (bye-bye, Meteor, bane of the last few days!) for some ludicrous amount of money, with the rather devious plan to take it back in two weeks when we leave the country. That’ll teach ‘em to force customers to buy modems they don’t want!

We spent a moment shopping around for a restaurant with prices that didn’t make us gag, and settled on a cowboy-themed establishment that was slightly less tacky than it sounds, where we had two extremely satisfying burgers with chips and cider. Man, that’s the stuff.

After a rather fitful sleep interrupted by passing traffic — well, for Katherine anyway; I tend to sleep through anything — we took the next day ‘off’. We wandered the pedestrian zone, had a run-in with a Nazi-automated-three-sheets-of-toilet-paper-is-enough bastard toilet that still makes me angry when I think about it (whoever designed and installed that abomination has a seriously sadistic streak. Galway city council, I’m looking at you. Bastards!), and spent a rather silly amount of time post-processing photos. Our home-based afternoon activities were amusingly interrupted by a marathon, runners passing by inches from the window. We may have felt our fitness increase slightly by osmosis.

A rather time-consuming search for a quieter place to stop for the night ended with a rather successful Google search, and we stopped at the side of a tiny road mere metres from a quite pleasant pebbly beach on Galway bay — aside from the basilisk glare we copped from two elderly pedestrians on the way in, for reasons apparent only to them! The wind came up late in the evening, and we went to bed to escape the howling gale blowing in around the edges of the kitchen cabinet. Brr.

An errand-day followed, necessitated by an empty LPG tank, and exacerbated by the fact that lots of the allegedly-LPG-carrying petrol stations we visited were either out of gas or had broken equipment. We finally found one, and the friendly petrol station attendant, who looked like he should’ve been hitch-hiking with a guitar slung over his shoulder, suggested some places for us to visit on our onward journey, and also suggested we duck into the mechanic over the road to talk about Nettle’s little fuel issue.

A rather uncomfortable experience followed, when the mechanic responded to my brief introduction with silence and a stony glare and proceeded to ignore me for several awkward minutes until I gave up and went away. Eek. I found a recommendation for a mechanic on an online forum — having Internet access as we travel is fantastic — who happened to be five minutes’ drive from our neat bayside wildcamp, so we spent another night there and dropped in on Phil the mechanic the next day.

Phil sorted us out on all fronts, including fixing our leak, lending me a hex key to fix our little draft issue, and recommending some more places to see.

So, with Nettle sorted, we headed onwards.

The beginning of the walk, starting at the visitor centre, felt a bit like being with a tour group — a very crowded pathway. The view was beautiful, though, over the surrounding bog, which was nicer than it sounds. Glossy luminescent red-and-green grass waving in the breeze, dotted with wildflowers, and with mountains in the background dropping into the sea. We broke away from the worst of the throngs once the walk departed from the ‘easy’ version, changing rapidly from boardwalks and gravel pathways to ad-hoc steps made out of haphazardly-placed rocks, ascending the steep mountainside in vertiginous switchbacks. The breeze increased to a crisp, strong wind, sometimes threatening to take one’s balance. Man, no way the public liability lawyers would allow this sort of thing in Australia. Brilliant!

We turned a corner, and the wind dropped away to nothing. A few tens of meters further and we were on the top ridge of the mountain, along which we walked with 360° views of the surrounding area. The mountains ahead of us had an amazing crinkly texture, deep fractal ravines in the otherwise smooth surface, through which creeks ran.

The track descended the other side of the mountain, and wound around through the bog (I just love saying that word — it works best pronounced “borg”) back to the visitor centre.

Some time spent futzing around trying to find a place to fill up our water; a quest we gave up on as evening progressed. We found ourselves a quite brilliant wildcamp spot, right on the bay with a splendid view of a nearby mountain.

The following day, we had a late start and drove out just before lunchtime. After ducking into the visitor centre again and asking for suggestions for walks we could do, we plotted out a route covering some of the driving tour around the area.

One promising-looking walk circumnavigated a lake nearby, so we drove down a likely-looking side road, which got narrower and narrower, and terminated at a highly un-promising-looking gate. Time to turn around, but where? We tried to do a six-point turn at the gate — there was a driveway nearby that gave a little width — with Katherine at the back window letting me know how close to the fence we were. There just wasn’t room, though, so I decided to just reverse back along the road as far as was necessary to find a place to turn around.

