Ireland - the rumblings
Well here we are again, after a dirth of entries it is up to me to blame technology's indifference towards me.
I pciked, that's right, pciked up a digital camera on Ebay (to replace my broken screened one, it came off second best to the harsh Estonian conditions of being dropped on the floor remember?) but naturally it arrived after I decided to take a trip to the Emerald Isle. My sister was kind enough to send me a digital camera, but I guess I was a little over-protective of the 27 exposures I was given and in the end only took about 6. So that will be a little gem, an emerald, if you will - there is a bit of 'craic' there, more on that later - to crack out in a few weeks or months when I get round to using the rest of the film.
So anyway, Lex (from Canberra fame) rings me up saying he is passing through England on his way home and has a week to kill. After saying that we should cherish and not kill time, he arrives over here in Oxford town. One day was plenty really - being the term break there are not many activities going on. Sightseeing and pub quizzes were fine for a period (there were no Ted Danson or West Australia moments, but I can remember cursing the machine as being a filthy lier a couple of times) but in the end it was decided that we should move on. I did manage to take him to the Oxford Story, my fourth time, and highly reccommendable and Ross, Richo, Prue and now Lex can testify - it is the ultimate Oxford themepark experience.
In the bar one night we asked a few of the seasoned travellers where a couple of likely lads could traipse around for a week or so, and Ireland was high on people's lists (as was a place called the LAKE DISTRICT, which insofar as I can tell is in the middle of nowhere, very cold but has a redeeming feature, there are lakes. I was nearly blown away by this revelation (hopefully in the same fashion as Bruce Willis will blow away nefarious types in Live Free or Die Hard) but decided that perhaps it could wait a decade or so.
Thence to the internet, that world wide informative combine harvester which sowed the seeds of our travel in the soil of.... life... for the farmer of... enjoym....
Right so we went on the net.
And found two £9 tickets for a bus/ferry journey from London to Cork (in the south-east of Ireland). It was a 15 hour (Fred the) demon (Spofforth) of a journey but well worth the price. The catch was that it left that evening from London, so a bus ticket from Oxford to London was it order - meaning we needed to leave in about 15 minutes. A quick look on the hostel websites was all we needed, to book at least one night and 'figure the rest out as we went along' - a mantra which soon became a ... mantra.
As he was fully briefed of the Amsterdam Experience, both via this device and a few imbibed pints, Lex was making sure that I wouldn't leave my passport behind to arrange my sock drawer a second time. So with a bag stuffed hastily with clothes, a passport, some tallnecked German beer, a disposable camera, my bottle of 80% Estonian Turpentine and a pocket full of miracles the journey began. In true Dan Brown style I will end with: little did we know that we would get more out of London than we bargained for.
I pciked, that's right, pciked up a digital camera on Ebay (to replace my broken screened one, it came off second best to the harsh Estonian conditions of being dropped on the floor remember?) but naturally it arrived after I decided to take a trip to the Emerald Isle. My sister was kind enough to send me a digital camera, but I guess I was a little over-protective of the 27 exposures I was given and in the end only took about 6. So that will be a little gem, an emerald, if you will - there is a bit of 'craic' there, more on that later - to crack out in a few weeks or months when I get round to using the rest of the film.
So anyway, Lex (from Canberra fame) rings me up saying he is passing through England on his way home and has a week to kill. After saying that we should cherish and not kill time, he arrives over here in Oxford town. One day was plenty really - being the term break there are not many activities going on. Sightseeing and pub quizzes were fine for a period (there were no Ted Danson or West Australia moments, but I can remember cursing the machine as being a filthy lier a couple of times) but in the end it was decided that we should move on. I did manage to take him to the Oxford Story, my fourth time, and highly reccommendable and Ross, Richo, Prue and now Lex can testify - it is the ultimate Oxford themepark experience.
In the bar one night we asked a few of the seasoned travellers where a couple of likely lads could traipse around for a week or so, and Ireland was high on people's lists (as was a place called the LAKE DISTRICT, which insofar as I can tell is in the middle of nowhere, very cold but has a redeeming feature, there are lakes. I was nearly blown away by this revelation (hopefully in the same fashion as Bruce Willis will blow away nefarious types in Live Free or Die Hard) but decided that perhaps it could wait a decade or so.
Thence to the internet, that world wide informative combine harvester which sowed the seeds of our travel in the soil of.... life... for the farmer of... enjoym....
Right so we went on the net.
And found two £9 tickets for a bus/ferry journey from London to Cork (in the south-east of Ireland). It was a 15 hour (Fred the) demon (Spofforth) of a journey but well worth the price. The catch was that it left that evening from London, so a bus ticket from Oxford to London was it order - meaning we needed to leave in about 15 minutes. A quick look on the hostel websites was all we needed, to book at least one night and 'figure the rest out as we went along' - a mantra which soon became a ... mantra.
As he was fully briefed of the Amsterdam Experience, both via this device and a few imbibed pints, Lex was making sure that I wouldn't leave my passport behind to arrange my sock drawer a second time. So with a bag stuffed hastily with clothes, a passport, some tallnecked German beer, a disposable camera, my bottle of 80% Estonian Turpentine and a pocket full of miracles the journey began. In true Dan Brown style I will end with: little did we know that we would get more out of London than we bargained for.
posted by Tim Trudgian | 8:19 pm
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