by the time i woke up in Dublin 6 days had passed, day after day driving through beautiful countryside, night after night in a different pub and hostel. our hostel in Derry was comfortable and well organised. the hostel in Belfast considerably less so. Galway was EXCELLENT, whereas the interior of the one in Annascaul i barely remember since i spent so little time in it, and almost none of it sober. Killarney was somewhere around average and Dublin did the job well enough, even with the radiators fused to "BLAST FURNACE" (nothing leaving the window ajar didn't fix). after a night out on the piss in Derry i woke up feeling amazingly good considering and stepped out into the dark, overcast morning with my coffee and realised that my mind was blank. nothing to worry about, nothing to plan or consider, just get on the bus and see what the day had in store for me: something i've been hanging out for since before i left Oz all those months ago.
over the rest of the week our merry bus meandered through most of the island of Ireland - the pins in the map on my Picasa album that misses a chunk of the south-east. we didn't really stop much in County Cork, i'm afraid. it's times like this that make me wish my camera auto-geotagged my shots, but micronised GPS is still a ways off, i guess. we managed to get to all the places i wanted to go to (Giant's Causeway, Blarney Castle), as well as places i never knew i wanted to see (The Burren, Cliffs of Moher).
i have a fascination for the Giant's Causeway - an area of volcanic rock which somehow cooled into an array of hexagonal columns marching out into the ocean. it's an almost unique rock formation where mathematical elegance meets the real world to the tune of the waves rolling in off the Irish Sea. it's the sort of place all the tourists want to see and while it's smaller than i'd expected it was still awesome to see and while every man and his dog's been there and wandered around, i kinda wonder how many people have stood in the freezing rain and flung poi around...
most of the tourists didn't hang around long - it was too cold and windy for most of them, but i got in as much as i could before heading back for the bus. next stop was the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge which started life as an access route for fishermen to get nicely in the path of migratory salmon, now another tourist trap. don't be fooled; it's safe as safe, but the views are incredible and EVERYONE wants a photo of them walking back and forth. i'm just glad it was open - they close it off when the wind's too strong. as far as i was concerned, it was worth it just to be able to look back and look out on the coastline. standing on a plank of wood suspended over 26 metres of air by a few ropes was just a bonus.
before we know it we're in Belfast, sitting in a couple of Black Cabs being driven around some of the political landmarks of the city, and there are many. after the definite bias of the last day it was refreshing when our driver told us that they consider themselves to be neutral - "we hate everyone equally," he says, and we laugh. i'm still not sure whether he was kidding. where in Derry there are murals illustrating the Catholics struggle, in Belfast we found ourselves in a Protestant low-rent area where they all came from the other side. we hear stories about the perils of disloyalty, both real and perceived. we sign the Peace Wall built to separate the residential zones which to this day have gates which close at night in an attempt to kerb the violence (it's explained that soon after the gates were installed the IRA fired an RPG over the top of them to prove a point, demolishing a church in the process. point made, i guess). we go to see the Sinn Fein HQ, site of even more bloodshed, and a prison where ten men died in a hunger strike over their status as Political Prisoners. we're warned to leave the pub half an hour or so before closing time so that anyone watching is less likely to guess at our allegiances based on the direction we head off in. by the time we hit the pub everyone's a little... wary. we're not far from the Europa Hotel which is claimed to be the most bombed building in the world (at one point the IRA decided that the best way to get the attention of the journalists was to start blowing a few of them up. it worked, apparently), and somehow after that we never did feel particularly comfortable.
that night had to be the least fun we had on the entire trip. we fetched up in a pub which was fairly OK for a while, then went off to try another which, while pretty cool, was packed and had nowhere to sit. we moved on to another we'd been recommended to find out it was student disco night, too loud and full of fat girls wearing far too little. back to the original venue and it was louder, messier and irritating. i would up walking a couple of the girls back to the hostel and sitting up chatting with one of the americans while she finished her pizza.
i can't say i'd recommend Belfast as The Place To Visit in Ireland. Dublin is nicer by far IMHO, although your mileage may vary. i got talking to a Brit the other day who's opinion was entirely the opposite. still, i may mention this a few times later until i feel like the point's been driven home enough.
the hostel was crappy, but at least i wasn't in it long. next morning we're off towards Galway way out on the west coast. the weather's cleared up and it's warm, sunny, clouds decorating the sky because plain blue's just so BORING DAHLING! out on the road and the world is green and blue and white, magnificent, glorious, perfect. we've a lot of driving ahead of us, so Tom's grabbed a copy of "In The Name Of The Father" - a movie about a group of Irish folk from Belfast wrongly imprisoned for a bombing in the 70's in the English town of Guildford. more political propaganda, but it's illustrative of the sort of things that went on in the Troubles. i let it play in the background while i watch the scenery i wish would never end scrolls past, thinking of nothing much more than how to frame the next shot. we stop at the shady green cemetery which is the final resting place of W.B. Yeats (as in "tread softly, for you tread on my dreams") and rattle off photos before blasting down to a little seaside town called Strand Hill where i get to dip my toe into the North Atlantic and go nuts with my poi. as i'm packing up Ginelle (Canadian) comes running up to join in and we almost miss the bus, dancing around the beach and generally having a ball, then onto Galway.
