Bill & Kelly arrive in Ireland!

For RVers in the United States, traveling to Alaska is among the most epic of adventure trips. The equivalent in Europe would be making the trip to Nordkapp in Norway, or Morocco to the south. It is a season-long endeavor. We decided to take on the Alaska trip in 2016, just shy of two years after we began fulltiming in our Class A motorhome, Scoopy. Before beginning our trip north, parked up in Bellingham, WA south of the western Canadian border, I logged on to the RVer’s social network, RVillage, to read posts of those also heading to Alaska. I found comfort in knowing others were also making the trek, safety in numbers and all that, and soon began chatting to Kelly Murray. She and her husband Bill had taken a workamping job in Alaska and were heading up early to see the sites along the way. After a few conversations, we decided to travel to Alaska together. This, to quote a cliche, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

After three weeks of travel through British Columbia, we finally made it to Alaska! This was our happy hour photo taken in Haines at our campground. There were about half a dozen bald eagles circling above us and we had the place to ourselves because it was so early in the season. We were happy campers!

In the years since, we have traveled together on several occasions and even worked a peak season together at an Amazon warehouse in Campbellsville, Kentucky. So it was a no-brainer that as soon we decided to move to Europe, we all began talking about Bill and Kelly coming over, renting a motorhome and traveling with us. Covid, of course, put it all on the back burner, but as the world adapted to its new normal, we began planning once again. We settled on traveling the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland and the North Coast 500 in Scotland. It always seemed like it was forever away, but the day finally arrived. Bill and Kelly flew into Edinburgh and picked up their motorhome there, visiting Belfast, Dublin and a family friend in Kilkenny before meeting up with us at the aire in Cobh, County Cork.

We welcomed Bill and Kelly to Ireland with Cream Tea, an afternoon delight of scones, clotted cream, jam and tea! They had to supply the clotted cream from the UK, because it is not readily available in Ireland. I am now responsible for Bill’s addiction to clotted cream. (Sorry, Bill!)
The first of a thousand selfies! The aire in Cobh is on the marina where huge ferries and cruise ships dock. In fact, it was here that the Titanic made its last stop before heading out across the Atlantic Ocean.

Our friends from Cork, Mark and Ingrid, put together a fabulous walking tour of the city for us to follow, so on our first full day we were up and out, catching the early train into the city. We really enjoyed this day and I was so happy to finally spend some time there as we had been a couple of times but never did anything worth mentioning.

We climbed the stairs of the Shandon church on the right to look out to fabulous views across Cork City. They gave us headphones for our ears in case the bells went off. They did, and I was glad to have my ears covered!
The River Lee runs through Cork city.
The wonderful English market in Cork. I could have spent all day in here, but it was getting late. I did get some Kalamata olives, though, and they were delicious!
You can always find good music in Ireland! These guys were really great and had drawn quite the crowd!
We walked through Fitzgeralds Park on our way to the Shakey Bridge.
If you nickname something “Shakey Bridge”, you know everyone is going to jump on it. We did, and it lived up to its name.
Later that evening after we returned to Cobh, Mark and Ingrid came out for a walkabout and pub dinner on our last night in Cobh. The row of colorful houses behind us are called the “Deck of Cards”. The Cobh cathedral looms behind them.
The cathedral.
The pub where we sat to have a drink. They didn’t serve food here, but they didn’t mind at all if we ran to the take out place across the street and bring it into the pub to eat. It was “No bodder!”

On a previous trip to Ireland Kelly had taken with her Dad, they had taken a tour through the Gap of Dunloe. The tour included a pony and trap ride, plus a boat ride through the lakes to Ross Castle. She wanted to do it again, so we signed up months before and crossed our fingers for good weather. I will say that these kinds of tours are not normally my jam, but I cannot say enough good things about this one. We all had a fabulous time!

This is Ross Castle, a 15th century tower house, where we started and ended our tour. We had been hoping for good weather and though the forecast warned of wind and rain, we started off in glorious sunshine!
The views from the castle grounds were stunning in every direction.
From Ross Castle we were transported to Kate Kearney’s Cottage where we met up with our pony and trap. Our pony’s name was Tom. Look at the expression on my face. I am wondering what I’ve gotten myself into!
For Tom, dragging four people through the gap is all in a day’s work, though he got plenty of encouragement from our driver.
When we reached the bottom of that hill beyond the lake, we had to get out and walk, because Tom has his limits.
We gave Tom a break and walked up the hill. We didn’t mind.
Quintessential Ireland.
Since I was leading the pack, I thought I’d take some photo pressure off Steven and take a few myself. Of myself. 🙂
The weatherman got it right for about five minutes. The showers came but they didn’t last long.
We had the world’s most entertaining guide on the boat portion of our trip. Honestly, he kept us in stitches. And his laugh was incredible, never heard anything like it before! He was super smart and very well versed on the ecology of the area and how it is all being affected by climate change.
This is one of the effects right here. We crossed three lakes getting to Ross Castle and in this section the water was so low, we had to get out while our guide wrestled the boats from one lake to the other. He said he’d only been doing this for the last few weeks because they have had so little rain. So Ireland may be behind most other places with regard to climate change, but it has been, and will continue to be affected.
A beautiful bridge as we float from one lake to another. This time we did not have to get out and walk, but we scraped bottom! I think it won’t be long before they will have to dig a few channels to continue these tours.

