After crossing the Irish Sea we found ourselves in Dublin still with our trusty van - we decided to book into some accommodation for the weekend. The place was definitely not the best Airbnb we stayed at but it was in the old Guinness cottages where the workman for the Guinness Brewery were housed, so a lot of history around the area. Staying so close to the Brewery we did the famous tour and sampled some freshly poured Guinness on a Sunday afternoon. The day after we arrived we headed into town to restock the wardrobe, as a few things were in desperate need of replacing. The one-in one-out policy is still very much enforced. After a few hours on our own getting haircuts and so forth we headed to the famous temple bar district to listen to some live bands. The street was buzzing on a Saturday and we signed up for the Dublin pub crawl. This turned into a great night out with other backpackers and a great way to find small hidden bars. The weekend in Dublin was a great one and we would definitely recommend a stay here.

Monday we were back on the road and aiming for Cork. We stopped off on our way in Kilkenny and jumped on a walking tour. Our guide Jim was great and we had a few laughs as he told us the historical story of the town. After lunch and coffee we were back on the road towards Cork. We knew we wouldn’t find a campsite in the city so we headed for the neighbouring town of Cobh where we found a secluded spot to try our luck at freedom camping, no one bothered us and we had our own little beach all to ourselves. The next morning we went and strolled through the streets of Cork which wasn’t overly interesting other than Pete collecting some Pokemon.

We continued our clockwise journey and found a campsite just out of Killarney. The next day we did the full Ring of Kerry road which is the peninsula coast out from Killarney. The drive was super windy and narrow but the sights were worth the ride. The coastline was beautiful and we found a few stops along the way. Killarney was a great little town and we would have definitely loved to try the local music scene if we were there longer. After an exhausting day of driving we stopped for the night just out of Limerick, in Adare - a small farming town where we found a small campsite. After a late start we had a quick breaky, which usually consists of cereal and banana and made our way towards limerick for a look. Limerick was pretty dead midmorning on a rainy day and we didn’t hang around for long. We saw the Castle across the river but were a bit ‘Castled’ out so decided not to stop in at this one.

With the Galway races in our sites we hit the road and headed north, where we arrived in a seaside campground in Salthill just on the outskirts of the city. We took a stroll down to the local pub which was great as the town was in racing fever. We had just missed ladies day the previous day, but with 3 days of a 7 day race meet still ahead we were off to the Friday evening races. We put on our finest outfits, consisting of, my one dress and Pete’s one crinkled dress shirt we had in our possession and took the bus into town. We headed out to the races after a nice Irish coffee to kickstart the afternoon. After breaking-even with our betting money the buses took us back into town where we stopped in at various bars and enjoyed a big night of live music and a lot of dancing with the locals! Thank god for the kind people next to us in the caravan park who bought us over some strong coffee midmorning as we arose. The locals loved hearing about our trip and I’m sure they would have cooked us breakfast without any hesitation, the Irish hospitality is amazing.  

Eventually back on the road we continued up the coast towards Westport only a few hours today, where we landed ourselves in a holiday fun park. The campsite was full, being a public holiday weekend, but they allowed us to stay in the carpark which was all we needed for the night. From here we headed for Donegal, which was all shut up on a Sunday of the Bank holiday weekend so we headed out towards the coast in search of a campsite for the evening. We stumbled across a small fishing village called Killybegs where a rowing completion was taking place and we were there just in time to watch the last race. That evening we wondered in from our campsite to check out some more live music, not realising it was a bank holiday on Monday, so Sunday was going off! We stumbled into the small local which was overflowing with people and we just had to go and check it out, turns out we landed in the middle of two hens nights a 21^st and a stag do all on the same night. Many hours later we exited with new friends and somewhat celeb status, being the only Aussie/Kiwi combo the town has seen in here as most tourists don’t stop in at their town.

On the road again and this time we were on our way to Derry and onwards to Bushmills. We ventured into the famous Bushmills distillery where they have been producing Whiskey for over 400 years on site. We took a tour which showed the distilling process right through to the packaging and shipping of the Whiskey, the tour ended with a sample, not for me but Pete enjoyed it.  From the distillery we made our way to the Giants Causeway where Irish mythology tells the story of a giant constructing a causeway to Scotland, basically it is a lot of amazing rock formations with a rugged coastline. Further along the causeway coast on our way to Belfast the weather had set in and visibility was to about 100m, needless to say we didn’t see much coast after the causeway. We spent a day in Belfast where we wondered the streets and took a walking tour. The tour was the best way to get the history good and bad of the city. That night we boarded an overnight ferry back to England landing in Liverpool. We were sad to say goodbye to Ireland as we had such a fun time and the people are just amazing.