Saturday 5 September 2020 – Carna to Doolin

 

 

 

A brighter morning but still quite breezy and the threat of a shower was with us all day. After breakfast Colin tried to move off to the garage but his van wouldn't start; our first thought was last night's Adblue problem although we couldn't see why. However he had used the immobiliser last night which seemed a better candidate for the failure, so a bit of messing about and he eventually got it going. At the garage though we were perturbed to find it needed 12 litres of fluid, which should have been enough for thousands of miles, not the 800 or so he'd travelled so we're going to have to watch that situation.

 

Eventually under way around 11.00 we continued along the WAW heading for Galway through some dramatic scenery, stopping off for a short break at a beach where the Galway football team suddenly appeared, stripped off and all ran into the sea! Seems they'd just finished a training session and the salt water was good for the muscles. Nutjobs!

Although we would perhaps have liked to stop off in Galway the coronavirus situation meant we wouldn't, for this visit at least. We did try to avoid the city but geography meant we had to pass through the older quarter and dock/harbour area and, being a Saturday morning, it seemed every man, woman and their kids were out, determined to have a break from the lockdown; it was heaving! There has obviously been a lot of redevelopment and even more is currently going on so the traffic was very slow but we just went with the flow and eventually rejoined the WAW to the south of the city.

Our first attempt at a lunch stop, at Traught Beach, was thwarted by height barriers so we moved on to Flaggy Beach which was just as busy but we managed to find room and gave the dogs a run. The scenery wasn't as good around here, being fairly flat and uninteresting so after satisfying our appetites we pushed on mid-afternoon, now with a view to finding our stopover for tonight. A couple of possibilities had to be ruled out when we encountered more height barriers although everywhere was again crowded so finding room for vehicles of our size was always going to be a challenge.

 

Doolin is the jumping off point for ferries to the Arran Isles and has a huge parking area which we had learned allowed overnight parking. Once again almost full, we found room overlooking the sea but in view of the weather were not really keen. However, it being quite late in the day, the last ferries were coming in, bringing dozens of day trippers who all climbed into their cars and departed, leaving us a much better choice of parking spots, which we took advantage of, managing to get both vans into two parking bays next to each other – the carpark signs warned of heavy fines for parking outside the bays. But as it happened when Tina went to buy a ticket she was told by a ferryman to keep her €5 as the carpark man had gone home and wouldn't be back until Monday!

Then suddenly things started going wrong with our van, bits falling off, a fuse blew and a locker doorcatch went “pingggg” and threw it's parts everywhere! Just what we needed after what was quite a tiring day – driving a large vehicle on the narrow roads needs your full attention at all times and we're not as young as we used to be! Oh stuff it – we'll have a cuppa and sort it out tomorrow. But we did manage to empty the toilet cassette, which was getting a bit full, just before the ferryman locked the public loos!