We really enjoyed our two nights in Doolin. A gorgeous, spread out, village with the added bonus of great live entertainment. Up until the last night there I hadn't booked anything for the Thursday night, but always thought it was likely to be Galway. I was half way through doing a booking when I decided to have a last look in case I could get something close to the city centre instead of having to drive in. And I did, amazingly about a two minute walk away.
View of the Aran Islands. Couldn't really see them until the morning we left Doolin
View of the Cliffs of Moher from our bedroom window
A Martello Tower. These were built around the UK when they feared a French invasion. The door is 3 metres from the ground, so I wasn't getting in to see.
View of the Burren
Another great B and B, probably the cheapest yet, under $80 Au with full breakfast. Really nice room with a huge bathroom. We really can't complain about the value of the accommodation over here.
We had still hoped to do a boat trip to the cliffs,, and headed around to the wharf after checking out. Yesterday we had been told all going well there would be a twelve and three pm trip. However when we got there we discovered they weren't running one until 3.00 pm, so too late for us.
It was a leisurely drive from Doolin to Galway, not a great distance at all. We detoured a little and saw some more of the northern Burren sights. It was still early afternoon when we arrived, so we went the extra distance through the city to the Salthill area, stopping on the beach for a lovely coffee. Traffic was a bit more than we anticipated and we did wonder if the detour was really worth it.
It was just before three when we checked in, giving us heaps of time to walk around the Galway streets. Galway is a very pedestrian friendly town with all of the major streets pedestrian only. Jim even stopped at a barbers for a haircut. Very good value too.
The Spanish Arches in Galway
Back to drop off some more purchases, then out for a meal. Of course, coming outside after eating, it was raining again. We have learnt not to go out without raincoats and umbreallas because it can be completely different the next time you walk out a door.
Friday, our last full day in Ireland. We opted for a later start knowing that the next morning was going to be an extra early start. Another good breakfast and we headed out of the city. There is a fairly new motorway linking Galway and Dublin but we opted to go off and look and some towns. Big mistake. It took us half an hour in stop start traffic and we didn't really see anything.
As we were booked near the aiport which is north of the city we went via Trim. I didn't really know much about it, but soon discovered they have a lovely castle ruin so we decided to have a look at our last castle, they did some of the filming for Baveheart there. There was a guided tour at a reasonable cost but we decided we didn't really have the time to wait until it started.
Trim Castle
We found our hotel easy enough, unloaded all the bags and shopping and took the car back. We thought we would have to get their shuttle back to the airport and then get the hotel shuttle from there, but they were nice enough to get an employee to drive us, which saved us a lot of time.
Then it was time to totally repack the bags. So all the heavy stuff into the smaller bag and lighter into the large bag. And they seem to weigh under - all that extra shopping I could have done!!
Ever since booking our return tickets I had been concerned about the time gap at Heathrow of only 1 3/4 hours, and even rang twice re this but was assured it was within limits. When we arrived at Dublin, they also frowned at the time and remarked that Heathrow can be a tricky transfer. As we were reasonably early, they decided to move us to a flight an hour earlier. We got the last two seats, in different rows, and with a bit of a rush to the gate we made it.
The flights were pretty uneventful if long, boring and uncomfortable. In the end we had heaps of time in London for a coffee and a look around the shops then on to the longest flight which was over 12 hours to Kuala Lumpur. Another flight of just over 7 hours and we were in Melbourne.
So we line up at the bag collection and wait and wait, and ours don't appear. On checking, we discovered we made it out of Heathrow in time, but the poor bags didn't. Lucky we had our toothbrushes in carry on.
I guess we can't really complain as in the nine week away, apart from our dose of food poisoning and Jim's teeth issues, very little went wrong.
A few thoughts from the trip -
The UK public toilet system is almost non existent and often when you do find any, you have to pay. It became a challenge each day to find a facility, so you'd make sure if you were having a coffee, they had a loo. If you were lucky to find a town with a tourist information office, they often had them or could point you in the right direction. Any venue you paid to enter normally had facilities so you made sure you used them. After our travels in Australia and finding something in just about any town you travelled through, we were a bit shocked.
We were quite surprised at the great value in accommodation in the UK. Maybe this was partially due to a reasonably good exchange rate. Many times we got lovely rooms with full breakfast for around $100, sometimes less. We would often skip lunch, just having a coffee at lunch time as these breakfasts were so big.
Drivers - where do I start. It seems we have much stricter rules and regulations here and sticking to speed limits and parking restrictions is pretty rare. Jim was pretty amazed by the things we saw. Maybe they just don't have money making fines like we do.
Food - we tried a number of local delicacies. Jim even found himself eating black pudding and white pudding. However, we were sick of most things only being served with chips and peas. Food was reasonably expensive. What we might find was $10 here would be ten pounds or ten euros in UK, so with the exchange rate at 1.7 or 1.5 times, quite a bit more expensive.
In summary it has been a great 9 weeks away with a fair bit of diversity from Cambodia to France, England, Scotland and Ireland and a taste of Wales. A lot of different cultures and habits even within the UK, but all great friendly people except for perhaps one cranky French bus driver who I think needs another vocation. We now look forward to sorting out the caravan and working out "where to next".
This is the final blog for this trip. Hope you have enjoyed sharing some of our highlights.
Carolyn & Jim
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