Meeting Kevin & Ruth, & the Dublin to Holyhead Ferry

We’ve spent our last days in Ireland making good use of the motorway network, meeting inspirational long-term nomads Kevin and Ruth (who blog daily at www.travelwithkevinandruth.com), and getting the ferry back to the UK from Dublin.

I won’t lie to you folks, we’ve had a few nights of broken sleep, and I’m very happy to be on a temporary holiday site here in Anglesey, North Wales. These sites are run by the Camping & Caravanning Club, and are well-marshalled (in other words, noise ain’t tolerated at night). We’re well away from busy roads, so unless the local RAF decide to conduct some overnight training runs, we should be guaranteed a solid gold night of kip!

Back down at Inch Beach on the Dingle Pensinsula four days ago, we’re pretty sure it must have been Tom Cruise filming scenes for the upcoming epic Days of Thunder 2. Why else someone would opt to lay down the rubber on the rural road outside our campsite at 1am, preceded by a few blasts of fireworks, is a mystery? Hollywood eh?! Tsk.

Car-racing neds aside, we loved Inch Beach. The campsite was characterful (read: men’s shower block was a shack, the loo they used for chemical disposal had a semi-working flush, and the grey water drive-over required some tactical maneuvering up a gravel hill).

That aside, it was a great spot. The views over the dunes to the distant Reeks on Iveragh Peninsula, the endless entertainment from folks getting their car/motorbike/van stuck on the beach, the delicious takeaway pizza, the beach-bum vibe, all great. We stayed a couple of nights there, even though our ferry in Dublin was looming, as the sun was shining and we couldn’t tear ourselves away.

But we’d a date, not just with the boat but with epic travelers and prolific bloggers Kevin and Ruth. These guys have been nomadic for the past 15 years, and have done a mind-blowing amount of travel. Much of it in motorhomes they’ve bought, run and sold, on several continents. They’re elite-level frugal travel experts, the real nomad deal, fueling their initial years of wanderlust through running a campsite in Canada, their native country. They’ve led RV tours to Mexico, a country they love, and run their own on-line businesses.

They’re currently traveling Europe in their motorhome Max, which they sometimes store at the dealer they bought him from in Germany, while they fly/AirBnB different parts of the world. We really enjoyed their tales of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. They’ve no plans to go back to bricks-n-mortar, and have plenty more ideas for future travels, taking some of their inspiration from Johhny Ward (onestep4ward.com), whose blog we’ll soon be devouring.

We could have driven from Inch Beach up to Dublin in a day. The Republic of Ireland’s motorways all radiate out from the capital. They’re devoid of traffic, and the short toll sections are cheap, we paid a grand sum of €4 to use two of them. Before this trip, if we’d known what we know now, we may well have taken the Holyhead to Dublin ferry and piled straight down to Cork and then on to the southern start of the Wild Atlantic Way. It would have been quicker than heading from Nottingham to southern Wales and over to Rosslare, then using the slower Irish R and N roads we took. But we’ve no regrets, we had some cool experiences on our early days away from the coast.

Instead of hammering it straight to Dublin, we picked a marina spot about half way, north of Limerick on Lough Derg. The lough is a huge lake formed on the Shannon River, and we found the parking spot at Garrykennedy on park4night (N52.905108, W8.344865). Tons of positive reviews, in we went. Via a tiny backroad for the last few km, with folks staring at us squeezing past their houses down the elbows-in country lane! The rest of the traffic sensibly took the nice wide(r) road running parallel. I finally remembered I’d switched our satnav off truck to car mode earlier in the trip, as it refused to take us down the more scenic minor roads on the Atlantic peninsulas. Whoops.

We should have seen it coming I guess. The Sunday morning weather was bang on, with huge blue skies and a warm breeze. Flags fluttered on lampposts and in folks gardens. The bus stops were a crush of folks in coloured shirts. Hurling day! Loads of big (40,000+) matches were on, and everywhere was in party mood. Including our hope-it’s-quiet little car park by the lake.

We were lucky we arrived earlier in the day, as later on the place was R-A-M-M-E-D. I can understand why. The local gourmet pub was absolutely delicious and no more expensive than anywhere else we’ve eaten and drunk in Ireland. They had trad music on in the afternoon, and a massive BBQ in the beer garden. Outside the sun beat down on the cropped-grass marina areas, and families enjoyed BBQing in the seating areas provided. Nippers chucked themselves in the brackish lake water, while boats plied the small waves bringing punters across the sea-like expanse to the marina. More and more cars arrived, squeezing in everywhere. End result: not much sleep until about 1am, again, but the place was worth it.

In the morning we ate a leisurely breakfast and then hammered up the rest of the motorway to Dublin. Kevin and Ruth are Jedi-Class wild campers and had sourced a spot outside a GAA club which was free, felt safe and was walking distance to the city centre. Pretty amazing, not much chance of that in London! We worked our way through the city traffic and parked up alongside Max (N53.338864, W6.216449).

Having visited Dublin way before this blog came into being, we hadn’t planned to head into the centre. But as Kevin and Ruth were in there already (these guys hike many miles every day), we had a walk over. Ooooeee, I’d forgotten just how packed out cities get with tourists these days (rich coming from me I know, I’m a tourist too). Cutting a story short, we bailed on the city and rendezvoused back at the car park for a coupla drinks and a good chat.

The following morning I woke up like a bear in spring. Grumpy! The parking spot was cracking, but also on the main southern entrance road to the port at Dublin. Traffic insisted on driving to and from the port until late (tsk again!), and then again from 4am. My usual 9 hours of kip was cut to 4, and my usual ebullient mood (!) was brought low. Let’s put it this way, I almost whacked the cashier at the small toll bridge on the way to the port with a wing mirror, until Ju warned me how close I was. I was relieved to get the van parked on the deck and abandoned for the three hour-ish crossing. Oh, if you’re interested, the ferries cost us roughly £400 in total. They were just under £200 each way for a 6m motorhome and two adults.

Ju hates getting seasick. But until they build a bridge or tunnel to Ireland, there’s no choice but a boat if you wanna drive your own van over there from Britain. We struck lucky though, and the captain reported swell no higher than half a metre. With Ju having quickly grabbed a big flat seat with a good view of the horizon, I headed out to eyeball the shipping containers being loaded onto two ships alongside us. I find these places fascinating, stacked high with huge boxes full of everything. A rare view of the inner workings of our 8-billion-person human machine. All those millions upon millions of tons of stuff we need (or want) being punted around the world like matchboxes.

The crossing was perfect. Alongside Ju’s den an American party kept us entertained with a steady stream of stories about the Emergency Room (one was a retired surgeon), affairs they’d had, divorces they’d paid for, therapy sessions, the times they’ve been held up at gunpoint or had their hotel room ransacked, and so on and so on. It was like a real-life soap opera being relayed to us piece by fascinating piece. Most of it would remain unsaid in public by a Brit, for better or worse.

Eventually the peaks of Snowdonia formed a shadow in the sky. The ferry cruised past a small, erm, cruise ship and pulled itself up to dock against Ynys Môn. Four weeks after setting off from Fishguard and we were back in Wales. Anglesey welcomed us in, offering up a few goodies at the local Morrisons before we drove all of three miles into the temporary site here against the coast. Ju’ll do a post about this little spot in the next few days. We’ll also put out a summary of what we learned on our first (and it won’t be the last) trip to Ireland next week. So, I’ll head off now, thanks for reading folks.

Cheers, Jay