Dundrum is not humdrum
I have been having issues with blogging and do not possess enough geek skills to dig myself out of what has seemed like an intractable mess since arriving in Dublin a week ago. But I will find a way, and rather than write an entire entry only to see it disappear into the ether (noooooooo) I will start small and see if I can edit as I go along.
Here goes!
Part II:
This will be a bit higgledy piggedly (like the streets of every town here) so bear with me until I can import the posts I've saved so far. I'll just take up where we are today and keep going...
We arrived in Dundrum after a bit of a white knuckle day. Arlene volunteered to drive (bless her!) during the planning phase of the trip but once we had made our way by train and taxi to the small town of Portadown in the heart of the Northern Ireland countryside, she started to have second thoughts.
"It's a stick shift!" she mouthed to me after the manager of the car hire place showed her how to work the car. Driving on the left side of the road is hard enough without having to deal with shifting, and I had reserved an automatic, so we endured a lot of eye-rolling by the manager but he went off to locate another car.
Then we were off.
Kind of like the first time you took the wheel in your father's station wagon, and I was the lead-footed passenger trying hard to be helpful "Look left!" without cringing every time Arlene skimmed the hedges on my side of the car.
To be fair, it is a real brain teaser to be driving on the other side of vehicle and keeping as close to the middle white line as possible while trying to wrap your head around the fact that cars are coming at you from the right, rather than the other side. Sort of like trying to write with your left hand. I could tell when a truck or bus was coming because the car would drift slightly toward the hedges that line the road (no shoulders), or worse, a stone wall. I found myself leaning toward her as if I could influence anything, and sometimes I had to force my eyes away to keep my sanity.
We had a GPS so as navigator my job was to let her know when we were coming up to a turn, or a roundabout. Fortunately the roundabouts in the country are wee ones and not like the heavily travelled 5 exit kind you find in the city. After a bit things began to normalize.\
Then we hit a pothole. Actually a series of small ones in a row.
Both of us yelped at the same time but it was over so fast and we were still moving forward that we just kept going, grumbling about potholes in roads so narrow there would be no way to avoid them.
It wasn't until we stopped for gas about 10 minutes later that we realized our front tire was completely flat. The gas station lady in the tiny hamlet wasn't really helpful but someone in line offered to bring her son around to change the tire and when he did we realized the car only had a temporary spare so we were sent off to the nearest garage for a fix. The tire, it turned out, was split at the rim so after some negotiation, the mechanic convinced the car hire place that we couldn't have possibly done it without a weakness in the tire wall so they paid for a replacement.
Then the GPS stopped working.
Driving in tiny country roads that bend and weave and have unmarked sign posts is neigh on impossible without help but we were close enough to our destination that a few hand gestures from the mechanic and we were on our way.
Dundrum. A tiny stretch of houses and shops along a tidal bay, a blue stretch of the Irish Sea beyond. We spent the rest of the afternoon combing the wet sand for shells, and photographing the landscape, hiking up a steep hill to the remains of Dundrum Castle.
There was a card for us in the room from our host at the nearby seaside estate. "Welcome to Ireland", it read. "Please do give us a call."
Tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Here goes!
Part II:
This will be a bit higgledy piggedly (like the streets of every town here) so bear with me until I can import the posts I've saved so far. I'll just take up where we are today and keep going...
We arrived in Dundrum after a bit of a white knuckle day. Arlene volunteered to drive (bless her!) during the planning phase of the trip but once we had made our way by train and taxi to the small town of Portadown in the heart of the Northern Ireland countryside, she started to have second thoughts.
"It's a stick shift!" she mouthed to me after the manager of the car hire place showed her how to work the car. Driving on the left side of the road is hard enough without having to deal with shifting, and I had reserved an automatic, so we endured a lot of eye-rolling by the manager but he went off to locate another car.
Then we were off.
Kind of like the first time you took the wheel in your father's station wagon, and I was the lead-footed passenger trying hard to be helpful "Look left!" without cringing every time Arlene skimmed the hedges on my side of the car.
To be fair, it is a real brain teaser to be driving on the other side of vehicle and keeping as close to the middle white line as possible while trying to wrap your head around the fact that cars are coming at you from the right, rather than the other side. Sort of like trying to write with your left hand. I could tell when a truck or bus was coming because the car would drift slightly toward the hedges that line the road (no shoulders), or worse, a stone wall. I found myself leaning toward her as if I could influence anything, and sometimes I had to force my eyes away to keep my sanity.
We had a GPS so as navigator my job was to let her know when we were coming up to a turn, or a roundabout. Fortunately the roundabouts in the country are wee ones and not like the heavily travelled 5 exit kind you find in the city. After a bit things began to normalize.\
Then we hit a pothole. Actually a series of small ones in a row.
Both of us yelped at the same time but it was over so fast and we were still moving forward that we just kept going, grumbling about potholes in roads so narrow there would be no way to avoid them.
It wasn't until we stopped for gas about 10 minutes later that we realized our front tire was completely flat. The gas station lady in the tiny hamlet wasn't really helpful but someone in line offered to bring her son around to change the tire and when he did we realized the car only had a temporary spare so we were sent off to the nearest garage for a fix. The tire, it turned out, was split at the rim so after some negotiation, the mechanic convinced the car hire place that we couldn't have possibly done it without a weakness in the tire wall so they paid for a replacement.
Then the GPS stopped working.
Driving in tiny country roads that bend and weave and have unmarked sign posts is neigh on impossible without help but we were close enough to our destination that a few hand gestures from the mechanic and we were on our way.
Dundrum. A tiny stretch of houses and shops along a tidal bay, a blue stretch of the Irish Sea beyond. We spent the rest of the afternoon combing the wet sand for shells, and photographing the landscape, hiking up a steep hill to the remains of Dundrum Castle.
There was a card for us in the room from our host at the nearby seaside estate. "Welcome to Ireland", it read. "Please do give us a call."
Tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
posted by vallie at 12:22 PM
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