When we left Cobh to travel to our overnight stop where we would do the Gap of Dunloe tour, we first stopped at Dunnes Stores to stock up on food and drink now that we had had a chance to discuss our meal planning. Dunnes Stores is one of my favorite food stores in Ireland and we spent quite a bit of time moseying up and down the isles looking at all the offerings. I wish I had photos of all the stuff we got, but I wasn’t that forward-thinking with the blog in mind. I should know better. I know we got Shepherd’s Pie and an inexpensive roast. I’ve said this before, but Ireland and England have great beef. I’ve seen this particular roast called a few different names, but it is probably like our top round or eye of round. Not the most tender of cuts, but I’ve discovered that if I want a roast that is sliceable rather than falling apart, these are good cuts for that. I douse it in garlic salt, then brown it on all sides in the Instant Pot, then pressure cook it for five minutes. Then I leave it alone on the “Keep Warm” setting for two hours and voila! I have a medium pink roast beef and, if I’ve remembered to add a bouillon cube, plenty of juicy goodness to turn into a yummy gravy. If only Bijou’s oven was hot enough to make Yorkshire puddings! Alas.

On one of the few rainy days we had on our adventures we made our way from Ross Castle to Dingle. We pulled into the parking lot, just as it was getting dark, only to find it full, except for the slots specifically for buses. Under normal circumstances motorhomes are not allowed to park there, but during Covid that all changed since basically there were no tour buses. We took a chance and parked there for one overnight, getting up at the butt crack of dawn the next day to move to another, smaller space. It amazes me the places Bijou can squeeze into!

A rainy day calls for dinner out, and wow, this Guinness stew with brown bread was delicious!
Dingle in the evening light, after the rain. Just beautiful!
The Dingle marina.
The sun sets on Dingle.
We had heard about the marathon taking place in Dingle but we thought it had already taken place. Clearly, we were wrong!
Since we were securely parked up, we just went with the flow and enjoyed the energy of the crowds. Most folks did not stick around after the race, so before long the town was back to normal.

After two nights in Dingle we left to make our way north to Miltown Malbay in County Clare. This is another place Kelly had visited with her Dad that she wanted to revisit. The local pub had a fairly large parking lot type aire where we stayed, and it was close enough that we just walked into town for a look around and another stop in the grocery store. This one was a SuperValu. If a small community has a decent sized grocery store it is likely to be a SuperValu and they can differ widely in their size and offerings.

We stopped at an overlook on our way to Miltown Malbay.
Parked up in Miltown Malbay. One thing about having one left-hand drive rig and one right-hand is that the habitation doors meet in the middle. So when we park next to each other, us on the left and them on the right, our doors faced each other. But as you can clearly see in this photo, we’re doin’ it wrong.

The next stop on our Ireland tour was the colorful village of Doolin just north of the Cliffs of Moher and the jumping off place to visit the Aran Islands. We had made our reservations at Nagle’s Campground months before just in case it turned out to be a busy off-season. Steven and I had stayed here before and though we intended to stay for only one or two nights, we ended up staying five. One of the draws is the trad music sessions at Gus O’Connors pub. Most pubs will start the live music after 9:00 p.m. at which time I am already in my jammies. Gus O’Connor starts their sessions at a very reasonable 4:30 in the afternoon! How perfect!

Once we were parked up in Doolin we headed right out to do the Cliffs of Moher cliff walk. It is about 8 kilometers and taking into account rain and wind, it is classified as moderate to difficult. In our case, I’d say it was somewhere in between. It took us about three hours and after milling about the visitors center for a while, we caught a taxi back to the campground.
You cannot beat the views from the cliff walk!
Kelly, Bill and me catching our breath before taking on another climb.
Steven waiting for the rest of us. That tall, white tower behind him is at the visitors center, so almost there!
The colorful shops of Doolin.

