Ireland Day One

IRELAND
DAY ONE
HOME : BIRKENHEAD : 7.30am
I am not the best person to ask to pack a bag if I am being brutally honest. My wife despairs of my lack of skill or care when it comes to placing clothes into a bag or suitcase in some kind of orderly fashion. The reason for her ire is that I am not methodical when putting things in a bag. I always assume, wrongly as it seems, that as long as I have the items I require, regardless of how the lie or are folded, then that is the essence of the job completed satisfactorily.

This is, apparently, a dangerous and foolhardy thought. In our early days together as a couple, when we ventured to the Lake District for a week camping, my wife was aghast at how “poorly” I had packed my bag. Compartmentalizing things was an alien concept to me, as was folding them neatly. I was a firm believer in the “chuck them in and sit on the bag until it closes” school of thought and such was her low opinion of my abilities; I was summarily stripped of all bag-packing duties for the foreseeable future. This has pretty much continued unabated until the present day. For any trip that requires anything more substantial than a rucksack with a spare pair of socks inside, my wife will despatch me to our bedroom at some point before we leave, like some kind of special needs of the luggage world, to place all the clothes I require on the bed. She will then perform the dextrous task of placing the aforementioned items into a bag for me. It isn’t so much that I can’t do it, just that she does it better. In this scenario ‘better’ means packing enough items to clothe a third world country into the space where I could conceivably pack an Ipod. Doctor Who, Einstein and Stephen Hawking would be hard pressed to explain how she can get so much into such a small space. She is the packing equivalent of a black hole; A luggage singularity.

And so, on the Friday before we departed, I was up in my bedroom deciding which clothes to take with me on our latest sojourn; a week long holiday in a rented cottage in Ireland during the last week of May. The cottage itself had been the subject of much conjecture. In the picture we had seen in the brochure that advertised the cottage, the setting looked beautifully idyllic. The cottage was situated in the tiny village of Rossadillisk on the west coast of Ireland, not far from the small town of Clifden. The grounds of the house fronted onto a clean, secluded and undeniably pretty white sandy bay complete with crystal clear azure waters lapping against the deserted beach. Even I, not being the greatest fan of beaches, had to admit that it did look achingly beautiful.

My mistrust of beaches stems from the fact that I am not really suited to the leisure opportunities that they tend to offer. Most people think of beaches and their minds turn to sunbathing, frolicking in the sand, enjoying a picnic with family and friends or perhaps even dipping their toes into the sea. Others may think of more daring surf based activities involving waves and boards, kites, wet suits and almost drowning. These activites have never appealed to me for a variety of reasons, for example sunbathing just gives me sun stroke and skin cancer, neither of which are an appealing addition to any holiday. I find the sand utterly intrusive. Not only will it squirm its way into your shoes and socks, but also trousers, hair and ears, or indeed any bodily orifice it can worm its way into. I will go to a beach only to spend the next three weeks clearing errant grains of sand from my bed, head or underpants.

Eating on the beach is also a somewhat joyless experience, usually in Britain and Ireland it is too cold to actively enjoy yourself and so you sit on a blanket, with the ever-present wind howling around your ears, eating ham and sand sandwiches whilst fending off violent seagulls, pretending that this is actually some form great self-indulgence. However if you are fortunate enough to find yourself at a beach on a seldom seen warm day, then you can expect your picnic to be inundated with wasps (who will steadfastly refuse to leave you alone despite frantic hand swatting and shrieks of ‘go away’) and your clothes, eyes and food will also be festooned with a liberal coating of wispy, wind-blown dry sand, so much so that eating a sandwich resembles licking the inside of a cement mixer.

As for the sea, it may look inviting in certain parts of the country, but it is usually of a temperature that would send Emperor penguins running for their wetsuits and a hot cup of soup. Usually it is so cold that you can dip a toe in and then chisel it off, with no feeling of pain, five minutes later.

Despite my deep seated reservations, I had allowed myself to fall for this picturesque little hamlet and in particular the house, which was not only beautifully situated but also large enough to cater for our rather substantial party. In attendance on this trip would be my parents and sister, Alex, my nephew Kris, my wife Katharine and I, our two children Jess and Josh and our good friends Jon and Ian. It was Ian that was entirely responsible for discovering this little gem of a cottage from the vast repository of holiday home websites, that liberally festoon the ‘Favourites’ folder on his ageing computer. In addition to the ten human holidaymakers, also coming along with us would be our two dogs, an old and trusted collie cross called Pepsi, and our young, barely house trained Yorkshire Terrier named Cookie. With all our bags duly packed and stored in a large bundle in the hall on the Friday night, we were ready for an early start on the Saturday morning.

Our initial drive would see us leave Birkenhead early on Saturday morning and drive across North Wales and Anglesey to get to Holyhead. From the port we would then take the Seacat over the Irish Sea to the port of Dun Laoghaire. This is actually pronounced ‘Dun’ – ‘Leery’ for the uninitiated in the joys of Gaelic spelling and pronunciation. From there we would have a long drive across the heart of Ireland from Dublin to the West Coast. This was a journey of a couple of hundred miles on top of the travel to Holyhead and the Ferry crossing and so we had all prepared ourselves for a long days driving. We had investigated flying to Knock and hiring cars, but the cost had proven prohibitive and travelling this way was the cheapest option available to us, short of hitchhiking over, or travelling Sangatte style in the back of a lorry.

Due to the fact we had ten people, plus two dogs in just two cars, we had quickly realised that not even my wife and her abilities to seemingly defy the laws of physics, could pack five people, two dogs and their combined luggage, into the interior of a standard sized Vauxhall Astra. This small hitch had been resolved by the procurement of two roof-racks, which would take the vast majority of the luggage. The dogs would then be forced to sleep around various items of baggage in the boot. This wasn’t too much of a problem for Cookie, who I suggested could be kept in the glove box of the car for the journey, but for the larger Pepsi it would be a bit of a squeeze. Fortunately Pepsi is not only thin, but also has a propensity to sleep curled up into the smallest ball that it is possible for a dog of her size to achieve. At times like this she looks less like a dog and more like a dark whirlpool of fur and confusion. As such, provided we gave her regular breaks to stretch her legs, she was quite happy occupying a small space in the boot.

