Adventuring/Wandering
Nov. 15th, 2008 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99Today I decided to Get Out of the Hotel. Officially. I have a map that gives a driving tour of West/Southern Limerick. It starts in Adare (which happily I knew how to find) and went south. I managed to drive through such likely-sounding towns as Rathkeale, Ardagh and on to Athea before disaster struck. Well, disaster being defined as "My GPS is low on juice, the plug T gave me does not seem to plug in any socket on it, and I am pretty sure I took a wrong turn back there in Athea."
Ack!
I plugged in the GPS, and it told me how to get to Abbeyfeale. I turned the GPS off and promptly hopped the largest road back to Adare.
I never stopped the whole way. There was really no obvious place to park. There were points when I wanted to stop and take pictures, but.... no place to park.
Evidently early November in Ireland is still Autumn. While many of the trees are bare, many more of them are spectacularly colored. Yellow, gold, orange, red, dark red and evergreen. They were amazing! Ah, the pictures I could have taken if I didn't fear for my ability to return my rental car undamaged...
At first the drive was really nice and easy. N21 is one lane each direction, but it is mostly one wide lane, with a shoulder. I LOVE shoulders. LoveLOVElove. But then I turned off N21 to Ardagh and that is when things went... um... Traditionally Irish. The road was TINY. I would define it as a single lane. But there was a stipe down the middle that tried to pretend that two cars could fit side-by-side. Yeah, right. I watched the cars that passed me (crazy locals). They couldn't even stay in their lane! They had both tires in oncoming traffic. They seemed unapologetic about it. And it wasn't like they were driving large cars!
So about 3 hours driving was my physical comfortable limit. Any more would have been too much. I am happy to be back at my hotel by a little after 3pm. I will talk to T, then go grocery shopping for dinner and breakfast for the rest of the week. Early to bed. This will be very nice.
Tomorrow I am going to sleep in again, and then wander Limerick on foot. Today driving, tomorrow walking. It is a good thing.
Ack!
I plugged in the GPS, and it told me how to get to Abbeyfeale. I turned the GPS off and promptly hopped the largest road back to Adare.
I never stopped the whole way. There was really no obvious place to park. There were points when I wanted to stop and take pictures, but.... no place to park.
Evidently early November in Ireland is still Autumn. While many of the trees are bare, many more of them are spectacularly colored. Yellow, gold, orange, red, dark red and evergreen. They were amazing! Ah, the pictures I could have taken if I didn't fear for my ability to return my rental car undamaged...
At first the drive was really nice and easy. N21 is one lane each direction, but it is mostly one wide lane, with a shoulder. I LOVE shoulders. LoveLOVElove. But then I turned off N21 to Ardagh and that is when things went... um... Traditionally Irish. The road was TINY. I would define it as a single lane. But there was a stipe down the middle that tried to pretend that two cars could fit side-by-side. Yeah, right. I watched the cars that passed me (crazy locals). They couldn't even stay in their lane! They had both tires in oncoming traffic. They seemed unapologetic about it. And it wasn't like they were driving large cars!
So about 3 hours driving was my physical comfortable limit. Any more would have been too much. I am happy to be back at my hotel by a little after 3pm. I will talk to T, then go grocery shopping for dinner and breakfast for the rest of the week. Early to bed. This will be very nice.
Tomorrow I am going to sleep in again, and then wander Limerick on foot. Today driving, tomorrow walking. It is a good thing.
