Until "Oh no! Mum and Dad are going to kill me!". At 8:00am we woke to hear Tomas repeating this in between sobs. I can tell you that this is not a relaxing way to way up despite the waves.
"What's happened?" I asked, still half asleep.
"I broke my window," Tomas said.
"Well don't touch it anymore and I'll look at it in a few minutes when I get up."
"I can't stop touching it or it will fall and break more."
That was enough to get me quickly pulling on some jeans and sliding down the ladder. At the back of the van, Tomas was sitting on his bed with his arm through the hole that had once been the back window, holding onto the window by the latch as it hovered about a meter above the concrete hard-pad. The window was made of perspex so there wasn't a huge chance of extra shattering but it wasn't a good sight. We finally found that Tom had tried to open his window and had problems closing it when he realised it was -1 degree outside. The windows opened by unlatching and lifting them, they then locked themselves into a semi-open position. To close them you needed to open them further and then they would fall back closed. He'd instead moved it to the locked open position and tried to pull it closed and Crack! the top of the perspex had cracked.
We were able to put the window back in place and lock it in with the latches, but there was no way that it would hold up to driving. It did still look closed so at least we probably would be secure. The fact the caravan park was locked up meant that we were secure for now. So we had a broken key and hence no way to empty the waste water, toilet or to fill up with fresh water, nor could we access the power input without reaching up through a small hole under the van to pull out the cable and blindly plug it in. Now we also had a missing window on a wet and foggy day.
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| Surveying the damage |
There wasn't much we could do at 8:30am, so we decided to secure the van and go for a walk through Doolin.
The small town was mostly closed for off-season (it mostly made a living with the tourists visiting the Aran Islands in summer) and there was no locksmith or shop that could sell us some gaffer tape.
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| Nagels Doolin Camping |
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| Inisheer, the closest of the Aran islands |
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| I believe this is the ruin of O'Brien's Castle on the Inisheer Island |
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| One of the roads into Doolin |
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| The cows were completely unimpressed by the waves |
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| Coastline at Doolin |
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| Fortunately we missed the ceremonial clubbing of the giant rabbit at Doolin Golf Club |
We then returned to the van and decided that we wouldn't waste the day searching for a fix to our problems like we had done the day before, so we headed up to the Cliffs of Moher.
On the drive we passed the ruins of Doonagore Castle, a 16th century round tower built from the local sandstone:
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| Doonagore Castle |
When we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher we locked the window back in place and headed into the tourist centre.
The Cliffs of Moher are sea cliffs that front onto the Atlantic Ocean. They stretch for 14km along the shoreline of southwestern Ireland and rise up to 214m high. It is possible to see the Aran islands from the Cliffs but, as always, we were defeated by the fog. The cliffs also house O'Brien's Tower, a tower built in 1835 to mark the highest point of the cliffs. It is believed to have originally served as a teahouse.
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| Entry to the Cliffs |
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| In order to reduce the environmental impact the shops (all closed for off-season) and set back into the hill |
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| The Cliffs of Moher (looking south) |
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| View south |
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| Us with a view over the southern cliffs |
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| O'Brien's Tower at the top of the highest point of the cliffs |
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| O'Brien's Tower |
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| Looking south from the base of O'Brien's Tower |
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| Us in front of O'Brien's Tower |
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| View south from the base of O'Brien's Tower |
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| View north from the base of O'Brien's Tower - That's probably the Aran islands in the distance, buried in fog |
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| Base of the cliffs, just around the corner from Doolin |
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| Base of the cliffs |
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| Our only real view of the Aran Islands - that's Inis Oirr (Inisheer) Lighthouse on Inisheer |
We then made it into Galway. This was the site of our next disaster. While following the GPS and looking for a place to park an enormous (6.5m long, 2.3m wide, 3.15m tall) motorhome we came to a left and right junction and the GPS directed us left, onto a narrow road with cars lined on both sides. Kris managed to skillfully maneuver through them until, clunk. The sides of the motorhome flared out just behind the door and the tiniest bit of the plastic edging had snagged on the rear bumper of a car to our left. There was no way to go forward, so Kris had to back up. We were too close to the cars on either side to be able to open the doors and get out so we had no choice but to reverse. Meanwhile a helpful taxi had pulled in behind us and was beeping and yelling at us to move. Kris managed to back down the road a little but unfortunately this pulled at the bumper of the car and popped the bumper clips off - leaving the bumper hanging loose. She managed to reverse down the road and park, while I found the owner of the car. There was absolutely no damage to the van, as it had just been a piece of the plastic that had snagged the bumper.
The owner of the car was a young guy, probably a student and he looked pretty stressed about it, and rightfully so. Pictures of thousands of dollars worth of insurance bills swam through my mind as I apologized multiple times.
"So, how do you want to do this?" I asked, "We have an incident form and we can give you our insurance details etc."
He looked over the damage and said "There's a garage on the corner, how about we take it up there and see what it costs to fix it up."
I told him I needed to dash back and let Kris know and he said he would head to the garage and meet me there. "No worries, I trust you" he said.
When we got to the garage I was still panicking at the potential cost. The mechanic came over - "Ah, you've just popped a few clips here. I can fix that up for about €100 (AUD$156)." The owner agreed and was amazingly good about it. I had to pay cash, so he took the things from his car back to his place, while I went to look for an ATM. All this time the owner was really friendly and trusting too, so when I came back I paid the garage owner €100 and gave the owner an additional €50 ($80) as way of apologizing for ruining his morning. He initially refused but I insisted and told him to get a beer with his friends and laugh about stupid Aussies who can't navigate Irish roads. So in the end we got it all fixed up for him without any hassles and he ended up happy. It was a huge relief that he was so understanding and friendly about it all, as at this point we still had the window and broken key hanging over our heads.
I found Kris and gave her the good news that it was fixed and we wouldn't need to sell one of the children, and we turned right this time instead of left. In about a minute of driving on the nice, wide road, we came to a huge shopping complex with a massive, almost empty carpark. Our first point of call was a locksmith in the shop to get a new key cut. With that done, we grabbed some lunch and supplies for our journey.
As much as we had wanted to explore Galway, the incident on the narrow had pretty much ruined our appetite for adventure and eaten up most of the day. Instead we decided to head to our next campsite, which we knew was a long way away in Northern Ireland.
What a day....
Our stop for the night was the Riverside Farm, Marina and Caravan Park. It cost us £15 to stay the night with electricity (Northern Ireland is part of England and hence uses the pound instead of the Euro - £1 = €1.13 = AUD$1.78) There were also showers that cost us £1 per four minutes, but oh my god! They were luxurious! They were hot and plenty of water, we ended up getting everyone through showers at night and Kris and I had an extra one in the morning. It cost us £7 ($12.50) in shower fees but it was worth it. With the key repaired, the waste water drained, clean water taken on, toilet emptied and the window securely taped on, and freshly showered, we were ready to continue with our trip.
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| Day 4 |
Distance driven - Day 4: 295km
Total Distance: 1165km
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