We had chosen to visit Ireland for the whit week holiday after staying at a cottage in South Wales the previous year. We had endured a rather adventurous time during our stay in Wales. We had paid extra for a house with a heated indoor swimming pool, sauna and jacuzzi as well as a fishing lake and the information about the home on the host website, made the house and its various accoutrements, sound absolutely ideal for our requirements. We could not have designed a more perfect house for our needs. Then, following our much later than intended arrival at the house (caused by me having to spend the previous night in hospital and then waiting all day for the medication I needed), we indeed discovered a beautiful place, with what looked like a fantastic pool and jacuzzi.

As we arrived so late in the evening after not setting out from home until tea time, trying the pool out was not really an option given the late hour and the tiredness felt by all and it was only the next day that we fully investigated the pool building and its contents. The first thing we noted was the coldness of the water. It had been advertised as a “heated” pool, this may be the case, however the term heated would only really have been noted by any passing polar bears or blue whales. In human terms, it was uncomfortably cold. That was not the main problem however, the real worry was that whoever maintained the pool, seemed to believe that the ideal chemical composition of any swimming pool should be around 10% water and 90% chlorine. A tiny mouthful of the water would have you spluttering and coughing, leaving a funny tickling sensation in your mouth and throat and if you stayed in the pool too long, the fumes rising from the surface would make you feel dizzy after a while. If you stayed in for more than half an hour you’d feel a slight tingling or burning on any part of skin that hadn’t been frozen solid by the water, and you’d begin to pass out from time to time. In sharp contrast the water in the Jacuzzi was not only warm, but clean and harmless (and as a result much used). It was galling to us to pay for something special like the pool and then to tell the children that they could only use it sparingly, although the fantastic Jacuzzi made up a little for the pool disappointment.

However those trifling worries paled into insignificance compared to the weather we endured. For the whole week we were in Wales, it never stopped raining. Not once. The rain was not just drizzle here and there or an occasional downpour, but proper, continual “I’m coming down to piss you off and ruin your day” rain. The torrential rains were only punctuated by fleeting moments of clear sky, and on one occasion by a powerful wind-storm which brought down many trees in the local area and necessitated my brother, father and I standing in the narrow lane that linked us to the main road into Carmarthen, with a wild-eyed local man armed with a chainsaw, hacking the fallen trees to pieces so we could move or drag the smaller pieces out the way, so we could rejoin ourselves back up with the rest of the humanity once again. It was pretty much at that moment, as I stood there watching a local lunatic wielding a chainsaw, soaked through, covered in lichen, moss, sawdust, mud, leaves and twigs whilst trees and live electrical cables fell to the ground around me, that I thought to myself this was not really an activity that I was all too keen to experience again. It didn’t really fall into the realm of relaxing per se. So we had decided that the following year we would leave these rain soaked shores and head to Ireland in search of marginally better weather and fewer tornadoes, poisonous swimming pools and lunatics with chainsaws.

Yes, I know how absurd and exaggerated that previous paragraph sounds to a lay-reader, but really considering the terrible weather we had endured on several previous holidays at this time of the year, we could have ended up on the frozen moons of Jupiter and still had better climactic conditions. Ireland seemed as good a place as any to go, it was reachable without too much travelling and was a place that we were all keen to visit. Our enthusiasm for a trip there only increased further when Ian presented us with the charming cottage on the edge of a glorious beach in the tiny village of Rossadillisk and after agreeing what we had wanted, we had booked the cottage as soon as possible, to ensure that nobody would book it instead of us for that week.

The morning of our departure dawned with predictably grey skies. However it wasn’t raining as we ate our breakfast. Afterwards I drove the quarter of a mile to pick up Ian and Jon with their luggage. This small act duly completed, we placed their luggage in the hallway onto the hastily growing pile and began to pack the roof-box of the car, chatting cheerily of the day that lay ahead of us.

While my wife may be the world’s best packer of a suitcase or bag, when it comes to roof-boxes, she will happily let me bundle my way through the arduous task of flinging our luggage into it. Deciding that my usual approach of ‘fling it in and hope for the best’ was probably ill advised given the amount of luggage I had to get inside the box, I had decided to attack the packing logically, loading the biggest bags into the roof-box first and then fitting smaller items around them where possible. I therefore felt unusually smug as I slid the key into the lock and turned it to release the lock and open the box. The roof-box had not been used recently and the lock seemed to be a tad reluctant to open for me, however a bit of gentle persuasion, swearing and brute force had the lock undone and the box open. We then commenced loading our larger items of luggage into the box, chatting happily about the trip ahead in quiet whispers in an altruistic attempt so we would not wake the neighbours. At least some of us were, Ian unfortunately has a tendency to speak as if he is yodelling from the top of the Matterhorn at any hours of the night and day regardless of the company he keeps. This auditory assault, combined with the excited chattering and shrieking of my children, combined to make our quiet, neighbourly friendly departure from home, anything but.

Having loaded the roof-box successfully I decided to close the top lid and lock it ready for the journey. I lowered the lid down and found that it would not locate properly.

“Hmmm...” I said scratching my head. “I think I’ve packed too much...”

I pulled out some of the items I felt were causing the problem and tried again. This time the box did close and located into the correct position. Realising my mistake of packing items a little too high, I rearranged a few bags, put the ones I had taken out back inside in a new position and closed the box again... Hurrah! It was a success! I felt that I would at least go up in the admiration of my wife for this, but as I went to turn the key to lock the box, I found myself hitting a rather large snag.

The key would not budge. At all. In any direction.

I wasn’t fretting at this stage. I just assumed that something I had packed had jammed the locking mechanism of the door meaning that while the box top had located, it was unable to lock. I checked to ensure that all the locking mechanisms were free to turn. They were. I closed the box again and still it would not lock. I opened the box and turned the key, it still refused to budge.

Seeing the puzzlement on my face, my friend Ian came over to have a look. Ian is one of these eternally optimistic people who believe that he can fix pretty much anything, despite a weighty tome of evidence to the contrary. From A malfunctioning lock on a roof-box to a sullen child, through to a nasty case of gastroenteritis or someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, Ian is one of these people who will insist that while something may not respond to your persuasive touch, treatment or whimsy, it will nonetheless magically respond to his. Ushering me out of the way whilst I let loose a flurry of expletives, he proceeded to do exactly what I had tried previously, with exactly the same results, before looking me in the eye and saying gravely;

“Hmm...This lock won’t turn, will it?”