About 20 metres reversing and, as usual, we saw two cars coming our way, thwarting the manoeuvre. Every time! Once they pulled up and realised our predicament, I got out and went over to discuss tactics. They made the universal apologetic shrug and told me they were French and didn’t understand, so I mustered up my meagre French and told them we were trying to back out. Then, a third car came up the road, a local wanting to get in her driveway. Brilliant.

I don’t quite know how we all did it, but like those puzzle games where you have to move cars and trucks around to make space for a car to exit, somehow we made it out.

So, on with the driving tour, which was satisfyingly pretty, the road weaving through the grassy hills, past a few loughs bordered with copses of pine trees. Still looking for water, I did a quick Google search to see if anyone had any suggestions for topping up in the area. Quite luckily, I stumbled upon a council press release which declared that the local water was not safe to drink after a cryptosporidium outbreak. Just missed the Letterfrack-belly there.

So, driving tour complete we ended up back in the place we wild-camped the night before. Wanting a change of scenery, we pressed onwards, as the road quickly narrowed and started steeply up a hill. Nettle’s engine did it’s worrying running-out-of-juice thing, and we barely made it up. A few minutes later, while passing another car, the engine stalled completely — even the power steering stopped working, and I was left hauling the steering wheel around to avoid the oncoming car. The engine started again immediately, but we were quite shaken and worried, and pulled over in a convenient place beside a nearby lake for the night. Whew.

The next day, Nettle coughed to life and we limped at an excruciatingly slow speed out of the Connemara area. Within 20 minutes, she was her old self again and we sped off, bound for Galway.

Eventually, we were closing in on Sligo, a town that happened to have a 3 shop in it, so we could have internet access. It also happened to be directly on our route to Connemara National Park, conveniently. We picked an arbitrary road to turn down, in the vague direction of the coast. After one bad choice, we found a road that led towards a fine little harbour town with a lineup of motorhomes already parked up for the evening. We followed suit, then wandered along the coast a little way, in the dusk light.

The next day, we made a spontaneous turn-off towards some promising looking mountains, and found ourselves eventually at a rather crowded car park for a waterfall. It was lovely, but wow, so many people. Tourism is weird.

One remarkable sight that seemed to go unnoticed with the tour groups was a waterfall that went in the opposite direction; the water fell upwards. Crazy Irish.

Some time spent in Sligo, hooking ourselves up with Internet access and getting some groceries. Finding a park was an interesting exercise among Sligo’s narrow streets and motorhomer-hatingest-car-parks-we’ve-ever-seen. What is these peoples’ problem with us?! There was a particularly excruciating encounter with a street I turned down, only to realise how narrow the gap between the parked cars was. I tried to back out, only to be hemmed in by a car that turned in after me at the most inopportune moment (this has happened at least a dozen times now — they love to show up and force me to perform insane feats of manoeuvring). Ahead it was, with Katherine checking her side. We made it, by no more than half a centimetre, to the great amusement and hand-signed-congratulations of an onlooker. Bugger me.

At least an hour’s fidgeting around trying to get the Meteor mobile internet to work. I was thwarted at every turn, and even their support line didn’t get answered within the half an hour I waited. Bastards! So, not having a map, or Internet access, and thus not really knowing where Connemara National Park was, we set off in the general direction we thought it was, hoping to figure it out along the way.

We didn’t make it, and it was getting dark, so we drove around for a while looking for a place to park for the night. With nothing promising found within twenty minutes, we just pulled over alongside the road to have dinner and sleep (or try to — the traffic passing by generally put a stop to that. Damn.)

Next day, finally figured out Meteor’s stupid Internet, found the route, from which we had not strayed too far, and drove the rest of the way.

Next morning, we drove the minute or two into town and made for the tourist information office. No great help there, just an armful of assorted brochures. I’d found mention of a walk online at the Telegraph, so we bought the referenced map instead and prepared to do the walk, made a packed lunch, filled the water bottle, packed the pack…Then I noticed an odd discrepancy on the map. Where was Strabane? A quick check with Nigel revealed that we were, in fact, about an hour’s drive away from the walk’s starting point.

