Saturday 04 June 2011
Lough Ramor -> Lough Arrow
In the morning, there were slightly fewer midges but the air was still heavy with them. The wind had picked up a bit and the sky was cloudy but it wasn’t raining, yet. We decided to make a break for it whilst the weather was still reasonable, so broke camp and headed off for our second lake-side destination at Lough Arrow. We weren’t originally going to Lough Arrow, but we couldn’t get a reservation where we wanted and the other site which was recommended did not get ANY good reviews, so we were lucky the Lough Arrow people were going to squeeze us in on their busiest weekend of the year. On the way we passed more silage cutting and tractors on the roads. The small laneways were barely big enough for one vehicle in any direction, so to have Vinny and tractors crossing was scary (especially as Vinny is left-hand drive). The area in County Cavan and County Leitrim could be called the lakes district because of all the water, but whatever its called it made for some spectacular scenery en-route.
We stopped in the largest town in the area, Carrick on Shannon to top up on supplies and grab a bite to eat at the pub. As we walked out of the shopping centre with our hands full of bags, of course, it started raining. We went into one pub on the riverbank to grab a bite to eat. The pub was brilliantly located, with a massive beer garden overlooking the river as well as upstairs and downstairs areas to keep every cosy in the winter, but, they didn’t serve food! We crossed over the river into the “main” part of town and joined the queue for the ATM. We found another “nice” pub, nice in the regard they served food and had a great pub-grub lunch. We spent the time observing some of the subtle differences between pubs at home and here. Here, pubs still serve honest pub-grub. Here, bring your kids. Here, guys will sit on stools at the bar and quietly chat and drink moderately. Here, hand driers in the bathrooms can remove paint from a Boeing 747 (they all seem to be made by Dyson!) Here, dogs are allowed inside and are offered water bowls. Anyway replete and content, we picked up Vinnie and headed off for the drive through the lake district. Luckily, as we pulled into the drive at the campsite at Lough Arrow the rain stopped and wind dropped (briefly). We were supposed to be getting an un-powered site on the fringe of the park, but a resident caravan owner wasn’t going to make it this weekend so we could snuggle Vinny up to his van and use his power supply ourselves. The sun was still out, so we pulled out the camp chairs and had a chat with our neighbour for a while; I later had a snooze whilst Tracy continued reading through her travelling library. Later we went for a walk beside the lake, following some directions a park visitor had given us. We didn’t walk that far but far enough, and made plans to go further the next day.
At the furtherest point on our walk there was the pad of a house under construction. The pad was huge and the house will eventually have 360 views over two different lakes, so maybe the economic times are not tough for everyone here? Although it should be noted that it looked like the site had almost been abandoned and nothing had happened for some time. We went back to the park for dinner and a drink or two, then an early-ish night.