I do confess that unapologetic sarcasm at 7.30am is seldom funny and does not help resolve an issue, but I could not help myself under these circumstances. I humbly thanked him for his intuitive foresight and for giving me the highly complex technical information that my feeble mind had been unable to ascertain, perhaps not unexpectedly given my fragile mental state and obviously inferior technical and mechanical understanding. By now I was starting to panic a little, my parents car would be packed beautifully, ready for the journey ahead and more than likely, would be here in a few minutes. We still had half our luggage strewn around the car, two children running about squealing excitedly, two dogs barking, my face like thunder and Ian’s booming voice announcing to our now not slumbering neighbours that “the lock on the box won’t shut!”

Sure enough, my fears were confirmed and that was the scene that greeted my parents as they pulled cheerily into our road. My dad pulled his car up beside me as I was struggling to turn the key, by now I was sweating, angry and about ready to attack the lock with a brick. He slid his window down and greeted me with a smile and asked me jovially how things were going, only to receive the red-faced, ill-tempered, breathy response;

“Oh it’s going fupping marvellously, I’ve got a lock that won’t shut, half the luggage still in the street, two kids arguing and fighting and Ian waking the neighbours because he can’t keep his voice down to anything less than 140 decibels... At this rate we won’t be going down to the end of the street, let alone to fupping Ireland!” I began explaining my predicament with the bellicose lock in greater detail. I confess that I may have inadvertently uttered a slightly ruder word than ‘fupping’ too.

Fortunately, my father is made from sterner stuff than I when it comes to all things mechanical. Such a trifling problem as a malfunctioning lock would be mere child’s play to him, as opposed to being close to inducing a hysterical breakdown and possible cardiac arrest in me. By now I was ratty as hell and realised it, so as my Dad came over to inspect the damage I had seemingly created, I disappeared inside the house for a calming drink and to get away from the cacophony of noise that was echoing around the empty early morning street, as we attempted to ‘quietly pack’.

Usually in circumstances like this when I have attempted to do something and I fail dismally at something mechanical, the process is that I make a phone call to my dad, he then turns up, laughs mildly at my ineptitude, makes fun of my lack of technical ability, points out I am an imbecile and has it fixed within about 20 seconds. I then, fulfilling my role of a complete but grateful prat, thank him profusely and feign understanding of the explanation he gives me, as to why what I was doing wasn’t work and why I should have done it his way. After downing my drink and finding my blood pressure returning to a more healthy level, I walked through the house, joining my dad and the others outside, feeling calmer and more rational. I was, however, surprised to see him still fiddling with the lock and nosing inside the roof-box, talking quietly to himself as he attempted to solve the problem. A solution which seemed to entail our luggage being liberally strewn around the street as if a tornado had passed through, the children squawking their excitement and Ian chatting overly loudly to my mum, Alex and Kris as they sat in my Dad’s car watching the scene unfold.

“Ah! The Floddle plopper’s come down and I need to flick that back...” said my Dad to nobody in particular as he manipulated something unseen in the box.

“...Ah! Now that’s come free and so this should...” he did something else inside the box that I couldn’t make out. He pushed the top of the now empty roof-box down, locating it in the place it should be.

“...and...Yes!” and with a flourish, he turned the key and with an audible and very welcome click, the roof-box shut and was indeed locked.

A rousing cheer went up from us all gathered in the street. I am sure a few of my neighbours joined in, gleeful that their Saturday morning lie in would not be disturbed for much longer by screeching children, loud adults and a red-faced, sweaty, swearing neighbour. With the box now fixed and working, we re-packed the roof-box under strict supervision and my dad locked it when complete, all the while explaining to me what the problem was. Suffice to say, I didn’t understand a word of it, but general feeling behind his words was that I was a complete tool and had locked it in such a ham-fisted and over eager fashion that I was an embarrassment to him and the lofty pursuit of engineering. When he was convinced I was unable to cause any further damage, he then returned to me the roof-box key, before jumping into his pristinely loaded car, as I bundled the dogs and my passengers into the back of my Astra. One of my children, Jessica, was travelling with my parents to give the adults more space (and to ensure that she didn’t constantly fight with her brother, Joshua), so we waved goodbye to Jessica as she strapped herself into the seatbelt in her Granddad’s car and headed off towards our shared destination. A few seconds later, we set the alarm, locked the house and drove after them, following them on their way through North Wales’s often busy roads to our first port of call; the famous sea port of Holyhead.

HOLYHEAD SEA PORT : 9.30am

The journey across North Wales passed remarkably uneventfully given the number of speed traps and traffic jams that booby trap this part of the world. I am certain that it is the case that the global recession can be traced back to all the poor unfortunates who travel through North Wales on a regular basis and are forced into paying speed fines of £60 a time, because they did 32mph in a 30mph zone. Technically now, there are more speed traps in North Wales than there are sheep or native Welsh people with a chip on their shoulder about the ‘damn English’ and that, my friend, is a frightening thought.

On this day however the Gods smiled upon us on our tiptoe through the Gatso’s and the only events of note on the journey were that it rained twice (which by now, we had all come to expect and indeed the fact that it hadn’t rained constantly imbued us with an almost joyous sense of moral victory) and also when a sudden gust of wind, ploughed into the car side on as we travelled across central Anglesey. The surprising gust had me reacting quickly to being pushed towards the central reservations with a surprised shriek of “Whoa! Did you feel that?!” which I don’t feel inspired my passengers with a great deal of confidence, given I was going to drive them for around five hours across the unfamiliar middle of Ireland shortly. As such, and despite our later than intended departure from Sunny Birkenhead, we hit Holyhead at the time we were hoping to, about two hours or so before our ship was due to sail.

I don’t think the metaphor “as beautiful as Holyhead” has ever been used by any of the great Welsh poets or writers and that cannot be a coincidence. The town is a hard place to like, let alone love. There is a rather desperately forlorn, almost melancholic, air about the place. As if the town has to apologise for itself. It seemed forever to be trying to hide the few places of beauty or interest behind a facade of depression and concrete. The place looked like a town planner had said “I’m sorry Dai, but this place isn’t depressing enough, can’t we add a few more derelict shops a bit of litter and graffiti and hundreds of concrete barriers to really make the inhabitants really miserable?” If you can imagine king of grunge, Kurt Cobain, being asked to decorate a power station, this is kind of the impression that modern day Holyhead leaves upon you.