D’oh. Another thing that apparently drives me crazy. I threw up my arms in dismay, Katherine told me to settle down, it wasn’t a big deal. Turns out she was right — we had a very pleasant drive following the official scenic route, or trying to; the road signage had a tendency to lead one down a dubious-looking road, then leave one to one’s own devices when presented with an intersection. We made it with no problems though, thanks to some creative navigation on Katherine’s part. At one point, we nearly drove over a bridge marked with a 3 tonne limit, before it clicked that we were 3.5 tonnes. Yikes. Thankfully there was another bridge with a 7 tonne limit. We started checking bridges very carefully after that.

We arrived in Moneyneany, the town near which the walk started, and followed the directions to the starting point. This was a rather tiny road that got tinier as we continued; no obvious parking spots in sight. On a whim, we turned up a side road that turned into an interesting pseudo-4WD experience that Nettle handled splendidly.

It was a bum lead though, and we ended up finding ourselves a lovely wild camp the other side of Moneyneany, beside a creek and a forest. I cooked us up some zucchini fritters with some brilliant cinnamon-y curry powder, a meal with nicely portable leftovers for a packed lunch.

The next morning we were ready to give it another go. Katherine sorted out the pack, I scribbled our approximate route down on the map, made sure we had the textual directions available on the iPhone, and we took Nettle back up the indicated road. This time we found a good out-of-the-way park beside an abandoned house (there are lots of these in Ireland!). We climbed into our waterproof gear and headed out.

Our walk took us switchbacking up the side of Crockmore mountain in the warm sun, panoramic views over the surrounding mountains and green-and-yellow patchwork plains. We were stopped for a moment while two farmers herded some sheep between paddocks. Upon reaching the top, and passing over the summit, everything became dark, a fierce icy wind started up and it began to rain. We threw on our raincoats and hunkered down, and where minutes ago we were too warm, we were suddenly quite chilly.

We could see we were in the cloud layer, clouds scooting by in front of our faces while in the distance we could see fields in full sunlight. Within a few minutes, the clouds had risen, presenting us with a clear view over the previously completely obscured mountaintop.

Now well off the path and following fencelines over the bog, skirting wet patches of bright green moss that our boots sank into, we descended the mountain into a glen marking the beginning of the Drumderg River. The rain had stopped by this point, and the wind lessened. A brief stop for lunch, then we climbed the other side, and down a track/creek that became a road.

Through an obscure side fence, past a bumblebee the size of a bus, legs dangling comically beneath it when it flew, like a Pixar character, then down across the all-grown-up Drumderg River and back through fields to Nettle.

The six mile walk had our feet aching a bit, so we lounged around for a while to recover. Then we piled back into Nettle’s cockpit and headed out south-west, for Ireland, the Republic of.

Upon reaching the taxi depot, we were shown to a cab, and the friendly young driver introduced himself as Seamus. He took us first, via a seriously fortified police station, to a mural depicting the great famine of the mid-1800′s, and explained some of the back-story.

As a lot of these things start, the British, doing their scumbag colonial thing, had installed themselves in Ireland as landowners, setting up the Irish people as often very badly treated tenants. During the mid 1800′s, a potato disease wiped out huge amounts of crops, a Europe-wide phenomenon. But, as Seamus explained, in Ireland, the British were syphoning off food still, even during the worst years of the famine, leaving very little for the Irish.

With this kind of treatment, tempers ran high, and Irish history is peppered with rebellion after rebellion; the oppressed Republicans (e.g. the Irish Republican Army, the IRA), typically members of the native Irish community who are mostly Catholics, rising up against the British and the Loyalists (a.k.a. Unionists, e.g. the Ulster Defence Association, or UDA), typically Protestants.

Seamus took us to several Catholic/IRA memorial gardens, remembering lives lost to the Troubles, both civilians and IRA volunteers. Among the civilian names are men, women and children, young as ten months, whole families. These are not all accidental, line-of-fire deaths, but deliberate targets, killing Catholics for the sake of it. In this atmosphere, cases of mistaken identity weren’t uncommon: Seamus told the story of a young Protestant woman drinking in a Loyalist bar with friends; the friends became very drunk and left early, leaving her alone. No one left in the bar knew her, and she was questioned. Being very drunk herself, she evidently didn’t give the right answers, and she was murdered, cut up and stuffed into a bin. Only later was it revealed that she was of a prominent Loyalist family.

