Home again home again jiggety jig
21 June 2015
Our final day in Ireland on this trip started well until I hit the shower in the fantastically warm and welcoming toilet and shower block provided at the campsite, to discover that the shower was running cold. The only other occupant of the showers at that moment was another camper, who omitted to give me the good news until I was fully naked and ready to roll. It was a strange arrangement, three changing booths, lockable, then a passageway across to a shower. This meant that if anyone else was around, there you were, starkers, walking across a public area. Now I know other nations are not as funny about being seen nude in the shower than us Brits, but I had not encountered an arrangement like this before. Meantime another camper had come in, in the third booth, and was at the point of switching on her shower when we got the good news. I stood there for a while, cowering behind the shower curtain waiting in vain for the stream of icy water to warm up, while my back end was in full view. Both I and the third woman went for it, and had a cold shower, although I balked at shampooing my hair. Later when we left Ju complained about the cold shower to the official who turned up to take our key back, her only explanation was that the showers are on a timer, which might have been thrown off-culter by a power outage. Aye right! The joys of a council-run campsite, I thought. Because they didn't open up their office till 9am we had to hang around and wait to hand back the key, as there was no letterbox to post it in. Apart from that the Ballyronan site by Lough Neagh was really good, quiet, highly secure with padlocked barriers everywhere.
Once on the road we ambled up to Ballymena to have a look at it before continuing our meander towards the fast cat which would take us home. Ballymena was full of Union and Ulster flags, armed police, searching the boot of a car as we passed, squadrons of military were forming up for some kind of parade - Ju reckoned it was Armed Forces Day - so we didn't hang around, but headed towards Carrickfergus. We had never been there before, in the boat or otherwise, and were mightily impressed with the fantastic castle at the water's edge, and we watched a three-masted barque motor out into Belfast Lough as we sat outside a cafe drinking coffee and eating panini, while Jack lapped up some water kindly provided by the cafe for him, without any prompting. We liked Carrickfergus! I did a bit of shopping in Sainsbury's then we headed up into the peninsula opposite Larne to give Jack a run on a beach before his necessary incarceration in the van during the crossing later in the afternoon.
The drive was lovely, vistas on both sides, although a serious regritting operation on the already very narrow road slowed us down considerably towards the north end, which to Ju's consternation was heavily industrialised. Round on the Irish Sea side, however, we found a nice sandy beach beside a large carpark, guarded as so many of these have been, by horizontal bars to keep camper vans and possibly travellers out. This one was set at 7ft, unlike many others we had found to be 2 metres, so we cruised comfortably under it and parked, taking Jack for a run on the lovely sandy beach. This is always a bit of a gamble for us, still, as Jack has an annoying habit of spotting anyone else, anywhere else on the beach, with or without another dog, and running off towards them, impervious and unresponsive to our calls for him to come back. For this reason we clap him back on the lead if there is any chance of this happening, but sometimes we aren't quite quick enough. He sometimes runs after bizarre sights, like the head of a motorcyclist the only visible part of him as he drives along the road beside the beach, the rest hidden by the banking. Or a pied wagtail strutting about on the ground, or a distant dog.
As we left the car park, later, we noticed a derelict campsite beside it, blocked off now by a huge boulder across the entrance, as well as a padlocked gate. But it had all the hard standing pitches, the electric hookups, the water standpipes, everything overgrown and abandoned. Shame.
Reg had been looking a bit travel-stained and grimy after her month in Ireland, so we set Jim to work to find us a valeted carwash. He tried, oh how he tried, but garage after garage was either closed or out of business, so we mooched around Larne for a while looking for one ourselves. The best we could do was a do it yourself jet wash, so we had some fun getting in the way of each other with jet hose and shampoo brush, but after about fifteen minutes our girl was wet but clean. We had topped up with petrol in Monaghan the day before, as petrol was much cheaper in the Republic. So we then headed for the harbour and got into the queue for the fast catamaran to Troon. We chose this method of return home as it got us considerably further north and was no more expensive than the Cairnryan crossing on the larger ferry. And it did 32 knots!
Security checked us through into the queue, asking if we had turned off the gas, looking into the side door of the van, and frisking me as I was the one standing about, as Ju was in the passenger seat. Curiously, on the way over it was Ju who was frisked, as I stayed in the driver's seat on that occasion. Why frisk only one of the two people in the vehicle, if they were going to frisk anyone at all? What did they think we would have about our person worth frisking us for? Remember, this is for travel between two parts of the same country, allegedly?
On balance Ju and I reflected that the part of our trip that we spent in the Republic had been, on balance, the more enjoyable, with the possible exception of the north Antrim coast. There is a feel about Ulster that is very unsettling, of two unhappy camps squaring up to each other all the time, using flags, graffiti, defaced roadsigns (removing the London bit from the Derry bit), all apparently requiring a heavy handed police presence. We saw more police in ten minutes in Ballymena than we had in three weeks in the south. The Garda are a very low key organisation to the touring traveller. In villages and towns the only clue to where their police stations are is a small possibly blue lamp above the door saying Garda.
Getting on to the cat was interesting, as all traffic has to drive on, turn round, and face back towards the stern. We little campervans could do this, but two motorhomes had the tricky job of reversing on last as they were too tall to make the turn!
So that was it, back on to Scottish soil at Troon, end of a great four weeks on that interesting island near Scotland.
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