18-25 August.
After arriving in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced dunleary), we planned to stay a few days to explore the area. A trip into Dublin (20mins by train) and a visit to the 'Epic' museum, a new attraction funded by a former Coca Cola CEO to highlight the contribution Irish descendants have made around the world. It's brilliantly done in a converted 19th century tobacco store, hadn't heard of half the people and not quite sure how long Irish ancestry can be claimed for....i think they were claiming Bruce Springsteen amongst others.
Sadly live music is not permitted indoors, so we weren't able to enjoy a lively night out in a Dublin pub.
North of Dun Laoghaire lies the largest of Ireland's 6 National Parks - The Wicklow Mountains, 20,000ha of moorland, lakes, wooded valleys and forestry plantations. Lovely quiet roads and some single track routes through the forest areas gave us a fab day out on our bikes.


A couple of days then spent in and around Dun Laoghaire, with Jay having work to do and me doing I'm not quite sure what! But I did go for a couple of runs along one of the two 3/4mile long sea walls which enclose the outer harbour of Dun Laoghaire, there are then inner walls enclosing the marina and harbour area. This makes it a very secure place but also creates a fantastic place for dinghy racing and for people to learn to sail. We must have seen 300+ children on sailing courses and the local clubs run 65 races each week, including 3 a week for class 1 yachts.

The marina is very large and at the far end some of the pontoons don't get much use and the area seems to have become a hangout for juvenile sea birds, particularly herring gulls, black head gulls and surprisingly turnstones. These are normally shore birds (getting their name from the habit of turning over stones and seaweed to find invertebrates underneath). Normally at this time of year they have migrated north to breed and then would come back to UK for the winter, but birds in their first year are not old enough to breed so get left behind. There were about 6 that seem to live on the pontoons and find enough food pecking on the boards on the pontoons.


A 05.00am start on the 22nd saw us heading south again to give us enough to complete the 80+ miles to Kilmore Quay, just on the south coast of Ireland. The wind was pretty frustrating, with good wind, then no wind, then the wind returning. So a mixture of sailing and motoring, but at least it was warm and sunny. We rounded the SE tip of Ireland with its wind farms by 17.00 and then into fishing port of Kilmore by 19.00, where out spot on the end of the pontoon had been reserved for us....very helpful harbourmaster!



A bike ride along the quiet lanes of the SE took us out to the wind farm on the SE tip of Ireland for a picnic lunch. We saw all these housemartins (i think!) gathering on the roof of this house, planning their return to warmer climes, another sign that summer is coming to an end. ☹️. On getting back to the boat we found the Germans had arrived, two single handed sailors Jens and Torsten (not guite alone, he had his dog Pip and an adopted racing pigeon that has been hitching a ride since Scotland!), they were rafted up alongside our boat. They came to supper and we had a good evening (obviously they spoke perfect English) talking of sailing adventures and Brexit!



From Kilmore we needed to leave at near high tide to have enough depth of water to get over the sand bank near the entrance to the Harbourside but then needed to anchor for a few hours in the mouth of the river Suir in order to get the flood tide up the river to Waterford. Not too much of a hardship as there were dolphins in the bay and it was sunny. A pleasant breeze saw us sail a good 5 miles up the river before it became a bit narrow to be safe. It's a real mixture - open countryside, small villages, power stations, woodland to the waters edge and container ports. After 14 miles we reached the centre of Waterford where there were pontoons to moor alongside. A bit tricky coming alongside with the river flowing at 6kts but we managed it ok. It's a great spot -right in the heart of the city, a mere 2 minutes from the nearest coffee shop. I think I’d only really heard of Waterford because of the famous crystal glass, but it’s Ireland’s oldest city, founded by the Vikings in 914 and became an important trading port and still is. We are very glad we didn’t met a cargo ship in the narrow river channel!



The weather was good and went on a 60m bike ride over to Dungarven, another port to the west on the coast. There is a disused railway line made into a cycle trail all the way, so no cars and no navigation required. It follows the river for the first few miles and there is a volunteer run railway for part of the route. The next day was a cultural day, visiting 2 of Waterford’s 5 museums. We did the Medieval and Time museums, the later was basically just full of grandfather clocks and other old timepieces, basically there were an awful lot of clockmakers in Ireland. Waterford has a nice buzz and again, friendly chatty people.