Along the way, in response to a question about how he got into the tour business, Seamus told us some of his own back-story. Growing up as a young Catholic, he experienced hardships we found hard to envisage; parents imprisoned, police storming into his house, wanton discrimination. Wanting to steer clear of the IRA and the accompanying violence, he ended up moving to America and joined the army, with the understanding that one achieves citizenship after five or so years’ service. His plans were thwarted, however, when the army were informed by the British government that they were harbouring a ‘terrorist’ (he was, of course, nothing of the kind, but being Catholic…). The army dismissed him, and he became a carpenter in America, where he met his wife, also originally Irish. With the peace process well underway back in Ireland, they decided to come back, and Seamus went to university to study Irish history. Afterwards, the academic path didn’t work out, for reasons I’m not clear on, and Seamus became a tour guide for the taxis. He has received his share of threats, and can’t set foot in many Loyalist areas; he stays in the taxi while his charges hop out and take photos.

The taxi company themselves were started by Seamus’s family after the British shut down the Catholics’ public transport system (among other services like electricity). Many of their taxi drivers were killed by the Loyalist paramilitary, but they persisted and are today an integral part of Belfast’s transport system.

Seamus took us through a Loyalist residential area to show us some of the murals there. One that stood out particularly was a mural commemorating Stevie “Top Gun” McKeag, a thuggish-looking guy wearing a backwards baseball cap and a gold chain. As Seamus explained, McKegg was a commander for the UDA, and celebrated for shooting the most Catholics in a year (“Top Gun”), a grotesque UDA competition. He died in 2000, apparently of a heroin overdose. And yet there he is, memorialised in a mural.

Seamus drove us up Shankill Road, explaining that this is the stronghold area for the Loyalist paramilitary, now basically a mafia-esque crime syndicate, dealing in drugs, prostitution, extortion. He remarked that, as part of the peace process, the IRA have disarmed, but the Loyalists never have. In fact, there are apparently increasing reports of robberies where guns were stolen, in Loyalist areas — particularly, Larne, where we recently stayed, and noticed the vast display of the Union Jack for the first time. The speculation is that the Loyalists are re-arming, perhaps to stock up an auxiliary supply to offer as their ‘disarmament’. We drove past the pub that is the headquarters, and stopped outside briefly, until we started attracting looks in our direction.

An interesting side note: In the picture above, there is a sign proudly displayed, titled ‘Battle of the Somme’. This refers to the 36th (Ulster) Division of the British Army, Irishmen who were celebrated for successfully capturing an elusive section of the German front line in the battle of the Somme. The interesting point here that Seamus made was that this was a Catholic achievement — the 36th Division were Catholics. So, the name has since been nabbed by the Loyalists who are now displaying the achievement as their own, to their own ends.

The next stop: A looming wall, peppered with brightly coloured graffiti-art and marks from explosions. This is, as Seamus put it, “Belfast’s Berlin Wall”, separating the Protestant and Catholic communities, and part of the divide known as “the peace line”. The graffiti art is the product of a project established by one of Seamus’s contacts to bring together kids from both communities.

We passed out of the Loyalist area, across a divide marked by large gates that are closed every night, and over the other side of the wall. Here was another memorial garden which lists names of, among others, people killed by Stevie “Top Gun” McKeag, mentioned above and being displayed proudly on a mural just a few hundred metres the other side of the wall.

Also on this side of the wall, we could see the back of the houses sitting almost right up against the wall. Unlike the Protestant houses on the other side, these are fortresses, steel mesh in place to stop projectiles.

Back onto Falls Road now, about 400 metres from where we’d parked Nettle, we passed by Northumberland Street, down which we could see smoke pouring off a fire in the middle of the road. Seamus pulled over immediately after, but obviously hadn’t seen the fire, and kept talking about something else. Having brought it to his attention, he peered down the road — Ah. A stolen car on fire.

At this point, already nervous at having parked just around the corner from the Loyalist paramilitary crime syndicate’s headquarters, on the street where we are told strangers are stopped and interrogated about where they are from, and having just seen a burning stolen car, we didn’t take in a great deal of what Seamus told us. He’d raised his eyebrow when we told him where we were parked, but hadn’t expressed too much dismay, so we weren’t quite in panic mode yet.

He talked us through a line of murals on the corner, a stretch known as “the international wall“. One was a memorial to honour the 1980 hunger strikers, who protested prison conditions at Long Kesh prison and, upon being promised a settlement with the British government and being on the verge of death, called off the hunger strike only to have the British government renege. One mural protested America’s blockade of Cuba, another highlighted the political issues in Basque country, which is another story altogether.

