Day 20

Despite the forecast for 70% or more chance of rain all day every day for the next eight days and an early shower, we left Carrowkeel to a cloudless sky. We opted to avoid the toll charge on our drive south to Adare. It isn’t that we are pathologically adverse to paying toll charges, it is just that this often has to be done online and we weren’t sure that we would have access to online. By now we have got the hang of the pulling over and travelling on the hard shoulder to let faster traffic pass, which is how things are done in Ireland. We are limited to 80kph when the caravan is on the back. I spend our travelling time translating the kph to mph, which fortunately our satnav does, even if the car is unhelpful in this respect. We drove through Galway and Clare to arrive in another new county, Limerick.

In theory there is only wifi at reception at this site. When choosing our pitch, I opted for one as near as possible to reception. My travelling companion is less keen, ‘we will get all the passing site traffic’, says he. ‘Oh’, I say , innocently, ‘but look it is lovely and sunny and has its own picnic bench.’ Yes, it does also have one teeny tiny bar of wifi from within the caravan, enough to download emails at least. Not that that was a consideration of course!!! It did prove useful as we hadn’t been able to book a site for our last five nights, when we wanted to be in Cork or Waterford. Sites we tried were either closed by the end of our stay, only took camper vans not caravans, or were no longer operating. That teeny tiny bar of wifi enabled us to find somewhere for the final leg of our trip. Slightly longer stays for our last three stops and it feels like we are on the downhill slope now, as indeed we are. The site also provides us with breakfast blackberries.

Day 21

With the forecast rain more in evidence, we retraced our journey from yesterday a short way to visit Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. Fortunately, by the time we arrived, the rain had virtually stopped and we manage the tour without getting soaked.

The site began as a Viking trading post and then a wooden fortification was built at Bunratty, overlooking the river Shannon, in 1251 by Norman, Robert de Muscegros. A stone castle was built in 1277 by Thomas de Clare and the present building was erected in 1425 by the MacNamaras and was later taken over by the O’Briens, who were to become Earls of Thomond. It has been much altered since and was seriously damaged by troops fighting with Oliver Cromwell and later William III. The castle and land passed to Plantation families and had been abandoned by 1800 until it underwent significant restoration in the 1950s, by which time it was little more than a shell. You’d kind of think that if you’d seen one castle you’d have seen them all but there is something a bit different about Bunratty. There is a huge contrast between the large central rooms, including 10,000 year old Irish Elk antlers retrieved from a bog, some very odd light fittings, that are apparently called  leuchterweibchen and are German in origin and the tiny rooms in the towers, which are accessed up some fairly perilous, narrow spiral staircases. Definitely not recommended for those with mobility problems and I did wonder how many visitors had to be rescued having got stuck somewhere in the warren-like one-way system.

In the 1960s, improvements to aircraft, meant that refuelling stops at Shannon airport were no longer necessary and an active campaign to attract foreign tourists to the area began. Much of this revolved round medieval banquets at the recently restored Bunratty Castle, which were offered to visitors for free, along with a coach tour and overnight accommodation to anyone who stopped over at Shannon airport. The banquets continue, although are no longer free and many celebrities have attended over the decades.

The castle is now part of a folk park, with reconstructed Irish dwellings. We’ve been to a few of these now and a bit like castles, you’d think it would be seen one, seen ’em all but we are not yet Folk Parked out and each one offers something slightly different. Here at Bunratty there were farm animals to see and a few costumed characters including a loquacious blacksmith telling tales of the little folk. There was also a shopping street, where some of the shops were also doing duty as retail outlets for crafts people. The last building of the tour was the tea rooms where I opted for an enormous slice of coffee cake. It is very rare for me to be beaten by such things but delicious though it was, I did admit defeat. I couldn’t even offer it to my companion as he is allergic to coffee.