Of course this wasn’t always the case, the town became an important and popular trade route to Ireland in the early 1800’s and it is because of the growth of Holyhead, and more so its important links to Ireland, that Thomas Telford was ordered to improve the transport links between the town and London, following the 1800 Act of Union. It is as a direct result of that need to improve the trade route, that you have such marvellous edifices as Telford’s Menai Suspension Bridge that linked Anglesey to the mainland permanently for the first time upon opening in 1826. The bridge is a feat of outstanding architecture and a triumph of innovation. It is the result of a combination of one man’s genius and thousands of local workers tireless struggles against the ravages of the natural elements, that have shaped and formed the often harsh and unwelcoming land and seascapes around Anglesey. It is therefore such a pity that all this wondrous innovation and ceaseless toil, now leads to a town that makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place.

Finding the docks was relatively simple. Town planners understand that the vast majority of people who come to the town, do so to get away from it as quickly as possible and as a result the port area was well signposted. We pulled into the port in our two car convoy and received our tickets for the boat from an avuncular chap, who didn’t take offence when I mistakenly told him we had four passengers instead of five and then immediately afterwards told him that I had two children in the back instead of just one. In my defence, we’d had to get up early in the morning and I hadn’t had my coffee and the trauma of the not-locking lock had addled my brain somewhat. I just hoped he understood my error strewn warbling as the tired words of a stressed father, as opposed to a militant Al Qaeda cell who was intent on destroying picture postcard town of Holyhead as some form of weird Jihad against ugliness and desolation. Despite my mistakes, he saw we were generally affable and harmless and he cheerily sent us into the parking lots, where we were ushered into a line of parked traffic that was waiting to drive aboard the Seacat, which had already docked in readiness for our arrival.

Docks usually unnerve me. Whenever I drive over one of the local bridges over the docks in Birkenhead, I always get an odd feeling in the back of my legs almost as if the bridge is about to give way at any second and plunge me and the car into the icy depths below. I am always a little awestruck by the sheer scale of the operation on the docks. Everything is so much bigger in this world and I don’t understand very much of it. It seems to me to be all too easy to take a wrong turning and drive off the quayside into the dock, ensuring a rather unpleasant start to the holiday. This is partly down to my own inherent fears and my own latent stupidity.

What struck me today about the vessel transporting us to the emerald isle, was just how small it looked. A quick glance at the size of the car park and the number of cars, coaches and trucks waiting to be transported to Ireland and my brain could not figure out the maths on how we were all likely to fit inside it. I pondered offering Stena line officials the services of my wife, who would no doubt have been able to get every vehicle in the car park on board, on with space enough for a Boeing 747 or two to spare, but I decided against it. This was mainly because she was bringing me a coffee back from the shop and also because she was now clearing up after the dogs who had decided to give us their critique of the beautiful surroundings of Holyhead, by taking two large dumps on the pathway next to the road we were parked on. I only hoped that she’d manage to wash her hands before she’d gone to get me my caffeine infusion.

With time to kill before we boarded, we sauntered around the parked cars giving our legs a stretch and discussing the boat, the dogs, the children, the docks and what a beautiful area Holyhead wasn’t. The children had decided to walk the dogs along a small pathway that seemed to have been designated as only fit for purpose by a myriad of dog users before us. Certainly the plentiful evidence of semi-fossilised turds that littered the area gave rise to this suspicion. Despite the open sewer ambiance, the kids were happy to allow the furry pair as much time as possible to stretch their legs and evacuate their bowels, before being incarcerated below decks on the ship for about two hours. It also served as an ideal opportunity to let Kris, Jess and Josh run off some steam before they were confined to the boat. I was delighted to see several dogs making the same journey over to Ireland with their owners. We’d been a little worried that taking our two could be problematical. We’d never taken our dogs “abroad” before and so we checked if they were allowed on the boat, which they were provided they stayed in the car or were placed in kennels.

We then forgot about this for a while until a few weeks before the holiday when my Dad phoned me in a panic stating that our dogs needed “Dog Passports” otherwise they’d be going nowhere. He then gravely informed us that Dog passports took months to issue and we only had a few weeks left before we were due to sail. This led to a frantic phone call to Stena who assured us that the dogs were free to travel sans passport and they also confirmed that my father was a tit for worrying us in this way. The passports, we learned, were only needed for canine travel outside of the GB and Ireland.

It wasn’t long before the first line of traffic was allowed through to board the boat. We were parked in the third line and soon a man in a yellow hat and high visibility waistcoat (The dockside work wear of choice) ushered us through and onto the road to board the boat. We drove around the snaking trail on the dockside and up onto the loading ramp, only to be swallowed by the vast interior of the vessel. My legs went funny as we drove over the water as I fervently hoped the weight of our cars wouldn’t snap the ramp in half and send us plummeting into the water below. The ramp held and as we drove into the ship, I was delighted to see that when we were eventually asked to stop park up by a member of the loading crew, we seemed to be facing the exit door of the ship. I felt this was a good omen, meaning we would be unloaded off the boat relatively quickly once we had docked in Ireland.

As we got out of the cars, we gathered our necessary belongings and set up the small dog cage that Pepsi had been happily dozing against during the journey over. Whilst we all trusted Pepsi to behave impeccably in the car, our mischievous Yorkshire Terrier, Cookie, was a different matter altogether. She had shown a worrying tendency to chew wallpaper, toys and pretty much anything that she could lay her paws on over the preceding weeks and that, combined with her somewhat erratic toiletry habits, meant that we’d have to put her in a cage for the short trip over the Irish sea. We weren’t too keen on keeping her caged up for a couple of hours and Katharine and I felt rather guilty about it, but the repercussions of what could happen if we left her free to roam about the car for two hours, just didn’t bear thinking about. Having thus caged one small dog and given the other a guilty cuddle, we handed the two of them a chew bone each, a rather pathetic symbol of apology and appeasement, and then we locked the car to the accompaniment of two pairs of mournful eyes and cold-heartedly headed up the staircase onto the main deck of the Seacat.

