Glendalough & Wicklow

Glendalough & Wicklow
After the drama of last week I made the decision not to make the long drive up to Sligo & Donegal, that will have to wait until I return another time. Instead I stayed in Wexford for a couple of days to make sure the van wasn't going to shed any more vital parts, and then headed up north about 60km to County Wicklow. I wanted to return to Glendalough again - last time I had been there it was a sunny bank holiday Monday and the place had been crowded with cars and people, not really the peaceful atmosphere that it is famous for.

Last week, when I met with Fr Michael, I offered to take a large brass candle stand to Guernsey for him. So for the past week I have been traveling around with it in the living space of my van. It fits quite nicely but makes me feel like I should hold a banquet or ball. I have had a few interesting looks from people over the past few days - they must think I'm a bit of an extravagant traveler.

My Dining Hall/Ballroom/Master Bedroom
I left Wexford in the sunshine, with the GPS working once again, and headed north along the East coast... or so I thought. I had been driving for about an hour when I came across a picturesque little fishing village with amazing sea views... on my left hand side... It turns out that either there are two places called Glendalough within a similar distance of Wexford (but in different directions), or my cheap GPS software was playing tricks on me... not that I'm complaining because the scenery was nice and I wasn't in any rush.

While driving around Ireland the last few months I feel like I have joined an exclusive club - the VW campervan club. Everytime I pass another VW campervan there is always a friendly wave or thumbs up... around here I haven't seen so many but along the west coast it was 2 or 3 each day. It seems you can only do this though if you have a VW camper of my style or older and only if it is kitted out as a campervan. It's the kind of wave you use with other mariners when you're out in a boat. On the road I have noticed that this phenomenon is not unique to VW campers though, tractor drivers do it too, and any two vehicles with surfboards on the roof.

Anyway...

As I arrived at Glendalough the clouds were just starting to form over the tops of the mountains and by the time I had found a carpark to stop for the night, and had started cooking dinner, the rain had set in.

Base camp The next day I headed into Wicklow town, about 45mins from Glendalough, to do some work and get some food. With the rain still coming down I spent the day in Wicklow exploring the town and quay.

WicklowThere was no sign of the rain easing off as I arrived back at Glendalough in the evening. I had come back to Glendalough to see it while it was quiet and I guess the rain was helping me with that, so I decided to make the most of it and walk around the valley and lakes. It is an amazing place, with no people around at all it did live up to the expectation. I felt like I was somewhere in Middle Earth.

GlendaloughAfter walking around and taking in the scenery for a few hours I decided that I was wet enough and headed back to the van. On the way I walked past an area by the side of a lake which was full of reeds and rushes. It reminded me of a the Celtic tradition of the St Brigid's cross. This is a cross which is woven out of rushes and hung in houses and barns to protect the people and animals living there - I have seen them a lot while traveling around and Alicia had given me one as a gift when I gave her a lift to Rosslare... So I thought with nothing else to do tonight, and the rains not easing off, I would have a try at making one. The making wasn't actually too hard once I had a good look at Alicia's - the hard part was picking the stems without getting eaten alive by the midges - I didn't do so well at that and today am covered all over in bites!

My St Brigid's Cross

Ballycogley & Enniscorthy

Ballycogley & Enniscorthy
Ballycogley is a small area not far from Rosslare and is the family home of Fr Michael, the parish priest in Guernsey. Fr Michael was over on holiday for a few days so I arranged to meet up with him. The whole area around here is really nice - it is the kind of place you would pass without even noticing (and I have 3 times since I've been in Ireland!) because it is away from the main roads, down a few country lanes. Even though it is only a 10 minute drive to Wexford town the place is so peaceful you feel like you are a long way from anywhere.

Looking to the Saltee Islands
Around every corner there was a Norman house fort, castle, or church ruin. The road led down to the coast where there are sand dunes, a long sandy beach, and a fishing quay. We went around some very interesting sites. We also went to visit some of Fr Michael's family and had a look around their stables where they breed thorough bred race horses.


An Old Thatched Church
Fr Michael's CottageI stayed here for one night and then left in the morning heading north with the plan of eventually ending up in Sligo and Donegal. After having had so many days of hot weather it was a bit of a supprise to wake up to heavy rain, but I wasn't too bothered because I planned on spending the whole day driving.

