The travels of Tim and Megan: Republic of Ireland

Day 1: Kilkenny, Cashel and Cahir

After a very smooth ferry ride, we disembarked in Dublin at 12:30am, with the aim to get out of Dublin as quickly as possible and find somewhere quiet to park up for the night. This proved easier said than done! After travelling through two toll gates, we were finally on the outskirts of Dublin, but everything looked a little too built up. Finally, at around 1:30am we exited into a perfect little town, although there was a strange black car following close behind us. We pulled over to let it past and what do you know... red and blue lights went on - the very helpful Irish police! They had assumed we were lost and had stopped to help us, and ended up directing us to a campsite back in Dublin.

However there was no way we were back-tracking, plus no camping ground would ever be open at that hour, so we drove on (hoping our uber-helpful new friends weren't following) to the next town, a place called Naas, which had a perfect carpark. We finally got to sleep around 2am. It turned out the experience unnerved Megan as she woke Tim up at 5:20am, convinced the spaceship was being towed or clamped (false alarm, just a rubbish truck). Not a great start to Ireland.

We awoke to drizzling rain and continued on our way to Kilkenny. Kilkenny has a lovely medieval city centre with cobbled streets bursting with colourfully-painted pubs. We explored the town on foot, checked out rather impressive castle and shops and enjoyed a taste of the local drop - Kilkenny of course - in one of the old pubs! We would loved to have stayed a night in Kilkenny, as it looked like the sort of place that would have really come alive in the evening!

After lunch, we set off towards Cork in the south-west, stopping at Cashel for a look at the Rock of Cashel, the traditional seat of the kings of Munster. Cashel was a pretty little town with a lovely church and again, plenty of pubs! We then drove the short distance to Cahir, a village about halfway between Kilkenny and Cork. Similar to Cashel, Cahir was very pretty, with some nice pubs and shops and plenty of people out and about.

The first campsite we tried was fully booked due to it being a bank holiday weekend, so we were relieved to find another site that had space for us. Actually, it turned out that we were the only ones there; and the place looked like no-one had stayed there for years. We had to de-cobweb the bathroom! It was run by a scary old man with a strange voice, the sort of guy who plays the serial killer in scary movies. He commented that it was a "great day for a hanging"...eeek. However, he soon left us alone and we cooked some dinner and then walked back to town in the hope of meeting some locals. We did meet one interesting character who was on his 12th pint of the day and swore like a trooper - charming. After a long day, it was good to finally head back to the spaceship for some sleep.

Day 2: Cork and Cobh

We began Wednesday by driving the remaining distance to Cork. We arrived at around 10:30am, giving us plenty of time to explore the shops and city centre before finding an impressive morning tea at the English Market - a sort of farmers' market with cakes and hot food too. Tim made the mistake of putting his used napkin in the bin just next to the butcher's stall. The butcher, who was French, promptly told him off for using "his personal bin". What a cock.

We walked up the hill to an area of Cork called Sheldon, which we had been told was very pretty and lively. We liked it, but like the rest of Cork it seemed asleep. Cork is apparently a student town and, being summer holidays, we guessed that most of the students were off on holidays. We turned down the opportunity of visiting the butter museum in Sheldon (as fascinating as that sounded) in favour of a trip out to Cobh.

Cobh is a sweet little seaside village about 20 minutes' drive from Cork, where the Titanic made its final stop for passengers. We visited the Titanic memorial and a memorial dedicated to the Lusitania victims (many of whom were brought ashore and buried at Cobh). We had some excellent seafood chowder for lunch and took a look at the cathedral; by now, we consider ourselves cathedral conniseurs. Plus they are generally free and almost always dry.

Later in the afternoon, we stopped in at the Jameson's whiskey distillery at Midleton. The distillery is really beautiful, having operated since 1825. We were too late for a tour, but poked around the buildings and gift shop, eventually deciding not to buy anything. We returned to Cork at around 7pm, found a spot to park up sleep in for the night, and then headed to the city centre in the hope of finding somewhere interesting for dinner. We had a couple of drinks in a pub and grabbed a pretty cheap pub dinner, but again, Cork proved a bit quiet - maybe things would be different in Galway?

Day 3: Limerick, Adare and Galway

Thursday was going to be a big driving day, so we left Cork first thing and drove north-west to Limerick, arriving there about 10.15am. Our guide book had a pretty negative view of Limerick, claiming that it was plain to the point of being ugly and that it was not very lively either. However, we thought it was actually pretty good. It was rather plain, but a not lot more so than Cork, and it had a lively, exciting feel to it.

