First real day exploring Ireland today. We both slept better than the night before, and no early-morning calls to stop the awning from taking off.
And we did also christen the loo!
The Bannow Farm site still hadn’t installed any more loos overnight, so the two loos, lack of a shower and teenagers brushing their teeth at the sink outside the loos still didn’t do the site any favours.
But off to Hook Lighthouse for the first stop.
Ferry
But first we had to get there… and the lighthouse was on the other side of the estuary.
And that meant we could have a go at a ferry crossing in Ollie.
It was a breeze. There were a couple of other campervans also doing the crossing, and luckily the ferry had just pulled into the east side of the river as we arrived.
There were probably a dozen or so cars and three campervans on the 10-minute crossing and the ferry crew were friendly and not at all worried about campervans using their vessle.
Hook Lighthouse
Hook Lighthouse was built over 800 years ago. Of course if was lit with a fire then, not a chuffing great big bulb, but still the same concept. Amazing really!
They do tours, but we didn’t.
We were happy to have a coffee and a full-not-English-breakfast for J. Nice breakfast and a view out of the cafe to the sea.
We then braved the walk around the lighthouse to get to the coastal path and a better view. A friendly lighthouse worker saw out confusion about how to get onto the coastal path and told us we had to go all the way around the lighthouse walls, and across the rocks, to get there. The lighthouse doesn’t officially tell you to do that, ‘cos that would be a elf-safe-tea risk, but he way happy to tell us anyway.
Copper Coast
Sort of.
Well, we missed a lot of it to be honest. We thought we were doing it, but in the end we dropped onto the route at the end. Hey ho! We’ll hopefully have lots of opportunities for coastal views so we decided not to retrace the coast path back the way we came, and to push on.
Stradbally Cove
This is a fantastic little cove with a massive beach… at least when we were there around low tide. It must really rush in when the tide decides to do its thing.
The car park wasn’t much more than dry beach, and we couldn’t park with a view… so we just wandered over the beach for a mosey.
After that, it was a quick jaunt around the Waterford ring road before we headed off to our overnight stop in Dungarvan.
Dungarvan
Well, this was a bit of a punt. And it turned out OK in the end.
We were heading for an “aire”-style campervan spot next to the water in Dungarvan. But we thought it would be full and so didn’t dally getting there.
In the end, there were still designated overnight spaces available. We did get one of those spaces, but there were other vans just parked in the regular parking bays, on the streets and in “no overnight camper vans in this car park” car parks.
The designated spots are €10 a night for a maximum of two nights. We’ll do the two nights as we’ve decided to do the Waterford cycle route tomorrow (at least some of it).
So we arrived at the campervan spot at about 3 and then went for a walk into the town.
For your €10 there’s a supply of clean water along with disposal for grey and toilet water too.
First walk into town
Had a coffee.
Chatted with a French guy on a 36-inch unicycle. He’d just done the 40 km Waterford cycle route that we’ll do tomorrow and was into his unicycling in a big way (he knew all about the World Unicross Championships that he was missing by being here).
We then did some shopping at SuperValu (much more high-end than its name might suggest) and had a wander round the castle.
Another walk into Dungarvan Town
We then had some dinner in the van (Sue did some bird spotting on the sea wall) and then went for another wander into town. This time to find a pint and to use the pub’s loos.
The pub was nice and friendly and the loos were clean.
Nice views over the sea from our spot.
By the end of the evening there were about 14 vans parked in the 8 designated spaces! (not counting the ones on the street and in the clearly NOT campervan stops)
Tomorrow is a cycling day…
J
Derelict Church Count
Now at 5
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