Upon leaving the stairwell and coming out on deck I found that I was once again taken aback at the size of the vessel. It didn’t take very long at all to walk from one end of the ship to the other and we were very soon at the bow of the vessel, staring out into the harbour and beyond that, the Irish sea, which looked relatively calm, despite the gusting winds that we had experienced on the car journey to Holyhead. Ian had taken charge of the organisation and booking of all our tickets for the journey and he had managed to gain us entry into the ‘upper section’ of the ships passenger area. This small and reasonably priced upgrade, allowed us to help ourselves to some basic refreshments throughout the journey, which the children soon tucked into. We were also able to sit in rather more accommodating and comfortable chairs than those that were available on the lower deck for travellers who hadn’t paid for the upgrade, and who milled around below us scanning the packed deck for free seats. It did feel rather elitist, rather like the captain of olde deciding to share his bunk with you. I half expected the smiling Stena lady to tell us “You can remain up here for the duration of your journey, enjoying the free food and drink available while dusky maidens will attend to your every whim and fancy, or you can mill about with the great unwashed plebs downstairs if you prefer and run the risk of having your wallet, children and kidneys stolen.”

It barely seemed like a few minutes before we felt the ship begin to move away from the dock and out through the harbour into the Irish sea. Ian had informed us that the crossing would take slightly longer than normal because the vessels owners, Stena, would save money on fuel by only running the engines at 70% power. Ian sagely informed us that this cut back in speed would only put an extra half an hour on the total time of the crossing and would not make a jot of difference to the journey otherwise.

We soon found out that Ian was talking abject bollocks.

My sister, Alex, isn’t a great lover of boats. She is much happier 37,000 feet above the sea, travelling at 350mph in a tube filled with highly flammable liquid and unreliable, rusty parts that defy the laws of physics to get you to your destination, than she is at sea level gently ploughing through the ocean waves. She had taken a little convincing that the trip on the boat would be uneventful and as smooth, if not smoother, than flying. My Mum, who had travelled on the Seacat before, assured her that the trip would be as smooth as ironing a snooker table. Ian concurred, explaining at great length and unnecessary scientific detail, just why the Seacat was so smooth to traverse the Irish Sea upon. The problem was that all his and my mother’s assumptions and assertions were based on the general understanding that the Seacat would attain somewhere near its top speed quickly into the journey. Today, however, we were going to be travelling at 70% of top speed and it wasn’t long before we soon began to notice a rather unsettling rocking motion on the boat. Don’t misunderstand me, this wasn’t the Poseidon Adventure, but the boat was clearly and discernibly rocking from side to side. Its forward momentum wasn’t enough to overcome the combined rocking effect of waves and wind and we inside, could quite clearly ascertain this.

“What’s that?” said Alex wide eyed upon feeling the ship move around her for the first time.

I think Ian plucked up the courage to tell her now because she was at sea and could in no way escape from the vessel and while it was unlikely he would escape with anything less than a broken nose, I think he felt it was probably a fair price to pay to get to Ireland in the first place.

“Oh, we’re just rolling a bit in the winds. The seas are a little choppy due to the wind and because we are not travelling at full speed, the ship will roll and loll... a little bit.” He informed her kindly.

Alex wasn’t duly impressed with this information and so she swore at him, the boat, the weather and pretty much everything else that she felt was to blame for the motion on the ocean and upon exhausting expletives, she steadfastly refused to move from her seat until the journey was over. Other people on the boat were feeling the effects of the perceptible rocking motion too. Several were lay down with their heads on the table, looking rather green about the gills. I did feel sorry for them, until I realised that it meant there was more free food for the rest of us, so my sympathy was somewhat muted after that as I tucked into several coffees, a couple of glasses of fresh orange juice and a selection of biscuits which were surprisingly tasty given the usual blandness of travel food that I have come to experience. It wasn’t haut cuisine by any means, but it was better than contracting salmonella from an undercooked burger.

The original plan we had decided upon had been for us all to lunch heartily on the boat ahead of the long drive across Ireland and since this meal would also be breakfast, we decided to indulge ourselves and try some of the rather tasty sandwiches and meals that were on offer from the on board restaurant, a menu from which we had been given as we sat down in our seats. My mum, dad, Alex and Katharine all tucked into an enormous bacon sandwich, which was less a bacon sandwich and more half a pig shoved into a loaf of bread. Jon and Ian enjoyed a full and hearty English breakfast. I was rather more refined and enjoyed a smoked salmon and dill bagel which was ok. I find salmon is an annoying fish in many ways; you always have to flavour it with something else to get any taste out of it. Still, it was rather nice and despite my mother and sister going the toilet just as the ship rolled and lolled considerably (causing them to slide along the toilets in a desperate lunge for the hand dryer while yelling a variety of nautical expletives) we enjoyed the meal and it helped pass the time for Alex, who after her adventurous trip to the toilet, had strapped herself into her seat and was refusing to move until the ship had docked.

As the self-appointed nautical expert, Ian decided to take the children off on a guided tour of the boat in an attempt to either inform them or bore them into a catatonic stupor. In the end they listened to him warble before fluttering their eyes at him and getting him to buy them some sweeties from the on board shop. The rest of us sat and chatted or read and within no time at all,the faint outline of Ireland appeared on the clouded horizon and within minutes we were walking back down to the car deck to be reunited with the dogs in readiness to disembark.

Pepsi, as ever, had behaved impeccably. Cookie had pooped, but she’d done so on her paper. Unfortunately there was no obvious place to put the paper on the boat, so we had to leave it covered by more newspaper, in the back of the folded down cage, until we were off the boat and able to dispose of it elsewhere. I combated this new olfactory problem by winding down my window and pretending I enjoyed the feeling of Irish drizzle and diesel fumes on my face as we queued to get out of Dun Laoghaire harbour. This relatively simple task took a considerable amount of time, as despite the fact there are about forty two lanes for traffic to leave the boat initially, they all filter down into just three small lanes to get out of the main gates of the harbour. Then immediately outside the harbour, you are faced with a busy series of roundabouts and junctions on twisting busy roads, during the busiest shopping day of the week. This is bad enough to negotiate at the best of times, however when combined with constant drizzle in your face, enough carbon monoxide to poison most of inland Belgium and the all pervading stench of dog poo emanating from the boot, it becomes something of a trial.

