A VW Golf diesel was the rental car of choice for this leg. My understanding was, there would be a number of narrow country laneways on the route I had chosen, and so a smaller car would be more comfortable when attempting to pass oncoming vehicles.
The surprise was, how many farmers used these lanes and roads with their (often very large) tractors. Facing one of those, many times, required reversing to pull over enough to let the larger vehicle past.
The other stark reality was, chosing smaller roads to enjoy scenery, often meant roads bordered by either a stone wall or significant hedge, right up to the roads edge. There really isn’t a lot of room at times, so add winding roads, blind corners and crests; and you want to be concentrating.
Many of these roads showed an 80 kph speed limit; and I would consider that ambitious, if not dangerous.
I had used Google Maps to determine routes, stops and driving times. Then converted that into My Places on my Tomtom GPS. The TomTom roughly confirmed a similar expectation for travel time to destinations. So when I quite often was only driving 50-60 in an 80 zone; oddly, Google and Tomtom seem to realise that the 80 speed limit was impossible. At the consistently slower speed, I still arrived on time, or ahead of expected time according to the Tomtom.
For the most part, I did not want to drive more than 3 to 4 hours on any day, allowing plenty of time to stop and enjoy the sites enroute; and/or to just pull over any number of times when a vista beckoned, or something unplanned presented itself.
For me, the drive itself is often the appeal. Hopefully beautiful scenery, while enjoying my favourite music. It’s never 100% stunning of course, but hopefully short passages connected unique landscapes. Hence not trying to do too much each day, or be too concerned by the clock. If the planning was considered, no need to stress on the day.
So while there was quite a variety of landscapes, and a few real highlights; the single generalisation of driving in Ireland is; Rocks. Green fields, strewn with large & small rocks. You would have to think the farmers have a difficult time with crops, perhaps a reason for so many sheep, grazing amongst the grass between rocks.
In the course of the drive, there was certainly some things I could have taken longer to enjoy; and others that were less than expectation. I found the 12 days sufficient in general for the points of interest I came to see.
I welcome questions and your experiences.
WILT – What I am listening to ?
Don’t try to read too much into these WILT’s, it’s often just that earworm from my music library