Preliminary Thoughts

With everything locked down due to the Coronavirus epidemic we've not been able to do much touring this year, once we'd “escaped” from Morocco - even as I write this 5 months later there are still Brits there, not yet being allowed to travel! We did manage a few days at Stratford followed by a week keeping an eye on Mum, doing a little bit of local visiting although with everything still locked down most places were still closed.

So having planned a return to Ireland for September this year to finish the Wild Atlantic Way, we've been keeping a very close watch on easing of restrictions. We booked ferries anyway as we firmly believed by the time of our visit there would be enough freedom for us to go ahead with the trip but even so it was only a few days before that we finally decided to travel. Ireland still had many restrictions, including a requirement for a 14 day quarantine for travellers from the UK. However we found a loophole; there were no restrictions on travellers from Northern Ireland, neither were there any restrictions to there from the UK as long as we had not been in any of the “naughty” countries within the previous 14 days. I spent hours scouring the various government websites, even trying to complete the on-line entry forms, which wouldn't accept our itinerary, so I contacted a fellow Funster who lived very close to the border to ask his opinion.

Basically, he said that there were no problems, no checks and anyway much of the country, away from the heavily populated areas, had not suffered although there were of course the almost universal restrictions covering the use of masks, hand-gel and “social distancing”. We had no intentions anyway of visiting cities so with his reassurance we gave it the green light.

Over the previous few weeks we'd had a few jobs done on the van including replacement of the barely-used aircon with a 12v reversible fan which we felt would be far more use to us, with the bonus that we sold the aircon for the same price as the new unit, just paying to have it professionally fitted.

A change of insurers meant we could also keep the van at home longer so this time we could take our time loading up rather than the frenetic 24 hours, which is what we did. So we were ready for our departure on Tuesday.