Another mural was a reproduction of a Picasso artwork produced by the same group who painted the graffiti-art on the wall mentioned above. There are names scribbled on the painting, which Seamus told us were not, in fact, graffiti. The locals see a parallel between their history and the situation in Palestine; one of the other murals reads “End this barbarian Israeli aggression!” [Edit: This implied that the locals took the Palestinian's side, something I didn't mean to suggest -- I get the impression that politics is not a factor; see second comment below]. This is as we understand what Seamus told us: A local school was visited by a delegation of children from Palestine, as an exercise to show the Palestinian children how peace can be achieved. During their stay, there was an Israeli bomb attack in their home town. Unprompted, the local kids together with their Palestinian visitors started writing the names of the dead on the wall.

Tour complete, Seamus drove us to where we had parked, where we were relieved beyond measure to see Nettle safe and sound. He told us to get in touch if there was anything else we wanted to know, and wished us well.

We were thrilled to have met Seamus, and to have heard his story and his take on Ireland’s troubled history — and the continuation of Ireland’s story, which we were surprised to see is not yet over.

Before doing anything once we got back into Nettle, we raced down the road towards safer Catholic territory. We pulled over and got Nigel our GPS system organised, and left Belfast.

After splurging on rather expensive fish and chips, we started noticing cars racing around us and beeping their horns; as the evening progressed, it became obvious that the car park was the gathering point for a group of odd youngsters who would drive up, engine roaring, stop, and sit in their cars beside other youngsters sitting in their cars. Every now and then, one of them would honk their horn, and then everyone else would have to join in. This horn honking game could continue for quite a long time, and, underwhelmed with the local youth culture, we looked up alternative sites and escaped to a more quiet harbour car park 15 minutes north, at Whitehead.

Anyway, we were in Belfast so Katherine could attend an art therapy workshop she had enrolled in months and months ago. For the first day, we drove in and parked at a big Tesco car park, minutes walk from the venue. It was conveniently close to a laundrette, so I dropped off a big bundle of washing that had been building up (phew!), and spent the day inside Nettle working on some software, as shoppers did their thing around me.

We spent another night in Whitehead, driving to Carrickfergus so Katherine getting the train in during the day, then decided to move to a caravan park after noticing the motorhome service point, a booth set up for motorhomers to plug in, fill up and dump waste, was rather damaged, perhaps reflecting the local opinion towards motorhomers (which seems relatively common in Ireland – there are height barriers above almost every car park and highway lay-by. They must hate us!). Besides, spending a week wild-camping in a city may be asking for trouble.

The workshop finished several days later, and it was time to get back to the tourist thing. We spent a surprisingly long time walking through Belfast, to a second hand book shop and a market, losing a little time when 3′s mobile network went offline for a little while, removing our map and search facilities. With quite sore feet we rejoined Nettle in the Tesco car park, put the bed down, and lay down to read and nap for the afternoon.

That night we spent in a relatively pleasant park we stumbled upon after roaming the back streets on the southern side of the bay for a while. Heading off the next morning we had an interesting experience where Nettle lost engine power, puttering along at about 40 km/h in an 80 zone, our panic levels rising. Three minutes or so later she sputtered back to life, to our great relief, and we continued onwards — to visit the Ulster Folk Museum, a town of old buildings, all made up to reflect traditional Irish life a few centuries back.

After trying to park up for the night in the museum car park, we were moved along by a very friendly staff member who was locking up and wasn’t allowed to let us stay. He recommended a park further along the road, and we followed his directions to find the same park we’d stayed at the night before. Classic.

Our first stop was Torr Head, a now-abandoned outpost used as a lookout during the war, squatting on top of a little bumpy headland with 360° views over the improbably-beautiful countryside and coastline and, as it happens, the distant hulking shape of Scotland, as this is the closest point between the two land-masses. Very, very beautiful, but we hadn’t seen anything yet.

Our next impromptu stop-in was near the end of a narrow and alarmingly steep little road that took us down towards Murlough Bay; a steep drop-off on the right hand side making Katherine somewhat skittish as she nearly hung over the edge. It quickly became apparent that it was a wrong turning, and luckily there was a suitably large area in which to turn around and crawl back up in first gear.

