Vantastic Voyage

6/26

We were able to see a few more of the popular Irish attractions such as the Clifs of Moher, Giant’s Causeway and a good bit of Northern Ireland. We managed to view those sites after closing time when it is free, nearly no one is there and you get to see the late sunset. I gave snorkeling a shot at a quiet beach called Scuba Dive West with a pair of goggles, a rubber band and a piece of garden hose, but didn’t have much to look at in the chilly sea. We also got the opportunity to blow up our kayak we purchased at Lidl and kayaked around the Killary Fjords. We had the fjord to ourselves, and came across some big swarms of jelly fish.  We enjoyed the rest of the drive from Galway to the north and finished out our nearly 7 week Irish tour with continual sunshine. The weather is seemingly undergoing big changes everywhere around the world I’ve noticed the past five years and countless people could not believe all the sunshine they had thus far this year. We had been expecting much more rain and clouds.

Cliffs of Moher

Giant’s Causeway

We met some more interesting characters with invitations to stay at locals’ places if we liked. We met a couple, David and Anne in Mullaghmore and spent 3 hours chatting away until midnight in their van. We met Elaine from Sligo who offered us a place to stay and a lovely couple Karl and Margaret and their family with an offer to park in their driveway and take the bus into Dublin when we passed through all at the same beach. We took up Karl and Margaret’s offer when we went to Dublin and they were very generous and welcomed us with dinner the night we arrived, fed us breakfast and helped us navigate the city. We enjoyed spending some time with them and they quickly made us feel like we were at home with close friends. We had met them and their family at Scuba Dive West and at the time had still been deciding whether or not to visit Dublin. They sent us off with  a concoction to help Ratha’s cold, soup, dates, motor oil for the van and let us leave our big propane tank with them that ran out a week earlier that we brought from Morocco.

Before we took our quick trip to Dublin Ratha was in contact with Maeve and Laura whom we met in the Chigaga desert back in Morocco. They live in Belfast and we stayed with them for three nights and had a great time. We were toured around by Maeve’s boyfriend, Ben, who took us to some very old, cool pubs, cooked us some meals and gave us a political tour of the city. We had a ton of fun with all of them and found it hard to believe that 3 months after meeting them in the desert, we were staying the weekend together in their home. They felt like good old friends, made us feel at home and gave us a peek into life in Belfast.

Mural in Belfast 

Traditional Irish Breakfast 

Northern Ireland we learned is the home to many of the scenes shot in The Game of Thrones and we would stop by a handful of them on our way towards Belfast. In a few of the locations there are freshly made placards attached to posts with pictures and descriptions about the scenes that were filmed at the various locations. We’d never seen anything like that, nor hunted it down, but one of the spots led us to an interesting encounter. We had driven through Ballycastle forest through a lot of rough shale looking for a nice spot to camp and have a fire which was a success. However, the next day we had a blowout that was just near the last house on a long stretch of road where there would be no one around for many miles thereafter. Eugene, a sheep farmer, stopped his sheering of his flock of 600 to come and help us get back on the road. The custom jack that we have for the van has 4 predetermined holes or slots on the car where you affix the jack to. Unbeknownst to us, the one we would need to lift up had been bent, making our jack impossible to use. He let us use his jack and some wooden blocks and his tools as our lug nuts had ceased and I was bending our tire iron trying to get them off. We tried asking and pleading to help in any way we could with his sheering, as we had wanted such an experience and we had the time. His daughter had told me he needed help earlier and though we knew that fact, we remained unsuccessful in our plea. We stopped for the night in Cushendun, which was supposed to have a small tire shop. Long story short, we didn’t have cash to pay him Sterling on the spot, so we had to wait until the next day to get it from a store. We would have moved on had we been able to pay him that night. It turns out there was a scene from Game of Thrones in these caves just across the river from where we slept in the tiny town and when we were coming out Ratha commented,”looks like these guys are doing some bouldering”. I look up right as we are passing and I immediately knew who one of them was. It was Kevin, whom was working at the Olive Branch hostel in El Chorro, Spain. We had dinner with he and his girlfriend 5 months earlier. We were at a loss for names for one another, but he recognized us after recounting the details of our prior encounter. The only reason he and his friend were there that day was because they knew it would be raining and there was nowhere else outdoors where they knew to climb. We found out there were rarely ever people in those caves until recently when The Game of Thrones trail was revealed. I couldn’t believe it and started adding up all of the things that had happened to lead to that point. Anyways, we had Kevin and his friends, Steean and Michelle for tea after doing some spontaneous bouldering with them in the cave where lady Melisandra gave birth to a shadow assassin baby in Season 2.

Cushendun Caves where lady Melisandre had her shadow assassin baby.

Ballintoy Harbour

Tullymore forest was beautiful which is located between Dublin and Belfast and we spent a day hiking there and a night in the park. We encountered 2 different groups of tour buses that seemed to be let by some of the actors from the scenes in The Game of Thrones that were giving personal details of their experience while at the filming location. We saw one of the groups loading into the bus in the parking lot, nearly half of them had epic walking staffs, capes and some with full costume. It was getting pretty serious out there.

We made a late departure from the forest directly to the ferry back in Belfast, where we would pick up Clinton (South African) and his girlfriend Margarita (British) and take them on the ferry in the van. For whatever reason, walk on passengers were not allowed on this late night sailing and we were happy to help bring them across. We arrived at the Scottish port of Carinryan and have already been attacked by midges and are told they get worse the further north you go. We awoke at 4am this morning and went on a hunting party for a good half an hour trying to kill them all. These little bastards can ruin your sleep in ways that make mosquitos seem pleasant and the sheer numbers of them are overwhelming. We did some nice walking around Galloway Forest Park, did a nice 5 hour hike to Loch Lomand and will be heading northward towards the highlands. Ratha got to feed some red deer in a sanctuary, we have seen wild red squirrels, hawks, red deer, pheasants and came upon an unidentified bird enjoying a waterfall (below).

Bird by the waterfall in Galloway Forest Park (Cormorant maybe?) 

Wild Red Deer

Quite Shocking to us and many others was the Brexit vote by the UK to leave the EU. Many people we spoke with were confident that they would not leave, but as we arrived to Scotland the night of the vote, things looked to be much closer than expected. For us (at the moment), we are enjoying some strength against the British Pound, but curious to see the many implications this will have for international markets and the future of the UK.