Galway Bay
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2006
1
79
232
Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Galway,
Ireland
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
We set off about 9am for Galway. The R roads seem to go on forever before we hit the N6. Trouble is when you are crouched over the wheel, in a manner of speaking, and driving through the, sometimes narrow and at other times damn near impassable roads, through the small towns, it became very tiring and slow.
Once again it was green from horizon to horizon and dotted with lazy cows and dopey sheep. A surprising number of fields lay empty. Lying fallow maybe or just waiting. In between the villages there were large, neat detached homes. One and two storey brick, rendered houses with semi circular drives and manicured gardens. They mostly looked immaculate. A lot of money was being spent on their upkeep. It's called pride in your place of residence. Something we had not seen a lot of on the continent so far. The only older homes are in the towns. I had the impression that over the last decade or two the Irish have been knocking down all the old, traditional, country cottages and, taking advantage of the acre or two they might have been sitting on, they built fine new homes. Now of course they are reaping the benefit. The news items of late have been headlining the fact that Ireland was the second wealthiest nation in the world...mostly due to the value of its properties.
We are still appalled at some of the driving habits. Because I tend to drive at what I consider a safe pace on these narrow roads I am being constantly overtaken by impatient youngsters who see the speed limit of 100kph as a target to reach not to remain within.
Galway Bay
I don't mind being overtaken but they do it over solid white lines and/or in defiance of those road signs that define the bleeding obvious...no overtaking!.We eventually arrived in Galway and parked for a few minutes on a pier in the docklands. Not very exciting except for the mountain and I mean mountain of scrap metal that was accumulating on the dockside. Dumpsters were arriving at regular intervals to disgorge their truckloads of metal garbage onto the pier side whereupon an excavator with a grapple would grab a ton at a time and toss it on top of the heap. For what purpose I know not.
We drove around a one way system and found a car park over a shopping centre. We had a tea and a pee and went out into the streets. We found ourselves in a myriad of cobbled streets and small shops. The modern day shopping mall has not taken root in Ireland or many parts of the continent. Instead the narrow streets are closed off, the roads repaved BUT no cover for the punters. Oh, how we miss the Sydney awnings but it was great. The shops curved around the old part of town with no vehicular traffic allowed and it was all good humoured. Lots of buskers. Every street corner had a guitarist or an accordionist. Shops of all description. Everything you could possibly want. Even music stores. EVEN an HMV. What a difference to France where there was a drought of music shops. Here there were at least three including a the two storey HMV. Mind you, half the floor space was taken up with DVD's. Recorded music is on the way out.
Galway old town
Anne was on a mission. To find a wool shop. We were successful after making a few inquiries and found some Arran patterns. We stumbled upon a raging torrent of water at the end of the shopping streets. Not sure which river it was because Galway seemed to be at the entrance/exit to Lough Corrib rather than any river system. We ended up back where we started. I bought a CD and made enquiries about digital cameras and the prospect of buying one with a built-in wide angle lens. Anne bought some Clark shoes. The only down side was that there were too many buskers competing for our cash as well as a charity collector on each corner.
Driving out of town was a nightmare. The narrow streets out of this old part of town were blocked in all directions. I did a bit of shortcutting and found ourselves on the R336 going west. I decided that it was of prime importance that we reach the shoreline of Galway Bay...especially since we were inadvertently pointing in that direction. We were surprised to see, on the way out of town, two large modern shopping malls which sort of rescinds my previous remark but I would not have thought there would be enough people to support all these retailers. I turned off the main drag west and found my way down to the shore. It was a beachfront! A combination of sand and cobbles and calm waters although it was really not warm enough here to go swimming. There was a fairground and all the other attractions that go to make a seaside. We parked on the front and walked along the sidewalk for a little.
We found our way back to the N6 which was the start of a long drag back to Bannagher or so it seemed. I was very tired by the time we got home. The whole journey was barely 100km but gee it was tiring driving.
