Day 28

Fortunately, the predicted overnight storm wasn’t too bad so we could begin our day’s adventures. Another day, another ring, this time the Ring of Beara but first to travel south to reach it. We, ok I, decided to cross the Kerry peninsula, rather than going round the main road, which we had travelled on before. In order to do so I set the satnav to follow the shortest route instead of the fastest. Do we want it to warn us of unsuitable roads? Yes, probably. The satnav makes a bleeping sound. Turns out that was it warning us, who knew? We wound our way up into the mountains until the road gave out. In theory it was a road, both map and satnav were agreed on this but it was a very narrow, bumpy, unmade-up track. Allegedly it went on for at least three miles. Having not realised this was a mistake in time to reverse back out of our predicament, we persevered amidst mutterings about the impact on the suspension. It was a mile before there was space to do a many point turn without falling over a cliff or in a bog. We took a slightly less short route but one that had the advantage of tarmac. This led us past Lough Caragh and across what is allegedly Ireland’s highest mountain range. The sum total of traffic that we encountered in an hour’s driving was one tractor. A rough road (but a least it was a road) and a series of tunnels took us to the eastern edge of the Ring of Beara and into County Cork.

The Ring was another scenic drive, similarly devoid of suitable places for comfort stops as the Ring of Kerry. There were lovely views over Bantry Bay. Many houses were painted yellow, perhaps there was a job lot of paint going cheap. As we reached the north coast, there were large mussel farms. I had hoped that our route would take us along the small portion of the Ring of Kerry that we missed in order to go through the Dunloe gap but by this time the satnav was firmly set to fastest, so we ended up going a different way. In the absence of an alternative on the Ring of Beara, we returned to Muckross for refreshment and their irresistible cakes. Their gift shop’s winter sale had started, so I was able to pick up a couple of much reduced jumpers.

Day 29

It turned out that Storm Agnes, which we thought had been and gone was here right now. We were due to travel a hundred or so miles south to our final site. Should we go or should we stay? It was pretty windy. Once the wifi decided to wake up I found a decent weather tracking site. It looked like the worst of the storm was likely to be about 1pm and it would be more severe in Kerry, where we were, than in Cork, where we were going.

Should we wait until 5pm to travel, when it looked like things would calm down? It was by this time 9.45am, should we go and hope to get there before Agnes did her worst? We ummed and ahhed a bit. I left the decision firmly in the hands of the driver, on the understanding that whatever he decided would become our joint decision and there would be no recriminations! We lurched from one alternative to another and finally decided we would go for it, stopping if necessary. We are dab hands at packing the caravan up quickly and were on the road by 10am. Apart from fording a few flooded patches of road there were no real issues and it wasn’t even raining for the first hour. We did notice that Killorglin was in darkness as we passed through, with the shop and traffic lights out, so it seemed they had no power. We felt that the potentially dodgy bit of the journey might be the Derrynasaggart Mountains but we passed through these without incident. The satnav was a tad fooled by the new N22, which she didn’t recognise but which made our journey quicker, even though this was the most exposed part of the route.

At last we neared Youghal. Should this be pronounced You-gal or Yog-hal? I am not convinced by the satnav’s version of Your. Interestingly, occasionally, the satnav lapses into Irish, so we were heading for Corcaigh, rather than Cork; she did a similar thing for Limerick but Your doesn’t seem, by any stretch of the imagination, to be an approximation of the Irish for Youghal. We arrived at 1.10pm and the last ten minutes had seemed to be windier, so the 1pm predictions were about right.

Accessing the site was ‘interesting’. First, there was a van in the entrance, so we had to wait in the road whilst I paddled across a waterlogged site in a howling gale to find out what we should do. Once the van was out of the way, we were directed up a narrow drive in the hopes we could drive out of a different gate to get where we needed to be. It turned out that this was too narrow and we couldn’t fit the van round the corner. Cue reversing the caravan back round the corner and back up the narrow entrance way. One of the site owners/staff offered to do this for us. Much to my surprise Chris, who would have been capable of these manoeuvres, agreed. I guess then the driver would have been responsible for damaged walls or caravans. Fortunately there was none. In the end the van was turned through 180 degrees and manhandled into position by site staff.

Next to set up as the wind got a little fiercer. When there is a storm force gale going on one thing you need is for your caravan legs to go down for stability. These are electronic ‘automatic’ legs that do have their moments. This was one of those moments and they were on strike. Fortunately we were able to coax them into action and we were able to balance on four legs and two tyres to weather the storm.