OUTSIDE THE PORT : DUN LAOGHAIRE : 1pm

Ireland, to me, remained pretty much unchanged from my last holiday visit seven years previously. For many it is the land of Guinness and song, the land of friendliness and warmth, and let’s not forget too, it is a land of great tragedy and pain and while to me it is all of these, seemingly paradoxically, I feel it can all be neatly encompassed in one word. Contrast. Our journey began in the Dublin satellite port town of Dun Laoghaire and took us across the heart of Ireland to the West coast, briefly skirting the bigger towns of Athlone and Galway on the way. Over the course of that journey, we witnessed a great many aspects of this amazing, enchanting country. From staggering natural beauty, such as the mountains around Galway Bay, to the invasive creep of economic growth which has turned the peaceful outskirts of Dublin into something of a raging ring road through a bustling building site. For a land so historically accustomed to strife and battle, there seems to be a new battle raging between traditional, rugged, beatific Ireland and a new, economically driven, concrete clad Ireland and it remains to be seen if any balance between the two can be reached. Progress is progress, but when does it start to impinge on the natural beauty that makes your home what it is, can it really claim to be progressive? Ireland’s still finding the balance between technological advancement, cosmopolitanism and the goal of becoming a real power in a new Europe, whilst maintaining the genteel and quaint roots that make it still, such a special, spiritual and endearing place.

We’d barely left the outskirts of Dun Laoghaire when the rain started. This was something of an in joke amongst us in our car and when the first spots splattered on the window, I had let out a hearty cheer. Ian and Jon were in the back of the car with my son Josh between them, the dogs were in the boot, already sleeping and Katharine was sat with me in the front seat. When Ian had come with us to Ireland on a previous trip, he had regaled us with stories about how beautiful the place was (which was correct), how the people were friendly (also correct) and how the weather can change so often that even if rain comes, it will be blown away by the winds from the Atlantic to ensure better weather replaces it (which was an utter lie). Our last visit had seen us spend a week on the beautiful Ring of Kerry at a fantastically equipped modern bungalow that had everything we could need for an enjoyable week away. Despite the weather, which was disappointing rather than biblically awful, we thoroughly enjoyed the week in this beautiful part of Ireland and we were all keen to see if our second week, in a former police station situated in the Wicklow Hills not far from the village of Avoca, which is well known as the setting for the TV show ‘Ballykissangel’, could possibly be an improvement on the first.

It wasn’t. Firstly the old police station lacked the charm and many of the other features of the previous house, such as natural light, comfort and cleanliness. Cottage guides often describe places as having “rustic charm”, which we discovered means that the house is generally a bit dusty and grubby. More of a shock was that a dank overgrown wooded, hillside ran almost sheer up the back of the house, giving the rear of the house virtually no sunlight at all during the day. The ‘utility rooms’ were situated at the back of the house and were actually the old cells that detainees were kept in. It all combined to give the house a truly spooky feel and I didn’t know if we were here on holiday or expecting to star in an episode of Scooby Doo at one point.

Suffice to say, at night we slept with the lights on with me, my heavily pregnant wife and daughter all in one room. I don’t know how many people had died in the “utility rooms” during its time as a police station in the nineteenth century, but I was willing to bet that they had only been cleaned out a maximum of three times since.

The reason that the rain caused us so much merriment was that during our second week, we had left the haunted police station for the day and drove along the splendid Wicklow coast, stopping only after coming across a long, quiet and beautiful beach that faced out into the Irish Sea. After parking the car in the car park, we spent a glorious hour on the beach, my wife playing with Jessica in the sand, Ian walking in the dunes and then chatting to me as I fished happily in the sea, miraculously, considering my well known inability with anything piscatorial, managing to catch a few dogfish and one tiny bass. It was serene, empty apart from a handful of walkers and we were all really happy. We had been at our little slice of Irish Shangri-La barely an hour when the seemingly omnipresent dark clouds descended and the heavens opened. The torrential downpour engulfed us as we raced to the car, my wife waddling as fast as she could given she was over eight months pregnant. “No matter” we decided as we dried off in the car driving back to the house, “We’ll come back here tomorrow, we still have five days left!”

Occasionally when people relate stories, they may exaggerate the facts for added emphasis or comic effect, however it is with as grave an intonation I can muster and an unusual degree of honest solemnity that I must report to you that for the next five days, it did not stop raining. At all. Not even once. For sure, there were short momentary breaks in the conditions, where perhaps the rain went very light, or even may fool you into thinking it would stop, but then, as your hope soared that you may finally brake the shackle of the dreaded haunted indoors, the scowling clouds would descend and the rain would resume with renewed vigour. We sat in the haunted house gloomily, knowing our beautiful beach was out there, and yet we were unable to spend time on it. It was during this time that I christened Ian as “the rain god” and on several holidays since, he has more than lived up to the billing, as it was proving once again today.

Once we were out of the growing sprawl of Dublin, the Irish roads quietened notably and the driving was particularly pleasant through rolling hills, over and past gently flowing, rocky bedded rivers and through the Gallic heart of small towns and villages. Even the large(for rural Ireland) population centre of Athlone came and went without any real traffic turmoil and at one point, I seemed to drive for an hour without seeing any other car in my rear-view mirror. It was disconcerting to see only cars heading away from where we were heading to. I wondered if they’d been told some terrible truth that we were as yet unaware of... Or perhaps they knew that The Rain God was heading in their direction and they were fleeing inland to avoid the raging deluges that would inevitably follow.

We completed this part of the journey alone as we had become separated from my father’s car pretty much as soon as we had exited the port and entered the disorganised chaos of the roundabout system outside Dun Laoghaire port. We had kept in contact via mobile phone when necessary and my sister had informed us, via text message, that they’d been stuck behind some traffic, slowed by a jovially driven but slow moving tractor, for several miles. She also informed us that they now needed a quick lavatory break as Jessica required use of some facilities to relieve her straining bladder. Unfortunately, my dad chose the one exit on the main route across Ireland that was festooned liberally with diversions and road works.

In typical Irish fashion, the instructions given not only gave directions which were confusing, but entirely contradictory at times, including directing unaware drivers up what appeared to be a cul-de-sac. This unexpected detour was exacerbated by the fact that my dad’s Satnav was completely and utterly bemused as to where they were and kept assuring them that they were actually in the middle of a ploughed field, urging them to “turn around when possible”. This combination of factors meant that they were going to be delayed quite considerably trying to work out where they actually were, while we made excellent time on the clear roads ahead. After retracing their steps back from the cul-de-sac, they eventually found a small Irish pub with the sign “Children Welcome” and they gleefully pulled into the car park to allow my daughter to relieve herself, under the auspices of coming in for a quick drink in this fine local hostelry.

