20 Jun 1985, Posted by Scott An Chora in Travelogue, No Comments.

06/20 Western Ireland

She had circled a small hostel up along the west cost of Northern Ireland in the little travel guide she carried.  It was a gorgeous drive and well worth going out of our way.  I’ll never forget the look on her face when she first saw her hostel.  It was in the middle of nowhere and when the young men came out of the house to greet her, all the sheep ran for the hills.  She had the look of a newborn, clinging to our car as if it was her mother.  “No way am I staying here” she whispered, hoping no one else heard her in case we abandoned her here.  So we turned the car around and headed back toward the next major city.  After dropping her off at another hotel, we again headed into the countryside looking for a small picturesque campground adjacent to a small lake that Jim had penciled on our map.  We couldn’t understand why we were the only visitors taking advantage of this gorgeous location.  We popped open a couple of beers and setup our tent for the night.  It was just about dawn when we were finally hit with the reason.  It took me a good fifteen minutes to kill every bug inside the tent so I could sleep without this additional company.  In the morning it was even worse.  First, the moisture claimed all of our gear and second, the bugs were now traveling in clouds, literally clouds. You’d think the lake was lined with campfires.

We ended up wasting a day in a local Laundromat.  I was standing in my bathing suit, watching my clothes spin.  The locals were quite friendly.  Once they discovered that my relatives were originally from Ireland, they actually opened up the local phone book and tried to persuade me to solicit free boarding for the night.  “I’m sure this is a cousin” We packed up all our clean clothes and headed east towards a shower.  We understood there was a hostel about fifty miles or so down the road.