Into The West
July 05, 2004
The last line of the last blog mentioned the fact that I was heading off to the West to go camping for the weekend. In the interests of conclusions, I simply had to write to tell the tale...
Brightspark and partner headed off for the West on Friday evening, a little later than planned, but still we'd make up the time. Or so we thought. Enfield scuppered that one. Later on, the car started to give us a bit of grief and we had to stop for quite a while to get a jump start.
We arrived in Easkey at 12.30am. Anyone who has ever been to that edge of the country will know that Easkey is a very open terrain, a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. There was a Gale (force 99) blowing which made putting up the tent a bit difficult. The torch had no batteries, so I was trying to manoeuvre the car into a position that would shed light on my poor Australian boyfriend who was wrestling with the tent. They just don't go camping in that kind of extreme weather over there, so he was a bit shell shocked!
Got the tent up and jumped in - I promptly fell asleep to the sound of gales and heavy rain. Australian Man lay awake waiting for the tent to lift off and take us with it. You see - he knew about the lack of ropes holding the tent down, while I slept on, oblivious.
The next morning at the crack of dawn, we upped and left. Got that tent down in 5 minutes, packed it into our car and drove away rapidly. There were other campers there too (mad!), they must have thought they imagined people arriving in the middle of the night, because they were sure gone by daybreak.
We went to a caff in Strandhill and had a feast. Then, at an appropriately late enough hour, we knocked on the door of one of our friends and begged if we could use the shower! Our hospitable host offered to put us up for the night which we gratefully accepted.
So that was the adventure of camping in Ireland. I will not say "never again" but if I do go again it will be with conditions...like a large storage heater in the boot, and hot whiskeys...
I know that this story is not directly about running an internet marketing business in Dublin, but it does go to show the lengths that people will be driven to when they feel they need a break from it all!
Happy Irish Summer Everybody!