Ireland 2023 - Day 2: From East to West

The summation of today is from car to campervan and the adventure begins.

Today has been a long and busy day. We started it off by finding a nice cafe to have breakfast just down the road from our hotel in the centre of Naas. I had looked online and found one called Home Cafe, that sold porridge, pancakes and waffles… perfect. When we got there we were the only customers but it looked welcoming and so we decided to give it a try. As predicted Paloma went for the waffles, Forrest ummed and ahhed with the porridge but finally opted for the pancakes. Matt had a bacon and cheese bagel and I went for an eggs benedict. When they arrived they all looked amazing and it honestly was one of the most delicious eggs benedict I have had. Forrest however was less impressed. His pancakes were the thin flat style rather than the Scotch/American pancakes he was expecting. Despite usually liking these, (because he was not expecting them) he decided they tasted different and proceeded to only eat the lemon slices with sugar sprinkled on top. He then decided that the 100% apple juice (mass produced plastic bottle) didn't taste the same either and Ireland must use a different variety of apples!! Not having the energy to argue with him, we left him to it and bought him some plain rice cakes from the local supermarket for him to have instead. 

We then checked out of the hotel and hit the road for the long drive from east to west. The majority of the journey was on the M4/M6 but once we dropped off the motorway the views started to get a bit more interesting and the last 5km were on windy, hilly, narrow lanes which I wouldn't fancy doing in the campervan.  Our destination was Caherconnell Fort and Sheepdog Demonstrations.  We had looked at several options for activities to do on this day but opted for this as it was closer to where we needed to pick up the van and so less chance of delays on the time critical part of the journey.

 

We had just missed the start of a guided tour of the fort but the lady who sold us the tickets assured us we had plenty of time to do a self guided walk of the site before the main event of the sheepdog demonstration, so off we set. Forrest has been studying ancient history at school, however he was getting a bit muddled over what dates were stone age vs bronze age vs start of the medieval era but once we had discovered the information at the back of the guide book that matched the numbered areas of the fort it started to make more sense.  Neither of the kids believed me when I tried to convince them that the 7th century fire pit was where they sat around toasting marshmallows though!

We then made our way down to the sheepdog demonstration. It was really fascinating seeing how the dogs respond so well to all the different calls, both verbal and whistled. There were four dogs being worked today, one was the ultimate professional, one semi-retired so no longer doing the long runs but very good at the close work, one a 3 year old "puppy" learning their trade and one a liability! The handler was very good and kept the banter interesting and the kids enjoyed seeing the dogs separating the sheep into smaller groups, especially when it didn't go quite as planned. We then got to see a selection of different breeds of sheep and the kids got to meet the stars of the show.

 

Next stop was Ennistymon to pick up the van. When we had originally booked the van we had liked the layout inside as it had bunk beds for the kids so we were pretty disappointed a few weeks ago on paying the final deposit when we found out they had upgraded to a newer model that no longer had this. On being shown round the van though we have configured a new way of organising the beds that will hopefully work out even if it does now mean the kids sharing a bed. We had pre-empted this a bit though by opting for sleeping bags for this trip which we are hoping negates a lot of the arguments by keeping them in their own little cocooned areas. 

The final stop of the day was our campsite at Doolin. We have settled in and have started making sense of where to store things and even managed a pretty decent first night meal of pie and mash. After being dry all day the heavens opened and it was a bit too wet for a proper catch up with our friends who have travelled all the way here from the Czech Republic but we are all looking forward to doing this properly tomorrow on a trip out to one of the Aran Islands. 

The kids are now tucked up and asleep and with an early start it is time for us to do the same.

Blogged by Amber.