As I set off I found that my GPS had stopped working, so it was back to using maps and roadsigns. I passed through Wexford city, and then a few small towns and eventually on to the open road heading across country. It was here, while traveling at 80km/h that my back wheel decided it would fall off. A fairly scary experience but luckily I was the only person on the road and the only damage done was to my van. Once I had recovered from the shock I realised that I wasn't actually sure where I was, the rain was getting to the point of being torrential, and I was in an area without any mobile phone reception. I was just getting ready to start walking when a guy stopped and offered me a lift down the road where I called the RAC. Eventually my van was taken to a garage who were not very optimistic about the chances of repair. Apparently the bearings had worn out and this had caused the problem, but a lot of damage had been done too. They spent a few hours calling around suppliers and scrap yards in Ireland & Europe to try and get the parts that they needed but nothing was coming up. They dropped me "across the road" at this point to the pub where I got some lunch and was told to come back in an hour. Because I had been signing all the official RAC stuff while they were driving I didn't actually notice how far we had gone, so on my walk back in the torrential rain I found out that "across the road" was actually a 40 minute walk by which time I was squelching with every step. When I got back to the garage they still had no parts and were looking into getting it towed back to Guernsey under my RAC cover.

That night Fr Michael kindly offered me a bed again. In my wet state the day before I had forgotten to leave the ignition keys with the garage so on Thursday I took the bus back to the town of Enniscorthy, which is where my van was, to drop off the keys and book into a B&B. Luckily that afternoon the garage called to say that they had finally managed to source the parts locally and that the repairs would be finished by Friday evening. So I spent the rest of that day exploring the city, and the next day exploring some of the hills that surround it.

Cork City

Cork City
When I arrived back in the city of Cork it felt like a familiar town even though I was only there for a few days last time. I booked into a hostel and then, because I had no food, went back to Benjamin's student house for dinner - it was amazing, a typical student meal; pasta, tomatoes, a jar of sauce, & cheese... I think there must be some kind of innate gourmet gene in the French because Benjamin somehow managed to produce an impressive 3 course meal! After that we headed out to the Sin É to listen to some music and meet up with some more friends from my last visit.The next few days were unbelievable. I spent my time with Alicia (the French harpist) and Benjamin. We busked on the streets, went to sessions in the evenings, and spent the rest of the time discussing music, art, literature, & religion... quite an amazing few days. Friday night was Alicia's last night of her year in Ireland so for the session that night she had cooked crepes for everyone which went down very well.

Alicia

Benjamin (http://www.myspace.com/rrow)As I was also heading to Rosslare I had offered Alicia a lift along the south coast. On the Friday night we had been told of a party and session being held at one of the musician's (John - The uilleann piper from Ennis) house about 1 hr from Cork, so we set off on Saturday evening, after having spent a nice day walking around Cork in the hot sunshine, with a very vague idea of which town we should be heading for. Even though it was the middle of the evening the sun was still hot and the drive through the countryside and villages was stunning. As we got closer we got some more directions, but the three way language barrier (English, English (with an Irish accent), and French) caused slight difficulty as we went in search of a 'green college' instead of a 'green cottage'... it wasn't long though before we found where we were supposed to be going.

Along the we way we passed through the town of Fermoy which is home to these three interesting statues - the translation stands for 'Monastery of Fermoy'... we asked a few locals but couldn't find out why the two people on the edges have no faces.


The party was good fun and the music was brilliant but with a long drive the next day we left before the end to set up the campervan on a patch of grass at the side of the road in front of John's neighbors house. The next day was another bright sunny day and after a breakfast of porridge with Nutella we set off for Rosslare. The trip was great fun, it was nice to have somebody to talk to for a change. We were half way to Rosslare when I realised that I had left my bag and wallet at John's house, but with no time to go back before Alicia's ferry we carried on going. In Rosslare we stopped for some food at the supermarket and then after lunch Alicia gave me a harp lesson in the carpark.

After leaving Alicia at the ferry terminal I made the same trip in reverse to go and collect my things from John's house... I spent that night parked up in a cliff-top carpark at Newton cove where I arrived just in time to catch an amazing sunset.

Ennis - Fleadh Nua

Ennis - Fleadh Nua

I spent the whole of last week in the town of Ennis; the capital of county Claire. I was really on my way back down to Cork but was given the tip of detouring to Ennis and stumbled upon The Fleadh Nua which is one of the major music festivals on the Irish trad calendar - somehow I had missed seeing anything about it before now. The festival lasted the whole week - during the days there were a series of workshops and concerts, and at night there was music sessions in quite a few of the pubs around town. By the weekend this ended up being music sessions in pretty much every pub in town (in some cases there were 3 or more simultanious sessions in the same pub!) and on every street corner too.

I arrived in Ennis on Tuesday but because there were so many people in town for the festival the only accomodation I could get was a B&B about 3km out of town - with my bike that wasn't too bad when it wasn't raining. The workshops were taught by a fiddler called Brian Prior who is quite well known in Comhaltas, an international organisation which promotes (and in a way regulates) traditional Irish music and dance around the world. The workshops were attended by people from all around the world, quite a few of which were in Ireland specially for the Fleadh.

