demm42 - County Clare (Ireland) #1/6

Introduction

2005 was different. While every year for the previous 8 years the demm42 clan has holidayed in Scotland, Ireland was our destination in this year. Why? Have we gone off Scotland? Of course not. Its just that we now consider Scotland to be our home. Granted were away from it for 51 weeks of the year, but I personally do not like leaving the life I want in for myself and my family in Scotland for the rest of the year.

Anyway Ireland, or in fact County Clare (with day trips into County Kerry and County Galway) was our destination in 2005. Would it live up to our holidays in Scotland? Or have we now been spoilt? Read on to find out.

One thing I'd better just say about this tour before I start. As well as mentioning the places we visited, I will also be making observations about Irish culture and how they differ from the UK or what we were expecting. This includes religion, driving, the costs of things amongst other noticeable differences. Anyway, lets get started.

We flew Ryanair from Liverpool to Shannon for a very reasonable £80 return for the 3 of us. While the Ryanair seat allocation procedure is a bit chaotic, the flights were more or less on time (15 minutes late coming back) and we experienced no general problems.

On arrival, we collected our hire car (we chose Avis who were very good with the exception of one person who was a bit brash with us. More details on Page 6 in the driving in Ireland section) without a hitch.

Now the only problem with the flight from Liverpool is the fact its an early evening flight. This meant that when we arrived we were travelling to our self catering cottage mostly in the dark. So as you can imagine when we arrived at the cottage I wasnt very relaxed after driving on roads I dont know in a country I dont know in rain that made the journey hazardous (in fact I was a nervous wreck). This was also the first time Id ever driven abroad.

We chose to stay self-catering and booked it through goireland.com which seemed to have a good selection of accommodation to choose from. (One word of warning: Check the details over the phone with goireland.com before booking over the web).

The Old Farmhouse near Kilfenora (about an hour from Shannon Airport) is a beautiful 4-bedroom cottage located on a working farm. The cottage more than relaxed us on the first night after our nerve wrecking journey from the airport. In fact this was the largest cottage weve ever stayed in with plenty of rooms for the extended family as well (if you want to bring the in-laws or the out-laws!!!).

Our daughter became very attached to our hosts Marian and Martin, the farm dogs (Buddy and Ruby) and the horse (Bruno). In fact she was in tears when we left the following week.

During the week she watched the cows being milked and helped collect the eggs.

And as for the home made scones cooked by Marian. They have to be tasted to be believed.

We were in no doubt we couldnt have picked a better place to stay for the week and knew whatever happened we'd becoming back to the perfect place to relax in the evening.

That conclude page 1 of the introduction to the tour. Take a look at Page 2 for information on the cost of things in Ireland, along with details of Kilfenora, Ennistymon and the Burren Perfumery.