Back to England

We were up early and left for the ferry wharf at 7. Our taxi driver was very jolly, and told us all about how he and his wife had loved Torquay so much they'd bought a holiday house there. It took us a while to figure out he meant Turkey, the country - NOT a place in England. And here we were, thinking we'd had a handle on the Irish accent!

With no Nigel, the ferry trip back wasn't very eventful (unfortunately there's nothing but open sea to see on the way). I was so heavily doped up on "Kwells" travel sickness pills that I slept mostof the way. We picked up a new hire car at Holyhead, and set out through Wales once more. The Irish sea was on our left this time, and I had much better views of the Snowdon mountains. The area near where we were driving is a national park, and if the mountains are anything to go by, it must be beautiful. Alas, the walls of the motorway obscured most of the view I might have had.



We did stop in Conwy, however, because dad had heard of castle ruins there. Conwy is just inside the Welsh border, and the castle "ruins" dad had heard of turned out to be a near-complete English keep (yes, English - a medieval attempt to keep the Welsh in line). It was spectacular! Almost everything is still standing, though the roofs and floors between levels have disappeared. It was a fascinating experience, because the place gives you such a complete picture of what it would have been like to live in a castle. I don't mean that they have tacky reconstructions, either - nothing at all but signs. It's the mere fact that you can wander up the towers, into the king's chambers, the chapel... around the walls, into the cellar of the great hall to see the huge fireplace on the wall above you. I had a ball trying to picture each room as it might have been, filled with people. There were good views of Conwy and its bay from the tops of the walls, too. I could see fishing boats pulled up on the shore.





Lunch was a hurried trip to a bakery before our parking ticket ran out. Afterwards, we drove out of Wales and into England once more. By early evening we had reached Chester, our stop for the night. Our guesthouse (named "Homeleigh", god help it) took a bit of finding, but we finally arrived and trekked up two sets of very narrow stairs to deposit our luggage in our rooms. The rooms, incidentally, were very comfortable. The bathroom door stuck a little, and to Pip's delight I managed to get stuck in there after taking my bath.

She rescued me, though, and the lot of us set out to explore Chester and find food. The interesting thing about the heart of Chester is that the shops are on split levels - one row lines the footpath, with a walkway at roof-height to service shops above. The buildings themselves are lovely, and fairly old - most of them seemed to be 17th century and half-timbered. I would guess any new developments in Chester are heavily restricted to make the structures conform. The Christmas lights had been strung out, and even though they were twee, I found the inner streets charming.



Mum and I were accosted by a woman handing out pamphlets, but it turned out the papers offered discounts at a nearby restaurant, provided you ate before 7pm. We decided it was too good a deal to waste, and walked into "Grille".

Well... when we were greeted at the door like long-lost friends, and a man took our jackets, we realised we were in the sort of restaurant we normally avoid, in order to refrain from going bankrupt. Still, true to their pamphlets, they served us food from the cheap menu, and treated us as though we were were paying hundreds each. I asked for the fish of the day, and... ohhhh. YUM. Monkfish wrapped in bacon, on spinach an potato mash, with tomato and lemon sauce. One of the best meals I've ever eaten. Dessert was choc-truffle torte (not something as base as "cake", y'see...).



We waddled "home", somehow managed the stairs, and retired to our rooms to digest. I spoke briefly with Pat on the phone, before sleep.

Holyhead

We left Coniston at 8 am this morning, after breakfasting in the dark (watching English soccer on the TV. So much more interesting and skilled than Australian football... please don't lynch me...). Like a few days previously, we drove out of Sheffield and through Derbyshire, heading south-west until we entered Wales.

The only immediate difference I noticed upon crossing the border was that the road signs are bi-lingual in Wales... and my first thoughts were that the Welsh language needs an urgent booster-shot of vowels. (I didn't take get a photo of a good example, but you can almost see what I mean on this sign from later in the day:)


Quite suddenly after leaving the motorway, the Irish sea opened up on our right. It was pewter-grey and, though calm, looked very foreboding. At the same time, Welsh mountains were beginning to rise high above us on our left - all barren and rocky, and apparently literally in danger of falling down around us - I saw lots of reinforcement work going on around the sides of the highway. We drove along the coast, sandwiched between mountains and cold sea, watching animals grazing on the slopes above us. Is this why the English didn't utterly destroy Welsh culture - because they didn't want such bleak land? I wish I wasn't so ignorant of Welsh history. I also wish I could have seen more of Wales and its people, but you can never fit everything into one trip.

We arrived at the port of Holyhead (pronounced more like "Hollyhead") in the early afternoon, where we gave our hire car back, ate some lunch, and checked onto our ferry. While my family sat in the cafe to wait until boarding, I decided not to waste any time, and set out to explore a tiny sliver of Holyhead; out along the headland. Obviously I didn't have time to see much, but walking down the monochrome grey streets with the gulls mewling overhead felt so atmospheric.


I passed one man twice, as I was coming and then going, and the second time we had smiled politely at each other, he quirked an eyebrow and asked me whether I was lost - in a beautiful rolling Irish accent. That was when it finally dawned on me that I wasn't just "going to Ireland"... I was "GOING TO IRELAND!!" I've had a distant fascination with the place ever since I was little, and excitement had finally caught up with me.

I scrambled back just in time to catch the ferry. It's an enormous boat, and someone told me (though I have my doubts) that it's the biggest car ferry in the world. The passenger decks certainly seem very high-up when you look out the window...

Just as we pulled out, all the workmen on the dock stopped work to watch us leaving, and to wave up at the huge ship. Seeing me watching this, the man sitting at the lounge-table next to me made some amused remark (again in a broad southern-Irish accent), and he and I got to talking. His name was Nigel, and he explained to me that he lived in Manchester with his wife and young daughters (I relaxed significantly at this point!), but that he was heading home to Offaly for a funeral. Nigel told me at length about his exploits in Northern Ireland as a health insurance salesman; about escaping Orangemen skinheads in pubs, and about how awful the Guinness is in England - he's "trained" his local bartender in Manchester to pour a passable one. He recounted pub brawls he and his friend Mick had gotten into (and then escaped), straight before showing me and mum the photos from his daughter's 2nd birthday party. He teased dad about drinking, and offered us countless suggestions for places to go and see in his home-country. In short, he was a one-man riot, and the 3-hour ferry trip seemed to disappear in minutes.


The ferry pulled up in Dublin port, and we said goodbye to Nigel at the passport-check. By this time it was dark, so we caught a taxi to the city centre to our hotel. We listened spellbound all the way to the rapid-fire accents on Dublin radio, one of whom was advertising a patent hangover cure. Turns out Barry's hotel is "famous" among the city's cab drivers - it's built above "La Petite" lap-dancing club. Tee-hee... take a look, in the light:


Dinner was off one of the main streets in Dublin, at a pub called Madigan's (turns out to be a chain rather than a one-off, which was a smidgen of a disappointment - though we made up for that later). I met my first "real" Guinness there, though, when I took a sip of dad's. And all the fuss is warranted! That drink has subtleties, especially in the aftertaste. I'll quote mum here: "it's rather like drinking gravy browning, but nonetheless it's somehow enjoyable".

Not long after dinner, we fell into our beds back at the hotel.