On Saturday I met up with Benjamin, the French fiddler that I had met in Cork a few weeks ago. There were also a lot of other familiar faces around the Fleadh from some of the other towns that I have visted along my trip so far. That night we played in a session in town with a bunch of completely random musicians... one of which was a Uillian piper who entirely co-oincidently, through a completeley different link, exactly 1 week later and about 200km away I end up at a party playing music in his kitchen... but that is another story!

At closing time we started walking back to the B&B and along the way sneaked into an after hours session in another bar... once they decided to close up we then joined in with a street session with some musicians from Leeds and eventually got back to the B&B just as the sun was rising.

We managed to get up for the 9 o'clock breakfast (mainly becaue I wasn't spending that much money on a room and not taking advantage of the free breakfast!) and then went back to bed to try and catch up on some sleep. As part of the Fleadh the cathedral was having a Sunday morning Mass in gaelic which we set our alarms to be up for... with just 5mins to go and a 3 minute drive we thought we would make it, until we got in my van to find it wouldn't start! - because I had been cycling all week the van hadn't been used and the battery was flat... Luckily there was a guy sitting outside who gave us a hand at push starting and we arrived only a few minutes late.

On the Sunday afternoon there was a big parade of marching pipe and traditional music bands... including a piping band from Ulster - I got the feeling that their presence in the republic of Ireland was politically quite a big deal. After that we went to a pub to listen to a session - here I was able to have a nice long nap in front of an open fire before driving on down to Cork city.

The Hounds of Ulster

The Parade

Galway City

Galway
I arrived in Galway on a hot and sunny Wednesday afternoon. I unpacked into the hostel and then went wandering around town to see what I could find. Galway is quite a small city, but being a student town the streets and square were packed with people shopping and sunbathing.

That night I went out looking for a music session but instead ended up listening to a bluegrass band and chatting to a local guy and a German marine biochemist researcher. At the end of the night I was heading back to the hostel, but having looked after my fiddle all evening I decided that I wasn't going to go to bed without playing it, so I set up at the side of the main street and had a go at busking for the first time on my own. By this time it was very late and most people had gone home but I still managed to make 20 Euro (£15) in 40 minutes, which I thought was pretty good going for a first attempt.

On Thursday I came back to the hostel after a day walking around in the sunshine to find that I had a brand new set of room mates... and they turned out to be a great bunch of people; Andy and Bobby are brothers who are visiting Ireland for a week from Colorado; Shannon & Sarah are over from Canada spending the summer working in Galway.

Me, Bobby, Andy, Sarah, Shannon A posing heron
We all headed out that night and spent the evening getting to know each other and listening to some excellent live music (non-trad for a change!) in a great pub called The Kings Head. It turns out that Andy plays guitar, and Shannon step-dances, so at closing time we went back to the hostel to pick up my fiddle and guitar and give busking another try - this time we were a bit too late and even though we made 4 Euro in about 2 minutes there weren't many people around so we moved on to find somewhere a bit more populated, but eventually admitted defeat. Us guys headed back to the hostel while the girls went on to find a night club.


Us providing street entertainment The next day went along in a similar way except by the evening Shannon & Sarah had been hit by jet lag and had decided they were going to bed early. I went out with Bobby & Andy to a session that I was certain I had seen advertised (more than once) around town but it turned out to be non-existent, however on the way past another pub the doorman saw the fiddle and invited us in to join the session there - we just caught the last 20 mins of it and then went back to drop the instruments back to the hostel (The plan was to come back later and try busking again but that never happened). While we were back in the hostel the girls caved into peer pressure and decided to join us for a little while, which turned out to be a good move because somehow we managed to end up in a pub which was hosting the party for some guy who had just been elected as chairman of the Vinters Federation of Ireland - this meant that there was free food, which Andy & Bobby did very well in acquiring for us!

Free Food
The next day the American guys headed off to spend a few days in Dingle and I went out in my van to make sure the battery was charged up, and to see what I could find a bit further afield. The girls were busy finding jobs, and a place to live, which amazingly they did both within 3 days of arriving in Ireland despite spending most the time partying and having no work visas or money!

I haven't got much of a clue about where I went but I found some nice mountains and loughs about 40mins drive out of the city... I think to the north.


The next two evenings I spent in town with Shannon & Sarah celebrating their new jobs and apartment as well as helping them to get acquainted with Galway nightlife... they seem to be doing pretty well at this, there is even 1 bar where we were getting free drinks all night because Shannon's cousin worked there last year. We met all sorts of people these few nights, a group of American engineer students and a group of German students too as well as lots of Irish.

American Engineer Students
Me & 'The Galway Girls'
A really great few days but I think I need a few days of recovery now!