On the Road Again

Welcome to the official launch of our blog that we’re calling Calculating Route…, a reference to our GPS guide and the general randomness of our travels.  Of course, we do have a route, at least through the end of 2023, but we’re trying to keep our options open in the search for a permanent, or semi-permanent, home here in Greater Europe. Off we go! 

When we started our little adventure here in Kilmuckridge, the idea was not to be on vacation, per se, but to be living our usual lives in a different place — just removing the daily task of going to work from the equation. For the first month of our time here, we accomplished that goal, falling into a routine, centered around Coco’s morning and afternoon beach walks and our meal preparation. However, we couldn’t help but think back to our planned 2020 trip to Ireland, canceled by Covid 19. The original plan was to take Reilly and Finn with us and introduce them to their ancestral homeland, including a stop at the Slattery family dairy farm where Denise’s grandfather spent his boyhood before leaving for America to become a physician in the late 1800s. Now we were here, a few hours drive from several of the places we were going to visit in 2020, and it seemed silly to pass up the opportunity to see the sights, even if we weren’t able to bring the boys this time. We got out the map and started planning. We scheduled a week to see the Ring of Kerry, The Dingle Peninsula, The city of Cork, and then end up in Tipperary at the Slattery farm, a proper holiday. 

Ten days ago, on the Monday morning, we packed our suitcases and Coco and loaded them into Sean and Ann’s Renault Scenic and started heading west toward Killarney, our base for exploring the Wild Atlantic Way. Admittedly, it felt a little sad to be leaving Kilmuckridge, which had begun to feel like a comfortable home to us, but it was exciting to be back on the road again and finally exploring parts of Ireland beyond our little village and the surrounding towns. The GPS took us on a wide variety of roads, from several very small country lanes that were only wide enough for one car and maybe a motorcycle to the New Ross Bypass, a modern divided highway (with a two-Euro toll and a designer bridge (pictured) over the River Barrow). The thing I love about most Irish roads is that they might be narrow and winding, but at least they’re in terrible shape. 

We passed pretty close to the aul Kennedy homestead, the birthplace of the great-grandfather of JFK. You can imagine what a big deal it was here in Ireland to have a US president descended from a famine emigrant.  Bigger than Bono, like! Still, at nine euros for the senior admission, and with our stomachs rumbling, we took a pass. 

We stopped for lunch in nearby Dungarvan, a southern port town, thinking we’d have to get food to go because of the dog. However, a kind stranger gave us her parking pass with an hour left on it and recommended a nearby cafe that ended up being happy to accommodate Coco inside. People here generally want to help you. It’s nice. All through the meal, other diners came up to her to pet and admire her, and naturally she loved it. Traveling with a dog has its challenges, but Coco makes friends wherever we go with her relaxed demeanor and sophisticated poodle-ness.  After lunch, we visited St. Mary’s Church, an impressive edifice overlooking the harbor with an adjacent graveyard that stretches for both acres and centuries (top picture below). Back on the road, we made a brief stop in Lismore, home of a large, well-preserved castle that intrigued us from the road, but it seems that the tourist sites don’t really open up until St. Patrick’s Day and we could only peer over the wall (bottom picture below).

At that point, we realized we were lingering and dark would soon be coming on, so I put pedal to the metal and we headed to Killarney. Unfortunately, soon after, a giant car-carrying lorry pulled onto the road in front of us and kept us from going faster than 60 Km/H all the way into Killarney. That’s one of the issues with driving in Ireland: lots of trucks and farm machinery on the roads and not worth the risk to safely pass them on the windy, two-lane roads, especially with our four-cylinder Renault. We finally made it to Killarney and registered at The Fairview hotel (the view from our room was fair at best, consisting of the wall three feet from the window), the only one in the area that accommodates pets. Not many hotels or AirBnBs in Ireland will let you bring a pet, which is strange considering how many people here own dogs and cats. 

We settled into our room and got our second-ever takeaway Irish pizza — slightly better than the first one from Kilmuckridge — and fell asleep to an Irish soap opera on the TV. We had an early call for the next day so we could make sure to see the entire Ring of Kerry in the nine hours of daylight available.

downtown Killarney at night.