Steven, Kelly and Bill decided to take the ferry to the smaller of the Aran Islands, Inisheer, while I stayed home to work on a blog post. I wasn’t there so I can’t tell you how it was, but Steven did take some great photos, so he’s going to tell you about them.

I (Steven) had been to the larger of the three islands before but never visited the others. It is an easy 20-minute sailing to get to Inisheer by ferry. It’s the smallest of the three islands and probably the most authentic at this point. The starkness makes it feel like it is frozen in time. There is a huge shipwreck that adds to the moodiness. We sprung for a guided tour when we disembarked. I was a little skeptical about it but the guide knew his stuff and we were easily able to see the main sights much more efficiently than if we had tried to do it ourselves on foot.
Bill and Kelly on the way up to a viewpoint with castle ruins.

After a couple of days in Doolin, Steven and I returned to Dublin while Bill and Kelly continued on north to Donegal Town, then into Northern Ireland where they visited the Giant’s Causeway. We met back up with them in Belfast where we were scheduled to take a 7:30 a.m. ferry the next day to Cairnryan in Scotland. We knew we’d get to the ferry terminal in plenty of time to take an earlier ferry, but were unsure if there was space for us. Turns out we could get on the 7:30 p.m. ferry which was just perfect! We had a long drive planned on our first day in Scotland and having the two-hour ferry ride already done would help make our day more relaxed. We boarded the ferry and headed straight for the restaurant where we enjoyed a dinner of fish and chips. We have eaten our weight in fish and chips on this trip, but the best was yet to come!

Parked at the ferry terminal in Belfast trying to change our tickets. Success!

While we were planning our Ireland trip, Steven was perusing old postcards of Ireland by the photographer John Hinde. He made this painting of one of his favorites. If you would like to see more, you can keep up with what he’s doing by following his Visual Art page here.


UP NEXT: The North Coast 500


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21 Comments

    1. 2chouters

      So many beautiful hikes await you in Ireland, especially on the west coast. I think you will love it, too!! And so sorry to hear about your bikes being stolen! What a bummer!

  2. Kelly

    I always love how we have different things to say about the same places. Of course Steven’s photos kick my amateur pics butt! Can’t wait to see what’s coming in Scotland (even though I already know!)

    1. 2chouters

      You are so much more detailed than me, I am glad you took notes! In my old age, to get a full picture of our trip, I will have to read both blogs! 🙂 Love you guys and miss you so much!

  3. Dolores Tanner

    Oh my gosh, again with the wonderful pictures!!! I don’t even know which I would want to get done to hang in the house, all so wonderful… U guys do know how to live yo the fullest!!

    1. 2chouters

      It was a fabulous adventure! Wouldn’t it be fun to get the Class of 2014 together and do a trip, say, to Norway? 🙂 LOL, I think it would be a blast! 🙂

    1. 2chouters

      OMG, Nina’s beautiful trip just keeps on giving! It turned out to be such an amazing journey for her and she has documented it well. I’ve really enjoyed it, too, and since we are going to Wales next spring, I am paying close attention!! Good to hear from you, Rita! Hope you are doing well.

  7. Susan Stewart

    Have been following along with you and Bill & Kelly.Thanks for the wonderful posts. We are touring England, Scotland, Ireland & Wales next year. Leaving the motorhome in USA and hiring a car and some month long stays. So looking forward to it. Our son lives in Wales. Have added the Gap of Dunlop tour to my list. May I ask what tour company did you use?

        1. 2chouters

          We had no issues riding in the trap or with walking in the places where we had to go uphill. We all four fit into the trap and it was snug, and then driver got in, too! Unless your husband has a disability that would prevent him from being comfortable in a moving, sometimes jarring situation, he should be fine. And it didn’t feel like 7 miles, we were having too much fun to notice!

  8. Lesley Bradford

    What lovely photos. I’m putting Ireland on my travel list after this blog. Not sure where you are up to but I recommend you visit the Kelpies in my hometown of Falkirk on your way back from the NC500. There is space for overnighting there too.

    1. 2chouters

      Thank you, Lesley, for your kind words. And thanks for taking time to comment! We did visit Falkirk and we loved it! We saw the Kelpies and the Falkirk wheel, amazing, both of them! You will enjoy the photos coming up in Part II of our trip! Stay tuned!

  10. Jodee Gravel

    So much fun – I just love the pony and boat tour you guys took. Love the pic of the little boats in the trees. It’s like a little secret no one else sees 🙂 That cliff walk looks brutal but oh those amazing views. I think I’d really love Dingle, all of it looks wonderful. Great pics and narrative from Steve’s island experience. Looking forward to Scotland!

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