We roller-coastered along the swooping R392 into Mullingar for supplies, promising ourselves our first real Irish Guinness at the unassuming looking petrol station/grocers/bar we passed. When we woke, hours later, the sky was already dimming. Tea, and oatcakes with peanut butter sent us plummeting into unconsciousness within minutes of arrival.
We continued through dull Portloaise and the cynical architecture of Tullamore (admittedly skirting the town centres) until we finally reached our log cabin near Rathconrath. The Wicklow Mountains, blue-tinted like a stage backdrop, reared up in the distance, far beyond the agricultural plateau formed of County Laois, County Kildare and County Wicklow. Three restorative cups of tea drunk, we headed out and north again, stopping briefly to stretch out under a wind-bowed hawthorn among psilocybe semilanceata on a hill by Ballintlea. It was a greyish morning, but the uniform grimness of cheap bars, betting shops, 1Euro shops and Polski Skleps seemed relentless and mean.
#Coppice fish bar windows
We stopped at Carlow, our tired eyes arrested by the bricked-up windows of many of the stone cottages lining the approach road. The River Slaney followed alongside us, brilliant and fast flowing.
Heading northward, we crossed the bridge at Enniscorthy. Several spiegeltents decorated the front beside the empty railway line. The town had a quaint, forgotten air, looking out on a choppy little bay with a single fishing boat. We breakfasted at Wexford, opposite the statue of John Barry. Adults drugged by driving and children snug in onesies sprawled across sofas, armchairs and on the carpet, snoring, snoozing, or getting up to stagger sidelong into walls towards the toilets, gently rocked by the Irish sea. The ferry had left Wales at 2:15am, and the passage across had been like a giant sleepover. Stadium-sized sodium lights highlighted steady drizzle- Rosslare docks at dawn- our first sight of Ireland. Shoulder muscles straining with low-speed clutch work, I disgorged the motorbike out of the ferry’s maw down slippy metal gantries.
0 kommentar(er)