The term ‘Irish Pub’ brings up the merry image of rosy cheeked Irish folk enjoying the craic and a Guinness or two while a traditional Irish band, bodhrun a-blur, belts out a merry tune in front of a gently burning peat fire with a hearty band of merry regulars joining in the merry song. This pub however had shunned such stereotypical nonsense and harkened back to times that I can only believe were prehistoric.

The pub was tiny, dimly lit and when they entered they were regarded by the locals with about as much warmth as the Hitler family turning up at a bar mitzvah. To describe the carpet as threadbare would have been an act of grandiose flattery or borderline stupidity and the decor could best have been described as archaic and rustic, but perhaps more accurately as flea-ridden, unkempt and moth-eaten. But worse was to follow as my mum and daughter ventured timidly down the hall towards the lavatory, avoiding a passing serial-killer, to allow Jess to relieve herself. To say it was ‘basic’ would have been overly complimentary, even an undue kindness. The room was devoid of many of modern day’s little accoutrements. Pot-Pourri for example hadn’t reached this part of Ireland, neither had sanitation, floor boards or a lavatory seat. My daughter was forced to balance precariously on the unkempt and unadorned porcelain in an attempt to empty her straining bladder, much to the admiration of my mother who felt that she would rather wet herself than attempt to use the facilities on offer. Back in the bar my dad had ordered drinks for everyone, mainly to show that they hadn’t come into the pub just to use the facilities (or lack of them), but because they had been genuinely drawn in by the delightful ambience, friendliness and decor of the place. It was so bad it looked like Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen had been let loose in there after overdosing on Rohypnol. All it was missing was the heads on spikes.

By this time, our car had been forging well ahead and we were headed straight for the famous city of Galway, renowned for its oysters and the bay in which they reside. As we reached the outskirts of the town, Josh decided to let us know he needed a lavatory break himself. This was quickly seconded by my wife, Ian and Jon, who had been keeping their bladder discomfort a secret as I happily ploughed through Ireland totting up the miles blissfully unaware of the straining bladders accompanying me in the car. Dutifully, I turned off the main road through to Galway and we followed the road signs to a large out of town Retail Park and pulled into a depressingly familiar looking McDonalds car park. My passengers squeezed their creaking limbs out of the car and all quickly availed themselves of the rather more modern toilet facilities McDonalds had on offer.

I remained with the car and opened the boot to allow the dogs a drink of water and a chance to stretch their legs on the grass. As I walked with them enjoying the sunny afternoon and the chance to stretch my own legs, Ian came out from the restaurant, arms loaded with a large bag of burgers and fries to share amongst us. This we duly did, remarking upon the tired adage that McDonalds food must be the same the world over, before jumping back in the car for the final leg of our journey which would take us on a particularly verdant route through the mountains, forests, hills and peat bogs of Galway, towards the town of Clifden and then from there, onto the small fishing village of Cleggan. The drive was a joy on virtually empty roads with sumptuous views at every juncture that were unsullied even by the oppressive greyness of the weather. It seemed as though no time had passed at all before we had completed the penultimate leg of the journey and pulled into the small village of Clifden at around 6pm in the evening.

THE SUPERMARKET : CLIFDEN : 6pm

Given that we were so far ahead of my parents, who we reckoned were a good half an hour or more behind us, we decided to save time and pop into the supermarket in the centre of Clifden, to pick up a few necessities for the evening and tomorrow morning. It would be a bit of a squeeze to get everything in the car on top of what we had already crammed into it, but we reckoned given that we only had a short journey to the cottage, we could cope with having plastic bags draped around our ears for a few minutes.

One of Ireland’s greatest masquerades is that the population is generally regarded as being a bit thick. This is patently absurd and bears no resemblance to the truth whatsoever. Some of the greatest thinkers, poets and writers have heralded from this indubitably intelligent country. In recent times there have been legends from almost every artistic discipline born from these very shores, comedians, writers, songwriters of such skill and wisdom that it beggars belief. Admittedly, you have to factor in Chris De Burgh and Westlife into that, but despite them the country still does remarkably well. This unfair myth about the innate stupidity of the Irish people continues to profligate, mainly due to the innate stupidity of people who like to believe it. In addition, I believe that I have worked out another reason why the Irish are not too keen to dispel the myth; It is because the Irish people appear so beguilingly simple, charming and friendly, so harmless and inoffensive and so welcoming and warm, that you are lulled into a false sense of security, so that you cannot see the fact that no matter where you go in Ireland, everywhere is so bloody expensive.

A half filled trolley filled with enough food to last ten people around a day came to nearly 200 Euros, all this at supposedly a budget supermarket. Even accounting for the weakened pound against the Euro, it was still ridiculously expensive (and it would prove to be not an isolated instance). Despite the fact we felt royally fleeced, we still came out of the supermarket delighted because everyone seemed so nice, friendly, jovial and they smiled and talked to you. The Irish are a latter day Robin Hood, taking your wealth not through the medium of arrows, but through charm and friendliness. It works too. Despite the shocking cost, it was an act of great prescience on our behalf to pop into the supermarket on the way to the cottage initially, although the reason why would only become clear to us a short time later.

Whilst Jon, Ian and I were ambling aimlessly around the supermarket and chatting amicably to locals, Katharine was walking the two dogs with Josh outside and at some point during this, my mother and father’s car had caught us up and passed us in Clifden, heading down the uneven, pock-marked road towards Cleggan. This meant that they first traversed the somewhat sparse and barren rock/peat, almost moonlike, landscape between the two towns and arrived at the house in Rossadillisk a few minutes before us. Finding the house was surprisingly easy given its somewhat secluded location and on the approach to the house, in the receding sunlight, it did look staggeringly beautiful; the white stone walls a stark contrast to the lush green grass, the bright (freshly painted) red gate and the blinding blue of the Atlantic Ocean, which lay beyond the sandy beach, just yards off the road to our left. A solitary donkey in a field eyed us with a mixture of contempt and disinterest as we approached the driveway to the house. To the left, a field of cows mooed their welcome to us and regarded us with about as much interest as they did the flies that like to reside as close to their bottoms as possible. The driveway leading up to the house was large and the parking area easily accommodated both cars and I ended our epic journey parked next to my dad’s Zafira. The entire journey from Birkenhead to Rossadillisk had taken the best part of twelve hours, and yet it hadn’t felt like an ordeal behind the wheel. Even so, it was nice to get out the car definitively for the day and to let my spine unravel and my numb arse to allow some feeling to seep back into it.

