Travelogue

During my travels, I usually collect three or four personal accounts which I then recount in emails to friends. And since they find them very entertaining, I reckoned you might too. A travelogue is born.

From: Ilse

To: Harold F.

Date: 24 October 2007

Subject:The Long Road Home

I got home today too, just freshened up and about to crash on the couch and recover from the four hundred mile drive home from Fishguard. Like you, I need a coffee IV, so I'll give you the highlights.

From Killarney I drove via the scenic Lismore and the Passage East ferry back to Rosslare where I spent my last night in Ireland at St. Martin’s B&B in the famous four poster room. But only after I paid a visit to Hook Head, where I witnessed kite surfers braving the elements and a dog almost drown. Early the next morning, a Stenaline vessel took me to Fishguard. I wisely skipped the Welsh mountains and drove straight to the village of Hook, where I had booked a room at The School House Hotel, previously a Victorian school and now a family hotel.


Avebury, famed for its stone circle, was just south of the hotel and the destination of my field trip early the next morning. After the awe, I continued on my way to Harwich to catch the next ferry, and finally arrived in my home town at about ten this morning.

In all, I drove about 2500 miles in three weeks. I foresaw driving left as the biggest challenge, when in fact it turned out to be a piece of cake. Even in a left hand drive car. The roundabouts were simple, navigation not much of a problem, remembering to drive left only when tired. Converting miles per hour to kilometres turned out to be more complicated. Furthermore, I found Lonely Planet's proclamation of Ireland as 'the world's friendliest country' still well deserved, the irish breakfast hard to swallow, and the good-natured disposition I was met with, very refreshing. And last but not least, in 17 days of the disreputable irish wheather, I had only one morning of rain.

So to conclude, it was a memorable tour. I will definitely have to visit Ireland again, if only to close the circle.

Ilse