Tuesday July 22, 2014

An early start and a great ride.  We wanted to stop in Avoca, which is where they filmed Ballykissangel, a BBC TV program that we enjoyed watching and actually bought the DVD series.

Fitzgerald’s the pub is still there but looking very tired. I guess there aren’t as many tourists visiting the area now as the TV series has been off the air for about 10 years.

The area around Avoca was primarily copper mining, we saw an old tower and chimney.

After Avoca we cycled on towards Wexford.

The Garmin and Google gave us one distance to Wexford, the road signs gave us another – the road signs gave us 10 extra kilometres.  After lunch the road signs, garmin and google maps all matched!  Very strange.

The route today was undulating, which means to this cyclist that there wasn’t any major hills, I only once needed to go into the granny gears and the rest of the time mid-range up and down.  A good ride.

A road cyclist passed us, and for some unknown reason only known to Ralf he decided to take off and chase the poor guy down.  It was a slight up hill, Ralf gave him a 15 metre head start and before the top of the hill he was on his wheel and then waited for me to catch up.  I caught up with him and as I passed Ralf he said “easy peasy!!”  He had the biggest grin on his face.

There wasn’t much to see today, although we did see a lovely thatched cottage and an old mill.

We arrived in Wexford at 3:15 pm, I was tired and wanted to stop.  Ralf wanted to carry on to Rosslare where the harbor is, but the campsite was another 12 kms past Rosslare.  Either way we would have to cycle tomorrow to the ferry terminal.  The ladies at the Information Centre were really nice and helpful.  They called the campsite to see if there were vacancies, and also called the ferry terminal to check we can get on tomorrow, we can.  The ferry leaves at 9:00 we need to be at the terminal for 8:00 which means leaving the campsite at 6:15.  A really early start for us.

The campsite is very nice and well equipped.  We do have to pay extra for showers, although the warden said we could go to the Community swimming pool (on-site) and shower for free.  When we got there the young girl on reception said we had to pay, Ralf explained what the campsite warden had told us we were allowed in for free – we got free showers.  The camp site is clean and well equipped, it actually has a campers kitchen with a stove, fridge and freezer and kettles, a place to eat indoors, free wi-fi this is the first time that a campsite has all these facilities in the UK and Ireland. For 16 EUs it is well worth staying here.  We are pitched near the shoreline, it is very peaceful.  At 9:30 we heard the evening ferry leaving for Wales – a lonely ship’s horn sounding over the bay.