i fucking loved Galway. i was about ready to piss into my water bottle by the time we got there (i piss-bolted (pardon the pun) down an alleyway when we pulled up i was so desperate. long drives + diabetes = bladder strain), but soon enough our kit's stowed the sibs and i went a-wandering, fetching up down the docks after a bit of tourist-tat shopping to find that the grass is covered in students sitting around having a beer. beer. on the grass. next to the water. we're down the bottlo faster than you can say 'scuse mate, which way to the offie? and 20 minutes later we're in the middle of it, lying around the grass, enjoying the sunshine and generally having a glorious time of it and while it's only a footnote here, it was one of the highlights of the trip. the pace of the tour was just about right - plenty of things to see, but also plenty of time to chill out and soak up the atmosphere.
another night, another pub and we're in The Quay where i've decided that tonight i'm on cider and we watch the cover band. we're having a blast and laughing like drains - Paul and i get rowdy when they play All Along The Watchtower while Jodie runs around with her plushie sheep. after too many drinks we find the rest of the group at Bar 903 up the road after posing for photos with the Oscar Wilde statue and i call it at somewhere around 1AM to sleep.
the Cliffs of Moher are out in Connaught, the area Oliver Cromwell pushed the Catholics into during the Plantation. after the plush, fertile lands in the east the west is next-to-barren, rocky and hard to cultivate. much of it is bare limestone with shallow soil in the low-areas, contrasting grey and green. during the 17th century the kings of England decided to confiscate catholic lands and hand them over to protestant nobles and army veterans. the Irish were forced to rent their lands back, and anyone surplus to requirements was pushed west "Death or Connaught" was the choice, and millions wound up trying to eke out a living in the Burren. during the Potato Famine nearly 2 million people died out there when their cash crops were barely enough to pay the rent and their food crop shrivelled black with Blight. now it's a tourist mecca and we're driving around looking at the rock walls build all over the place - Famine Walls. some were built to divvy up land for farming, some just to give people something to do. they had a lot of rocks to get out of the way so that they could till the soil they had to go somewhere, so they went into the walls. now the walls remain protected by the National Trust as a reminder and a county-wide monument.
meanwhile, limestone is a pretty soft, fragile sort of rock. unlike the volcanics like granite which are hard and wear slowly, limestone erodes like nobody's business. the waves of the North Atlantic have been battering at these shores for millenia, grinding away from the bottom and undermining the landscape which makes for some unbelieveable cliffs (think Great Ocean Road region in Victoria, Australia). we stop in an area that gives a great idea of what the Burren is all about on one side of the road, then drops off not far from the other. of course, i HAVE to go horsing around and my new friend Nathan (Canadian) helps out taking some insane photos.
from 30-40 metre drops to 250, our next stop is at the Cliffs of Moher which i'd not actually heard of prior to the tour. gentle green slopes drop off into the abyss and the water is so far down you can't even hear the waves. a section of it's been nannyfied and safetied with walls and pavement with a sign which reads "Please do not go past this point" blocking the way to the old goat-trail along the top of the cliffs to the south and is easily defeated. Ginelle's camera's just died - she tried to turn it on as we got off the bus and it's not playing anymore. she's shattered. i know the feeling - that's happened to me twice now in the last few years, so i tell her that's fucked up, but look: come along with me, use my camera for any shots you want to take and i'll copy them over to your card with my laptop later. over the next half-hour we take some mind-blowing photos, and even get videos of us flinging poi around on top of the cliff, two paces away from the dropoff. it's yet another insane part of the world and whenever i look at the photos i'm speechless.
it's also stuck me with a new hobby - getting photos and video of me playing with my fire-toys in amazing parts of the world. sure, Where The Hell Is Matt? got in first, but i'm not getting paid to do it motherfucker. meanwhile, all this adventuring is thirsty work, so it's onwards to the Dingle Penninsula and our introduction to the Irish Carbomb.
Paddywagon Tours decided at one point to set up shop in a little town called Annascaul. it's one of those quiet little villages with somewhere around 330 people living within a 6 mile radius. it's rural and pleasant and fairly conservative, which is of course why they took over a hostel, painted it bright green and named it the Randy Leprechaun. don't ask me, i'm just a fucking tourist, ok? it caused a... um... small amount of controversy, but they finally talked the townsfolk around and so there it sits. it's only open when the tour's there, and i have the feeling it owes its existence mostly to its convenient location for the next day's bog-lap around the Dingle Penninsula. still, it's neat, tidy and has its own bar, and in that they serve Irish Carbombs at 3 for a tenner. it's a bizarre, but entertaining concoction which i have the feeling you'd have to be mad to come up with, and Irish to name so ironically, but what the fuck? take a half-pint of Guinness in a glass. sit it next to a shot of 50/50 Baileys Irish Cream and whiskey. now pick them both up, depth-charge the shot and scull it. now to the other 2 in rapid succession. the men's record is 29 in a night. the lady's record is now 15 since Jodie went in with a bunch of Euros and something to prove. me? i only had 6, and a couple of pints. i was pacing myself... which somehow didn't stop me being talked into doing karaoke. call it peer-pressure. call it i'm surrounded by relative strangers so what the fuck? either way, i was in Ireland, so i sang U2, and i'm at that sort of stage of my life so i sang "i Still Haven't Found What i'm Looking For" and everyone must have been good and drunk by that point because they answered with roaring applause. don't ask me, i can't sing for shit, ok? they must have just been too polite to yell "Get off the stage!"
after that things got messy. Jodie spent some hours searching for her lost camera, only to find that it had fallen under Paul's jeans when she put him to bed. Pam was so sick that she spent most of the next morning clutching a double-plastic bag. faces on the bus were a mixture of "oh god i need more sleep" weariness and "please kill me" despair. no time. NO TIME! we're off to Dingle!
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