Another one of those goat things

Things went pretty well on our trip to Ireland until our arrival in Dublin from Vienna – then they went a bit pear-shaped.

You will note that I have not blogged – but that is a story for another blog.

Liz and Darryl had hired the car and acquired a new Tom Tom so we were well equipped with navigation tools. Now all car navigation systems have their little quirks and this one – as we discovered – was no exception.

Our destination was so obscure as to not even register so we input the closest town we could find. As soon as we did so it flipped to the main street – we thought of that town – so we said OK and off we went.

Four hours later we arrived at a place called Castletownbere which – we discovered upon inquiry at the nearest Pub– was on the Ring of Beara. The place we were looking for was on the Ring of Kerry.

We had no maps other than those in our guide books and discovered that we were in fact in the wrong part of Ireland – but not by all that much – we had missed it only by about 80 kilometres.

A couple of hours earlier I had started looking at the many pages of instructions I had for getting to the house only to discover that they were not in fact instructions for getting to the house but were mainly the terms and conditions for renting the house.

There were almost no details about how to get to the house or how to get in once there. There were however two telephone numbers for the owners – Maeve and Brian.

There was no answer from either of these. Uh Oh!

So we got to Rossmore Island at about 10:00 PM which was not the tiny island we thought it was – with only one road as shown on Google maps. There was indeed a big long road with quite a few options so we ploughed along through gates that opened as we approached them – and eventually – out of desperation into someone’s front yard.

This kind man did not know Brian and Maeve but he made a phone call and sent us way back out again – turn right at the cattle crush – down the long road and it is the last house on the peninsula.

It is indeed the last house – we recognise it from its photos - it is in pitch blackness – the wind is howling off the Atlantic ocean – it is freezing – there is no way in – the phone numbers are still not answering. We are fecked.

It is 10:45 and we are running out of time before we have to sleep in the car. It is 20 kilometres back to the nearest town – Kenmare – and we stop at the first hotel. It is in darkness but a man appears and says he is full but he makes a telephone call and give us the name of a B and B.

Five minutes later we pull up at Leebrook House and Betty is waiting for us. She shows us to our rooms and lets us use her kitchen to make sandwiches and pots of tea for our supper. We sit there until 2:00 drinking wine and Jamesons – contemplating the way forward.

We know that Brian and Maeve go away for weeks at a time.

Are we temporarily fecked or completely fecked?