We stretched our legs with a walk through the city centre and we found a delicious brunch at a bakery. We then drove the short distance across to Adare. Adare is a beautiful little town packed with medieval buildings and charming thatched cottages. We walked up and down the main street of Adare, admiring the thatched cottages and the colourful Irish pubs, which are literally everywhere. We visited the supermarket and acquired some supplies for an awesome picnic lunch.

Next stop was Galway, a place we had been looking forward to visiting all trip, not least because we happened to be visiting Galway right in the middle of its biggest festival of the year, the Galway Races! Due to the races, there were thousands more people in Galway than usual. The place was absolutely buzzing.

We parked the spaceship and walked through the pedestrianised centre of the city, enjoying the live music and other entertainment on offer on the crowded cobbled streets. Once we had our bearings, we moved the spaceship to its overnight docking spot and we hit the pubs. Shortly after we arrived our first pub, which was already busy - as were all of the pubs - town was hit with a tidal wave of well-dressed people who had arrived back into the city on dozens of buses following the end of the day's racing action.

The streets were packed with thousands of people, most of whom were drinking. It seemed that many of the pubs were actually too full to allow anyone else in. The whole city had gone mental. We managed to move around a few different pubs, before we settled on a very busy and lively one right in the heart of the city. It was exactly what we had been looking for in Ireland - live music in the corner, plenty of people and excitement, and of course plenty of Guinness!

Within minutes, we had acquired a group of new Irish friends. We asked them if they had won any money at the races and that was it - we were instant mates. Three or four hours and many pints of Guinness later, having been invited to stay with our new friends if we were passing through their part of the country, we had to leave to find some food. It was 1.30am and we had loads to drink (10 pints of Black Gold for Tim), so we felt that we had earned a greasy burger, which we found at Supermacs (Irish version of McDonald's). That, too, was absolutely chokka. Galway in race week is insane. We loved it!

Day 4: Galway

We woke feeling rather hungover on Friday morning. Tim slept like a baby, but Megan was woken at some crazy hour by a couple of drunken Irishmen shouting down the road to each other, something along the lines of:
"Paddy...Paddy...Paddy..."
"What?"
"What are you doing?"
"What?"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm walking on the road. What about you, Seamus?"
"Oh me too."
Hysterical laughter.

We drove around to Salthill, a beautiful suburb of Galway down by the sea, where we very craftily made use of the showers at the local swimming pool. For a few euros each, we had a sauna to sweat out some alcohol and then had really good showers, before heading back into the centre of Galway. We managed to find a brilliant carpark, where we got all day parking for 5 euros. We wandered around the city centre, checked out a few shops, visited the Galway city museum (which was really good), had lunch in the museum cafe and then retired to the spaceship later in the afternoon to read and sleep. Galway is a really nice place, with lots of good cafes and restaurants, as well as insane pubs.

In the evening, we went to a couple of different pubs, although strangely we didn't feel like drinking much! There were even more people out drinking than the previous night! We saw some brilliant street performers, our personal favourite was the two guys dressed as those little green plastic toy army men that many of you may remember from your youth. They stayed still in an army pose until somebody put money in their bucket and then they quickly changed to a different pose and stayed still again. They were awesome. One of the pubs had a couple of guys performing Irish music and they were amazing. That was a good end to a rather quiet day in Galway.

Day 5: Sligo and Ballyshannon

We left Galway early on Saturday and drove north to Sligo (about 1.5 hours away). Sligo was a slight disappointment - our guide book had really built it up, but it was just a standard town, which was pretty dull and lifeless for a Saturday. We walked through the town centre, but nothing really grabbed us. Things improved though, as we found a Pizza Hut on the outskirts of Sligo, where we had a brilliant lunch (unlimited drink refills - giddy up)!

In the afternoon, we drove to Ballyshannon, a pretty little town made famous as it was the birthplace of Rory Gallagher, a very popular Irish singer. There is a big statue of him in the centre of a roundabout in the town. We enjoyed walking through Ballyshannon before we headed to a good camping ground on the edge of a lake that we had found. We got there in plenty of time to do some washing and get all sorted for a picnic dinner. However, the weather had other ideas and it started raining arounf 6pm and didn't stop until the morning. So we had a makeshift dinner in the spaceship and watched a DVD.

Day 6: Exit to Northern Ireland

We woke to more rain, so we got showered and sorted and left the camping ground. We drove north-east, passing through Donegal Town and across the border into Northern Ireland, where the weather was a little better.