Setling in
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2006
1
76
232
Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Banagher,
Ireland
Sunday, July 9, 2006
We both had a good nights sleep albeit on separate double beds in separate bedrooms. Sometimes a body just needs some space. Of course when we went to bed it was light and when we awoke at 6 am it was also light. In fact during our stay in France and Ireland we never ever had to drive in the dark. So I still do not know where the light switch is on the car. I fib. There were times in tunnels when it was obligatory to put them on. Mind you there are still a lot of light addicts who keep them on at all times. Actually, I believe it was mandatory on autostrada and autoroutes but not on Irish motorways. &n bsp; &n bsp;
There was an ensuite in the main bedroom but we decided not to use it. It had no toilet anyway. What's the use of an ensuite without a toilet! 'Tis the only reason for there to be plumbing off a bedroom, surely. All else is secondary...well at our age anyway.
In the main bathroom the shower was situated in the bath and was a push button heat-as-you-go contraption which, now that we have experienced a few, is very efficient. Which is more than I can say for the oil fueled water heating system for the rest of the house. Most British hot water systems (and I include Ireland here) do not have off peak, tank heating or any full tank heating. Hot water is heated as you go. In this case by an oil burner which heats a coil of water pipes sufficient to fill a kitchen sink at a time. I suppose it is efficient but it requires so much infrastructure. In the garden was an enormous PVC tank of oil which could hold up to 400 litres. It fed into the heater which was nearly as big and the water pipes were heated by a burner controlled by a switch within the kitchen. The water was carried around the house to the taps and of course more importantly to the central heating radiators which we turned off as soon as we arrived. In Winter they must always be on. Sounds expensive to me...not to mention dangerous. Every back garden had one of these tanks of oil. A hit by a Hizbollah rocket would devastate Banagher!
The water pipes were fed from the water tank installed in the 'airing cupboard' in the bedroom in which there was also an emergency immersion heater in case you could not wait the ten minutes for the oil burner to wind up. In addition to all those heating arrangements there was an open fire in the sitting room which we were encouraged to use using the peat provided. There was a barbecue in the garden and when you think about it together with stove and the microwave oven that's a lot of power.
After a good breakfast we went for a walk down the to the river and inspected the marina there. Some fine boats moored there plus many for hire. Very similar to those we saw on the Canal du Midi. I think there must be a standard size for leisure boats in Europe in order to pass through the locks and, yes, there were locks further upstream as we were to find out. [I have always been proud of the fact that Sydney has always had a disproportionate number of boats per head of population...one of the highest boat ownerships in the world...indicating, I presumed, a high standard of living. But we saw a lot of boats in France and we were seeing a great many here too and would see more. Ireland, surprisingly, has only 4 million people but they have a lot of boats...and cars.] The river Shannon was very wide and fast flowing and crossed by a 100 metre long road bridge at this spot.
We walked back up the main street and found the newsagent and supermarket amongst others. The small shops were scattered up and down the street with narrow pavements in front and were, on the whole, dingy, dark places. No awnings, of course, so it was hard to tell sometimes if one was looking at a shop or someone's residence. Lots of pubs. In fact we counted nine in the main street, two of which had been closed down and boarded up. It was busy but not somewhere where you would go out of your way to shop. It was not raining and did not rain again for the duration of our stay.
We watched Federer win the men's final at Wimbledon in the afternoon and Italy claim the World Cup in football in the evening on our own TV.
