Every Shade of Green

Day Two

Today is out of the city and heading towards Dingle in the green that is Ireland. It is almost unreal how extraordinarily vibrant the colour is. No wonder it’s referred to as the Emerald Isle. 

Yesterday the weather in Limerick was blue skies, sunny and warm. Today it is overcast.

 AirBnB should think about changing the name to AirB as no host of mine is offering breakfast so that had to be my first port of call. 

Foynes was the first village I got to on the Shannon Estuary and the start of the famous Wild Atlantic Way. It is also famous for being a serious port in spite of its size, more village than town, as it has a deep water harbour so can handle very big ships. 

It’s home to the Flying Boat Museum as in the 1940’s passengers flew from here on a 17 hour flight to America and used water in the estuary as a runway.

 It’s other claim to fame is  for inventing the first version of Irish Coffee to keep said passengers warm!  

(Shame Ryan Air has no sense of tradition to offer the same tipple!) 

Got a a non- Irish coffee at the Flying Museum cafe and continued onwards. Thanks to the EU long straight smooth roads not like our pot holed ones in England and surprisingly very little road kill. Is that because there’s very little traffic or has some enterprising forager already collected it? 

Planned to stop at the next village for proper food but I must have blinked because I was through in a heartbeat. And the next. 

And the next. 

Not a cafe in sight. In most cases not even a shop. Just a pub or three and at least one church.

Then Listowel.

 I just loved this little town.  I spent about four hours there. It was exactly as colourful as I’d imagined a town in Ireland to be.

It had a castle, two churches, a thriving Art Centre, a sports stadium, lots of good quality independent shops, a wonderful writers museum as several famous writers came from Listowel and a stunning, mile long walk along the river Feale. So green again and so many flowers and birdsong.

Then over the hills to Dingle. I drove straight through Tralee as it was a big town with the usual high street chain stores but the road over the hills to Dingle was gorgeous. 

Have you ever been to Cornwall or Totnes? Dingle was a colourful Irish version on the sea. Masses of tourists from America, Italy and England and every other shop was selling arts and craft, designer ice-cream, crystals, candles and the sort of “Traditional” souvenirs you find in tourist towns in Scotland and Wales and in London, probably manufactured in China. 

And it was buzzing. Good food, lots of bars advertising tradition Irish music and it was delightful.