Kilkenny, the Marble City by Motorhome

Our motorhome destinations are often influenced by how convenient places are to stay in the van. We’ll usually pull up the park4night app and find highly-rated stopovers, before then researching the place in Lonely Planet. Probably the wrong way around that approach, but it’s just how we’ve found ourselves planning tours over the years.

Kilkenny’s proved very easy to visit by motorhome, with a private aire a stone’s throw from the centre (N52.654699, W7.248011). It’s €10 a night here, although we only know that from the instructions on park4night and a new resource (to us), Total Motorhome Ireland (Ju’s been a member of the Facebook group for a while but the stopovers are on the website yourtmi.com). There are no payment instructions in the parking area, just a sign showing where the black disposal and fresh water are. The aire’s shared with cars, but not many and they’re mostly gone by the early evening.

The money goes into an envelope (bring one with you) with your registration and dates and then either into a postbox near the fresh water, or you can pay the butcher over the road. We opted for the butchers, it sounded more interesting, and were glad we did. Walking in took us back in time, probably to before we were alive! Eyes drawn to the sawdust spread across the floor, then back up as the butcher correctly guessed we were in a motorhome. He told us he doesn’t own the aire, he just collects the money for a mate.

He’s a vanner himself, he tells us, and can spot fellow motorhome owners a mile off (we later realised he knew every other customer by name, so we easily stood out). And with that a friendly conversation kicked off. I’m introverted, and I find striking up small talk with strangers a challenge. Not a problem here, the Irish don’t seem to mind doing all the talking and it suits me just fine! We’ve only been here a few days but have already experienced a few chance encounters with the locals treating us like they already know us. It’s pretty cool.

Later on I nipped back in to grab some lamb chops. The butcher was busy relentlessly taking the p*ss out of a 75 year-old customer, I guess someone he knew well, who was giving as good as he was getting. I know he’s 75 as he said so, complaining loudly that someone (a doctor I guess) had made him stop drinking for three weeks.

He said there was a time he couldn’t have gone three hours without a pint, just as the butcher was pretending to blow cobwebs from the customer’s wallet. Just then he remembered he wanted some black pudding, ordering a ‘fistful of black’ and a ‘fistful of white’, must be new measures of weight the EU has introduced recently? The whole encounter made me smile.

Once the other customer had left I asked the butcher about a drawing on the wall behind me. He relayed the story of a local 18 year old lad, captured by ‘Crown Forces’ (British security forces) in 1920 during the war of independence, and subsequently hanged. I’m not feeling 100% comfortable at this point, being the obvious English bloke I am, but there wasn’t any indication of ill-feeling.

The butcher said the drawing reminded him of a mate called Buckley, which then got us into a conversation about my surname. I eventually bought a couple of lamb chops and, although I didn’t fancy an entire fistful, a slice of black and a slice of white pudding to try.

Anyway, Kilkenny! It’s called the Marble City as there’s a lot of black and grey stone knocking about. A castle, cathedral, churches, administrative buildings, even the pavement, all dark grey or black. Imposing under a grey sky and all with long histories. The town has a ‘medieval mile’ (presumably so-named by the tourist board) which runs between two of ’em, from the castle to the cathedral. We’d read about this and were expecting something like the Shambles in York.

If you’re heading this way, don’t be like us! We were a tiny bit disappointed to find it’s more of a pretty (and long!) shopping street, lined with independent shops. They’re interspersed with old buildings and signs indicating where the old town walls would have been. Nice, but not spectacularly medieval. We’d have been better informed if we’d visited the Medieval Mile Museum, but we couldn’t summon the energy. Each to their own, we do visit museums and galleries, but only ones which are of real interest to us these days.

Things other than buildings are capturing our interest. We’ve not come across the sport of hurling before, but like Gaelic football, it’s a big thing around here. There’s a huge stone statue below the castle walls with three guys frozen in position, all looking like they’re about to get badly hurt!

Groups of schoolboys amble around the town wafting hurling sticks about. Like long wooden flat-ended spoons, the players use them to balance the ball before belting it into or over a net. They can hold the ball by hand too, to a limited extent. Full contact is permitted, so the whole thing seems as brutal as the statue suggests. The local team are the Kilkenny Cats, and a poster suggested they’re well-feared by other teams. Even the local youths can whack the ball about half a mile with pinpoint accuracy.

We’ll keep an eye out for a game while we’re here. And Irish road bowling too, it looks hilarious in this clip from 2010. How none of the spectators get maimed is a mystery!

That’s us, we’ve enjoyed Kilkenny, the Parkrun was great around the path in front of the castle with lots of lovely folks to chat with at the end! It’s time to head south now, we’re off to Cobh (pronounced cove) on the coast near Cork. We both love the sea, and always kind of regret leaving it to go inland, so we’ll be glad when we’re up against it again.

Cheers, Jay

P.S. Forgot to add an update on the ‘what’s broke on the van after winter’ topic. We’ve been pretty lucky so far. The submersible water pump seized so the taps didn’t work, but it’s easy to get at and a few taps with the hammer part-freed it. I then read someone had had success by swapping the positive and negative 12V wires over for it. Seemed improbable but I did just that and it’s now functioning perfectly!?

The other thing was the windscreen jets. They’re mounted on our van’s wiper blades, and none were working. We checked and there was no noise from the pump attached to the filler bottle under the bonnet, so it was seized too. The fuse looked fine, and a check with a multi-meter showed we were getting 12V at the pump. We walked to a local garage to ask for advice and he suggested ordering a new one from eBay. At this point Ju asked whether giving it a hammer tap too might sort it. “Yep, could do”, said the garage bloke, and yes indeedy, a few taps and boom, it started working too.

So, we’ve just had to whack some stuff (gently) with a hammer and we’re back in business. Everything’s working as it should, touch wood, so we’re good to head off into the wilds of Ireland to get plenty off-grid camping done.