We found our way to Fairhead, after missing the turn-off and doubling back, down another one of those tiny-but-two-way roads we are getting to love so dearly. At the end, finding us amongst some farm houses, I nearly gave up and turned around, thinking we had made a wrong turn. Luckily, Katherine spotted a turn in the road which led to the well-disguised car park. We strapped on our hiking boots, read the sign about following the yellow dots, and strong winds and falling off cliffs, and started out. We made it about ten minutes without seeing a single marker, and decided we must’ve gone the wrong way. Sure enough, after our retreat I spotted the first well-hidden marker, the opposite direction to that indicated by the sign. Brilliant!

So, we stomped across grassy fields following a charmingly decrepit-looking rock wall, tip-toed politely by skittish cows, and hopped across patches of standing water hidden in reeds and across little streams. The fields become increasingly punctuated by lichen-covered rocks, with clumps of pretty purple flowers. Then, quite suddenly, we were standing, dumbfounded, on the edge of sheer rocky cliffs staring out over roaring, turbulent bright blue water at Scotland. The beauty of the place was breathtaking, and we stood in stunned silence for a good thirty seconds.

After some time spent enjoying the view, and back to Nettle, we passed by the celebrated Carrick-a-Rede and its rope bridge, which looked extremely tacky and touristy, and drove on towards the Giant’s Causeway, also highly touristy but one of those obligatory things.

Formed by very slowly cooling lava, the Causeway is an extraordinary collection of mostly hexagonal pillars. Extraordinary, but also crawling with tour groups, which to we spoilt and uppity travellers detracted from the sight:

So, we escaped the throngs and followed the path eastwards around the bay, climbing around a slope overlooking the water. I noticed some fluttering in the bushes and we were stopped short by the sight of tiny little baby skylarks, little squeaking nervous balls of fluff, who were obviously in the process of leaving the nest for the first time. A very anxious time for a mother skylark. So, not moving, we watched as they flopped around on and beside the path — a bad choice for a first flight, guys. One took flight straight towards us, and to our surprise, landed on my leg. Good move: Pick the vegetarian.

We got some good views of the rugged coastline, and some good leg exercise climbing the stairs to the top of the cliff. We’re continuously impressed by the array of wildflowers, in purple blue and yellow, that seem to grow everywhere. Spring must be amazing here.

So, what a day! We finished it up by finding ourselves a nearby CL site, which turned into a bit of an epic when Nigel our oft-foolish and increasing anthropomorphised GPS system in Katherine’s mobile phone led us to the wrong location a good fifteen or twenty minutes away from the site, and I found the directions from the CL owner entirely incomprehensible. This sort of thing apparently makes me crazy, I discovered unexpectedly, but I felt better when we got there eventually. This new lifestyle has led to some interesting self-discovery!

We settled in with some Irish pear cider and an episode of So You Think You Can Dance (the once guilty pleasure that I now find entirely defensible!), streamed over our mobile broadband.

First up was a forest at the edge of the town of Glenarm, a recommendation from the CL owner — rather than turning right and continuing down the A2, one continues onwards down the narrow street. Being Ireland, it was raining, so we donned our waterproof gear and stomped out down the path. The park was very picturesque, with one of those tea-brown creeks we love so much, with deep pools, rapids and waterfalls, a pine forest and silver birches, still funny to see growing naturally.

Rain still coming down, we continued onwards, after stopping for a tasty scone with jam and cream, and a hopelessly poor coffee.

Next, on another recommendation from our increasingly admired CL host, we stopped in on another forest near Waterfoot, just beside the car park of Larah Lodge, a left turn along the A43. The rain was now really, seriously chucking down, so back on with the waterproofs and out we went, camera bulging out beneath my raincoat like some bizarre tumour.

Our walk took us skirting around the side of a hill overlooking a neighbouring escarpment, wreathed picturesquely in cloud, then the path became a boardwalk wound precariously down a steep narrow gorge filled with brilliant greenery clinging to every nook and cranny, and vibrating with the roar of an intimidatingly large and vigourous waterfall.

After some careful extraction of ourselves from the washing machine that was the Irish atmosphere, and without bringing too much of it into Nettle, we continued down the road, now in search of a place to park up for the night. The caravan park was asking more than we wanted to pay, so we went further onwards, while the rain continued to bucket down. The fog on the windscreen gradually closed in on us, ignoring my attempts to blow it away with the fan, until we were both bent forward peering through a clear patch a foot in diameter, only to have visibility limited to about a foot or two by the rain anyway. We finally took to it with a tea-towel, and settled on a car park in Cushendall, beside an old church.

