Drogheda – Wicklow – Dublin

(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)

We completed the short commute down the motorway to Dublin and, with all beds in the city booked on weekends pretty regularly, I thought it would be best to look for a place to stay in the morning rather than leave things till evening. The B&B for our last three nights was out in Maynooth in Dublin’s western outskirts, the home of quietly spoken Jim and his not so quietly spoken wife. Though it was clear the wife ran the household, we never remembered her name as we never heard it again after our initial introductions, but remembering Jim’s wasn’t a problem as she constantly barked out orders to him in a deep gravelly voice that only a lifetime of heavy smoking can do. As with almost all of the hosts we stayed with, they were lovely and friendly, warmly welcoming us into their home and we thoroughly enjoyed staying there.

With Dublin still to be explored over the weekend and our circumnavigation of the country complete, today was a chance to head inland and drive through some of the counties we had not yet passed through. And so it was that before the day’s end we had ticked off Kildare, West Meath, Offaly and Laois for the first time, giving us a final tally of having ventured into 19 of the 26 counties in the Republic and 4 of the 6 in Northern Ireland.

I had intended to finish off the day by driving into the Wicklow Mountains just south of Dublin and pay a visit to Glendalough, an incredibly impressive ancient monastic site. By taking the back roads and navigating only by the county maps in our Lonely Planet guide it proved to be a little trickier to find than I had imagined. I ended up going round and round in circles in the lower foothills of the mountains, sometimes meeting tractors and other slower vehicles along the narrow and bendy country roads, but never seeming to pick the right direction to travel in. Eventually, with it getting close to dark and the petrol tank getting alarmingly close to empty, I had no choice but to give up. This was not an easy call to make but I think my passengers were relieved I’d finally swallowed my pride. Nanna was dead silent in the backseat and Amber had long since given up navigating, had stuck her head in a book and continually rolled her eyes and groaned at her brother’s stubbornness and doggedness when it comes to finding places by just following his ample nose.

After passing through the village of Avoca, the setting for the TV show Ballykissangel, we found the major highway and spent some time in the town of Wicklow to refuel both the car and ourselves, and then we were happy families once more.