Ireland

It was Thursday the 22nd of March. I'd just finished a long, hard two-day working week, and the 4-day Easter weekend had just begun. I desired a beverage. To be precise, I desired a Kilkenny Irish Ale. It is quite probable I could have obtained one in London. It is quite possible I could have laid my hands on one in West Hampstead. But that would be too easy, and I wasn't willing to risk it. There was only one way to be sure. We assembled a recon team and shipped out early Friday morning, and a couple of hours later we arrived in Dublin.

Our unit consisted of Brendan Lynch (farl left - went to school with Tim), Cameron Rush (third from left - also went school with Tim and now lives in Dublin), Tim, Kate, M-A and yours truly.

We jumped in our 9-person troop carrier and headed to our rendezvous point in Dublin, to meet Brendan and Cameron. Good Friday seems to mean different things in different parts of the world. In Australia, nothing is open (not necessarily out of any reverance, Australians just love a good public holiday). In London, everything is open (London stops for no man, prophet, god, fire or plague). In Dublin, everything seems to be business as usual, minus the alcohol. Not a drop of it to be found anywhere. So in the search for Kilkenny we had to widen the net. We decided to roll straight on out of Dublin. For those playing along at home, a rough guide to our circumnavigation can be seen here.

We drove across to Galway that Friday, and spent the night there in a travel-lodge we had booked from London. We figured that since the search for beer had brought us to Ireland, we may as well do a little sight-seeing, so Saturday morning we headed for the Cliffs Of Moher.

The Irish countryside can be summarised as: Fields, castles and sheep.

The cliffs were definitely cliffs.

And there were some nice beaches.

Ireland even has a surf scene. This beach was crowded even by Gold Coast standards, despite the water being arctic and the swell non-existent.

We picked up some hitchhiking girls, but they turned out to be Americans, so we dropped them off pretty quickly :P

Saturday night we found a B&B in Dingle to stay for the night. We had a great view as we warmed up with some drinking games before hitting the Dingle town, but alas, still no Kilkenny was to be found.

Lonely Planet had informed us that the sight-that-must-be-seen in Ireland is to drive the Ring of Kerry. Having already spent most of two days in the car, and still feeling the effects of the drinking games the night before, we passed on the 200ish km ring. Maybe another time.

And if the Ring of Kerry is the sight-that-must-be-seen, then the cheesy-tourist-magnet-that-must-be-done is the Blarney Stone. And was it ever cheesy. The fact that those of our group who been there previously elected to stay at the pub and watch football rather than return should have been a clue. Brendan, M-A and myself walked from Blarney town up to the castle. We then climbed the castle, dutifully reading the first few of the hundreds of signs that adorn every goddamn rock in the thing. When we got to the top, we watched a few people suffer the warm embrace of the man assisting people to lie on the floor whilst leaning out to kiss the stone - he seemed to be enjoying it a little too much. We passed. M-A kissed a stone. Close enough. We headed back to the pub - which incidently did not serve Kilkenny.

It was Sunday afternoon, and time to head back towards Dublin. Fortunately, a beeline from Cork to Dublin passes directly over a town by the name of Kilkenny. Finally...

We spent Sunday night at Rushie's place in Dublin, and jetted back to London on Monday afternoon. Mission successful.