(I LOVE bunting. I have even been knitting bunting on this trip and there’s some on it’s way to Canada and Cashel…)

Remember I was saying there were all these wonderful free places to stay? Well, we’ve been mixing the free ones with the paying ones and everything was going well until last night… I will try to describe it, but my mother once told me if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. Emm… the name was pretty. The End.

(I like close-ups, here’s a close up of a monument)

I woke at 4am with the (not very melodious) sound of cows mooing… there were no fields and no cows when we went to bed. So possibly there was a mart, where farmers bring livestock to sell to other farmers. When I woke again at seven there was no mooing and I had a sinking feeling that the mart was not a mart but instead might be another place where cows go…maybe  an abattoir? I fell back to sleep and next time I woke it was time to get moving to someplace nicer, warmer and less attached to dead animals. I jumped out of bed and then jumped right back in again. It was freezing. Denis had installed an outdoor and indoor thermometer on the van when we came back from Portugal so I was inquisitive enough to hop out again and check if it was really as cold as it felt…

(Nooooooooooo! (File Picture))

I know water freezes at 0ºC so it wasn’t technically freezing… it was 1.5ºC… so very close to freezing! In fact there was ice on the windscreen. Could this place get any worse? I was now suffering from sleep deprivation and hypothermia and I was feeling a little grumpy but the best thing to do was to get out of beg, get on the road and leave so I grabbed the de-icer thingy and opened the van door. Well… if you ever though it was impossible to change a grumpy mood into an excited mood in less time than it takes to say WOW, then I am here to tell you it is possible.

(Looking up through the cloud at the town with the pretty name)

As I exited the van I happened to look up. At a cloud. Nothing exciting about a cloud, you’d think… but on the other side of this cloud was the town with the pretty name.

(Our overnight parking is somewhere under that cloud)

All is forgiven, Mairead.