The main job for today was to return the campervan to Ennistymon before experiencing a Medieval Banquet at Bunratty Castle. Similar to an Airbnb, there is an expectation that the van will be returned in a certain state of tidiness and with everything stowed away correctly, so we spent some time before getting on the road making a good start with this.
Our first point of call was our hotel for the night, The Courtyard B&B in Bunratty where we'd arranged an early check-in. The hotel is practically empty as the owner is going away tomorrow for his own summer holiday and the hotel then closes for two weeks, so no bookings beyond tonight have been taken.
I took some time to finish cleaning the van (much easier empty without passengers) whilst Amber made the most of a hotel shower and the kids attempted to find something to watch on Irish TV. Then I ran them down the road to Bunratty Castle so that they could spend a few hours exploring (over to Amber below) whilst I took the van back to Vanderlust. In total we travelled 859 km / 534 miles in the van and I much preferred it as a vehicle than the more traditional motorhome that we had in Scotland last year. Being that little bit narrower and lower makes it much more car-like to drive, although it did make the S-Max feel so low when I first set off on the drive back to the hotel.
We had read online (but not found anything official) that you got reduced entrance price to the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park if you had tickets for one of the evening events so we hadn't pre-booked tickets for this. I was glad we did ask as they only charged me €10.50 and let the kids in for free. With only 2.5hours to spend here we decided to bypass the castle itself as we would be seeing inside some of that later at the meal and headed straight for the folk park. This is a living reconstruction of the homes and living areas of Ireland from over a century ago. The kids were interested in seeing inside the various buildings and especially liked the school with its separate entrances for boys and girls.
The Village Street was nice although it was a shame that there were no demonstrations on today, or none that we managed to see anyway. Each house seemed to have a gift shop attached to it or was just purely a gift shop selling relevant wares which was a challenge with the children and especially Paloma who always wants to buy everything even when she doesn't know what it is!
We had been following but lost signs for the start of a Fairy Trail that I had seen advertised online (not marked on the map) but only found the start of the trail by accident when Forrest wanted to see the red deer enclosure. I then managed to download the trail booklet and whilst we couldn't do all the activities, this did help us follow the route and locate all the fairies.
This was a good way to encourage the kids to explore the site and we popped in several of the houses and recontructed buildings along the way. The kids liked seeing all the animals and in particular made friends with some kid goats. Then after a quick play on the playpark it was time to meet up again with Matt.
After meeting Amber and the kids in the entrance lobby at the Banquet Registration desk, we set off for the castle. We were greeted at the entrance by Jim the chief butler and compère for the evening. He made small talk with the kids and said they were Prince Forrest and Princess Paloma, and setting them up to call us their King and Queen, he duly corrected them to call us their servants!
Before the meal we had a glass of mead (juice for the kids) in the great hall of the castle whilst listening to some live Irish harp and violin music. We were then introduced to the full cast who were multi-talented as singers, actors and full on waiting staff for the meal.
The meal was held in a different room in the castle on large shared benches and two guests had been chosen to play the roll of king and queen. Seats were preassigned and we had one end of a bench next to some American tourists. The meal was four courses, starting with soup, then ribs, followed by chicken as the main dish and an apple based dessert to finish. The food and drinks were plentiful and of a surprisingly good quality for a mass catered event with 120 covers. The only item of cutlery that we had was a dagger (think steak knife) and we had to rely on using our hands for everything else. This is something that our kids are experts in and for once we didn't have to nag them to use their cutlery!
Throughout the meal there was banter, song and music, with a more structured final 20 minutes where the full cast performed some classic Irish numbers. The harpist had a solo piece that I thought was really impressive, especially considering that a few minutes earlier she was cutting up and serving roast chicken.
Soon the entertainment was over and we walked back to the hotel via a quick photo call outside the castle with the kids. Tomorrow we will be heading back to the UK on the Rosslare to Fishguard ferry, but not until 7.30pm so have a couple of things planned. More on that tomorrow though.
Blogged by Matt and Amber.