THE COTTAGE : ROSSADILLISK : 8pm

At first glimpse, the inside of the house was as impressive as the outside. It was clean, furnished well for our large party with plenty of seating. There were plenty of enclosed grounds around the house for the dogs and children to play in safely, as well as the beautiful white sand beach that lay across a sparse car track (that, for the duration of our holiday, would only see one car other than our own). It was only when we investigated things a little more closely that we realised that we had been very wise to stop at the supermarket and stock up on a few basics when we did.

Most rented cottages will leave you a few basics in the house to ensure that if you get there late of an evening, you can at least use the bare essentials. By this I don’t mean make a cup of tea and a slice of toast, I mean THE essentials, like the ability to put on a fire or to use the toilet. Sadly the owner of the house didn’t believe such a common courtesy should be extended to his guests. All toilets in the house were devoid of a scrap of toilet roll, much to our amazement. There was no firewood or peat to use to get the fire going, there wasn’t even so much as a grain of salt in the salt cellar. I half expected to turn the tap on to see a piece of paper unfurl with the message “Why didn’t you bring your own water? Do you expect me to provide everything do you? Ya fecking English baskets!” Fortunately, we had been ordered by my mother to buy toilet roll from the supermarket “just in case” and so we were able to furnish our bare loos with this seemingly needless and frivolous item.

We then made a note of the necessities we’d need to pick up from the supermarket tomorrow, which included items like salt, tea, sugar, all things which you may argue a cottage owner is not obliged to provide, but when they do it actually makes it feel like they want you to be there and enjoy the place, rather than an invader that needs to be repelled.

Our chagrin at the lack of loo rolls and other essentials was further heightened when we read the number of other items we were expected to pay for. We’d be charged for any electricity we used while we stayed (again some landlords charge for this, others do not), we’d be charged for using the oil filled radiators. We’d already paid to use the linen provided by the owner rather than bring our own with us from England. Given the amount of people and the time we’d spend around the house, these would not be small charges of 20 Euros, but a serious and considerable outlay over the course of a week. The final straw came later in the holiday when we learned that we had to ensure all our rubbish was stored in special green bags. The information provided informed us that these bags could be purchased from the local shop in Cleggan, although it did not say how much they cost. Reckoning that a bag of ten would cost around 1 Euro, as in the UK, my father headed out to pick up a few of the green bags and was stunned to find that they sold for the princely sum of 5 Euro per bag. Suddenly I could understand why I had seen a large and somewhat unsightly, burnt out patch at the foot of the garden with what appeared to be the remains of several bin bags littering the area. I think a few other tenants before us had baulked at the idea of having to spend the equivalent of £5 per rubbish bag, to get their detritus taken away.

I do realise the above may sound like we are penny pinching, mealy mouthed and perhaps not quite so understanding of the local culture, customs and rural ways of Western Ireland. However what irked us was that none of this additional expense had been told to us before we left. Had we been informed that we would be expected to pay for pretty much every single thing we used,a great many of which are fully included as part of your rental with other cottages in other parts of Ireland and the United Kingdom, it may well have seen us persuaded to go somewhere else. This general feeling of being taken as some “thicky tourist with money to burn” added somewhat to the general feeling that we were being taken advantage of somewhat. The “thickie English with their fancy cars and their money, what can we fleece them for next?” I felt like the idiot man who had paid £150,000 for his new Ferrari, only to sit in the car and find it missing a steering wheel, handbrake and pedals, while the conniving salesman happily skipped off to count his percentage of the sale.

The caretaker, who looked after the house in the owner’s absence, was sympathetic to our gently put complaints. She seemed to share many of our grievances and I am sure she had heard the complaints several times before. Her answers seemed well rehearsed to me. It didn’t make the argument provided by the owner to her as to why he didn’t provide anything and charged for everything, any more convincing however, especially since we had paid well over the odds in the first place to secure the house. She also confirmed that the owner would come to the house after a tenant had left and “take away” anything they’d left behind, such as toilet rolls, salt etc and as petty as our complaints sounded, surely that beats them?

As I said before, Ireland is a land of contrasts. We’d seen the beautiful side of it earlier during the day, we’d now met the other side. Rough with the smooth, Yin with the Yang, the unerringly generous with the insidiously petty, the beautiful beach with the burnt out bin bags.

Upon arrival we had to sort out who was sleeping in which rooms. Due to a chronic lack of decisiveness amongst our group, few people in the entourage were willing to make a verifiable decision as to this, so my wife and I got the ball rolling and took the smaller room at the back of the house. We did this for three reasons, firstly it was near the back door, allowing us to let the dogs out late at night and early in the morning with the least amount of noise for anyone else. Secondly it was near the children downstairs, who would often spend the morning trying to be as loud as humans can tolerate. The close proximity would enable us to race along the corridor of a morning and threaten to break the Blarney stone over their heads should they continue with their decibel laden racket. Lastly and most importantly, if nobody had made some form of decision, then we’d have spent our first night in Rossadillisk, sat in the kitchen refusing to make a decision for fear our choice offending the sensibilities of someone.

Our bedroom had a small en-suite which seemed to have its own colony of weird long legged Irish spiders resident. When I opened the door switched on the light and sat down on the toilet, it was a good job I had removed my trousers as when I looked up and saw the number of spiders on the ceiling I almost did shit the proverbial brick. It was like a scene from Arachnophobia. Being a brave man with no fear of spiders, I did the sensible thing and rushed out crouched down, sending my wife in to deal with them in her own inimitable way. I will have a go at packing roof-boxes, but I draw the line at spiders and before you ask; yes, I had wiped.

For our first meal on holiday, the ten of us then consumed the most expensive ‘pizza from the supermarket’ meal we had ever eaten and then wandered down the drive to the beach for a short walk along the sandy bay. The cool wind howled mercilessly across the beach but even so, it was still undeniably beautiful. The dogs chased each other along the beach, the children asked if they could build sandcastles (which was lovely but misguided, a bit like asking to play conkers in the middle of a tornado) or swim in the sea (The sight of a passing Beluga whale trying to get a fire started to warm up a bit, not putting them off in the slightest). The grown-ups enjoyed the view and ignored the wind and the ever present threat of rain.

When global warming takes hold, this will be a paradise.

Considerably shorter of cash, but much less grumpy and with a feeling of warm fullness from tea, we departed to bed and my wife soon fell into a deep sleep. I on the other hand kept guard.

The spiders weren’t fooling me.