Wednesday was a lovely day, so we had along walk up to Heinrich Böll's cottage and back, it turned out that the man who runs the campsite knew Heinrich well, and his family. Lovely man, he said. I can barely remember the texts of his I studied at university, shame on me!

In the evening, rather earlier than usual, we headed for the pub and had a really good dinner, seafood chowder was fantastic, all local seafood.

Thursday morning was wet again, and we left Dugort, or Doogort, and continued our southward journey as far as Clifden. The route took us past Ireland's only fjord, where we stopped and had a coffee in a really nice shop cum cafe. We even bought some souvenirs, t shirts and fridge magnets. As you do. For me the major find was the clan crest and motto of the McNally clan. The information with it made it clear that all the McNallys, McInallys, McAnallys amd even Nallys are really closely related to each other. Our growing awareness of the erratic nature of Irish place name spellings helps us understand these variations. The name comes from Irish gaelic, son of the poor man. That explains why my ancestors became economic migrants and headed for Glasgow! It looks like they most likely came from Monaghan or Armagh. Fascinating! The family name appears in some of the townlands in those counties. These are small parcels of land historically owned and worked by a single family, so there's one called Cahermcanally, and another called Tanmacanally. Talk about finding my roots, this is great!

Clifden is a small town beside the coast, so we toured around following Jim's directions along impossible tracks and up challenging gradients, and finally found the campsite, perched on the side of a boggy hill.

On Friday we decided to head further south to Galway, and to do so along the scenic coastal route. On the way there is a spot which is famous for two different things, the controlled crash landing of Alcock and Brown, the two intrepid English fliers who in 1919 made the first non stop flight from America to Europe, winding up in a bog. The other historic element was the site of Marconi's radio transmitting station, from where he made the first radio contact across the Atlantic. You would imagine that the local history group at least would have made something of this, and that there would at least be a visitor centre, an 'Alcock and Brown' experience? Not a bit of it. We followed the small sign at the roadend up a metalled road which terminated at a closed gate. We went through the gate on to a rough track, and growled along in Reg's lowest gear through potholes and past sheep, over hills, past bogs, up to at last a spot where we called a halt as there was just enough space beside the track to safely reverse the van. Not a sign, not a scintilla of an indication of where or what or when. Just a blasted hilltop, populated by sheep. The Rough Guide said the buildings had been demolished but the aerial masts were still there. Nope, nothing, nada. Disappointment, really. I'm such a technology freak I really wanted to see this place, because Marconi was one of the real innovators of the 20th century, and I loved seeing the monument at Ballycastle commemorating his pioneering work using radio there.

The coastal run down towards Galway was lovely, a strong wind blew white caps on the sea and all its inlets on the way, and we found the campsite west of Galway just after one pm. The ofice was shut for lunch, so we left the van and took a walk round the site to assess it. From our point of view I'm afraid it was mince! The electric points were all in clumps together, meaning that each pitch had to have a very long electric cable to connect with it. We saw one with two long cables jointed together! Also the site was totally exposed to the strong onshore winds running at the moment as this weather system goes through.

So we did a three point turn and left the site, driving through Galway city and on inland an southwards to Corofin. On the way we passed through part of the Burren, an amazing geological feature is miles of limestone pavement.

A nice little site welcomed us, with a short walk to the pub, as it is situated right in the middle of the village.