Our first stop was Wexford, all business: Stock up on supplies, fill our water tank (hooray, showers!), find the quayside free wifi I’d seen mentioned, settle on a mobile Internet carrier and hopefully buy a SIM card and unlock the USB modem dongle thing so we could use it. Not all went according to plan: The wifi was busted, and we had to wander around looking for an alternative, which we found at the Wexford opera house, within convenient range of a café; I spent the next frustrating hour or so desperately trying to find a convenient way to unlock the Huawei E156G modem, which I previously through would be easy, but is in fact quite tricky and possible costly; and, the local Meteor telco didn’t have the product I was looking for, so we continued to be cut off from Internet-land, a very stressful experience for yours truly!

Anyway, having had enough of errands, we set off in the direction of the Wicklow mountains, which we had both heard from separate sources was worth a visit.

Wow, was that an understatement!

We found ourselves driving along twisty mountain roads with spectacular views over beautiful forested valleys, weaving through quaint little towns (which reminded me of Olinda near where I grew up in the hills in Melbourne), through deep woods and over tea-coloured creeks.

Arriving at a junction in the little village of Laragh, we made the decision to take the less direct-looking road, claiming to be unsuitable for ‘horse-drawn caravans’ and impassible during winter. Sounds good.

And sure enough, just a few turns down the windy little road perched on the side of a grassy valley, dramatically steep sides dotted with precariously balancing sheep, we pulled into a nook a little away from the road and beside one of those beautiful tea-coloured creeks to get a better view at a spectacular waterfall in the distance, and realised we’d found our wild camp stop.

So, we heated up dinner, converted the dining table into a bed and lounged around watching an episode of Alias, while the rain pattered on the roof.

The next morning, having woken up and rolled over to this view:

…We showered, had breakfast, and set off with great anticipation up the little road, a very appropriate-sounding track from BSG playing. A few minutes later, the road had wound up to the head of the valley, and we had to pull over and gape for a little while at the soaring view beneath us: A precipitous, vast sheep-dotted slope from the left, down into the river valley with the creek winding through it fed by a tumbling waterfall; a thousand shades of green.

The remainder of our journey through the Wicklow mountains was a series of short hops, necessitated by our need to get out and stare frequently at the scenery:

This is where the independence Nettle gave us made all the difference: Being able to go our own way, away from throngs of peace-disturbing tour groups and bus terminals, and to discover the world for ourselves. Still, I never really expected anything like this: It was truly magical.

Anyway, all too soon we emerged from the mountains into suburbia, and it was a long drive north, out of the Republic of Ireland and into Northern Ireland (again, with nothing so much as a ‘speed limits in miles per hour’, and a sudden arrival of email in my now no-longer-roaming iPhone), and to a CL site in Larne, just a little north of Belfast. Actually, it’s a village just outside of Larne called, fantastically, Islandmagee (try saying it with an Irish accent). We were greeted by a welcoming party of ducks who know just how to play us for bread, and we settled in.

Good calm passage over, which lasted just shy of four hours, during which I used up every scrap of available 3G airtime before we left the UK’s radio range, trying to make a plan for our arrival. With not much success finding a particularly appealing option (between spending upwards of AU$40 for a caravan park, or a good-sounding wild camping spot half an hour’s drive in the wrong direction), we decided to wing it upon arrival, like the free spirits we are.

So, upon hearing an unintelligible string of syllables coming from the ferry’s public address system, which we interpreted as ‘please return to your vehicles, we’re nearly there’, we were reunited with Nettle, and following a stream of traffic into the Republic of Ireland! No fanfare, no customs, no passport checks, just a sign proclaiming that speeds were in kilometres, and one reminding us to kindly drive on the left side of the road. No worries.

Having been told by a little birdie during a forum crawl (Motorhome Facts is a brilliant little community) that we could probably park overnight at or beside the dock, we inspected the car pack and realised that due to our needing to take two parking spaces, the overnight parking fee would cost about just as much as the overpriced caravan park. Instead, we found a beside-the-road car park that worked for us, right behind another motorhome, which is always a good sign.

So, with cars and trucks zooming by about a metre away from us, rocking Nettle on her suspension, the sun setting over the harbour, and the odd family or couple wandering by our front door and peering in curiously, we fired up the stove, chopped up a huge amount of zucchini and made ourselves some lemony chickpea stir-fry. Sleep was a little disturbed by trucks sweeping by at high speed, inches from our toes.