Monday 06 June 2011
Lough Arrow -> Strandhill
When we awoke, the first thing we noticed was that it had finally stopped raining! We were leaving Lough Arrow today, so did our usual pre-departure chores, paid our monies to the park proprieters and headed off. We were expecting a lot of end-of-the-bank-holiday traffic but were pleasantly surprised to find many of the roads almost devoid of traffic. First up was a trip to Carrowkeel Passage Tomb Cemetery which was a short walk (1km) from the car park. However, this turned into bit of a furfy with a 5 km trek to what appeared to be a knocked down old shed. Not exactly the eerie and uplifting experience we had anticipated. So off we headed. The country roads were only a short part of the journey today, we spent the best part of the (short) drive on the N4 heading towards Sligo. Of course, when we did get to Sligo, because of the bank holiday everything was shut! The shops were shut, the pubs were shut. There were a few people driving around the city, so we assumed, like us they were travellers looking for a bite to eat and to do a spot of shopping. As there wasn’t anything else to do here, we headed just out of town on the airport road to Strandhill where we would be staying for the night. Strandhill is the local surfing spot, so it felt a little like old Dunsborough or old Yallingup. From what we saw the surf was not that good and the water was very cold (toe tested). The Gulf Stream is supposed to arrive here and keep the water temperatures “moderate” so we are now starting to get worried about diving in Ireland if they think ‘that’ water is moderate. We watched a couple of groups attend their surf school lessons on the beach before heading out into the shallow chop for their first attempts to surf. Each student is dressed head to toe in thick wetsuits, booties, gloves and hoods. When they emerge from the water they looked excited enough to have tried surfing, but we surmised some of the smiles must have contained some element of grimace from the cold.
We went for a short walk into the town (the campsite is literally at the back of the buildings on the “main” street) to count at least four surf schools, along with the surfing town favourites; bakery, three pubs, seaweed massage and spa centre, ice-cream parlour and a couple of restaurants. we decided to head to one of the pubs and had a great lunch washed down with some drinks.
Afterwards, we went for a longer walk along the beach. The top of the beach was made up of large rocks, washed smooth by eons of tumbling in the surf, but there was sand and bedrock which, as the tide was out, left rockpools near the waterline. There were a few people out walking dogs or otherwise meandering along the beach as we were doing. Surprisingly, there was not a lot of life in the rock pools except some seagrasses and kelps, when we expected to see at least one crab or a small fish or something, but nothing. Undoubtedly due to the fact it was freezing.
We walked back to Vinny and made dinner, but then decided we should see if the nightlife of Strandhill matched Dunsborough or Yallingup, so went back to the pub where we had eaten lunch. There were still people at the bar, some of them may have even been there when we were there earlier in the day, but it was quieter now, so we laid out our maps and planned the next days drive over a couple of drinks. There were a couple of guys with long lengths of PVC piping laid out on the floor of the pub as rails, using a platform with some skateboard tracks as some sort of carriage. We watched with bemusement as they used hacksaws and fiddled with their system, right there in the pub. We couldn’t figure out if they were making some system to move equipment, or whether they were prototyping some adventure ride! We didn’t bother to ask, thinking it more fun to leave things to our imaginations than let the truth intervene. So with not much else happening at the pub, we headed back to the park.