It was still raining when we woke up this morning. Not good.
Today, we had a ferry to catch and with Cairnryan just up the road, we had a leisurely breakfast and packed up the van. Armed with our travel documents, we drove the 15 minutes to the Stena Line port as the rain stopped and patches of blue sky appeared. Looks promising. We checked in. The staff at the first booth asked us to pop our bonnet so they could check the engine compartment, while another chap went round with a mirror checking the underside. A little bit unsettling, but we were waved through and felt better when a little Fiesta was given the same treatment too.
We were ushered to Lane 8 and with time to kill, we wandered over to the terminal for a coffee in the little cafe and watched the car park fill up, as well as another big black rain soaked cloud creeping up on us. With time marching on, we headed back to the Van, when a another staff member wanted to check The Pup and her documents and microchip. She wasn’t impressed to have to get out of the Van again, but with everything in order, she settled back on her blanket as we started to board the ship. It seemed every type of vehicle was onboard – motorbikes tethered down, huge articulated lorries, motorhomes, campervans, cars, lorries, trailers of various sizes – all expertly parked and packed in.
Prior to this trip, we had researched about travelling with your dog on Stena Line. On Caledonian McBrayne, the Scottish island hopping service, you can take your dog to the designated pet lounge on a lead and it’s simple. Stena offered three options: 1. travel in the pet lounge, but your pet had to be in a specifically sized pet carrier. The Pup is a Labrador and wouldn’t fit in the largest one that Stena would allow. 2. in kennels somewhere onboard the ship – various forums and comments put us off completely that option and finally 3. Pup to stay in the van for 2.5 hours, but we couldn’t return to the car deck and check on her. After much wringing of hands, we had plumped for the Van option – it was a place that was familiar, safe and comforting to her. Still, we had trepidations as we left her and the van and made our way upstairs to the passenger area. Halfway up, we met a Stena staff member and asked the question – did anyone patrol the car deck during the voyage and check on any pets left in vehicles. Well, to cut a very long story short and before you could say Stena Line, she had us bounding up the stairs behind her as she consulted colleagues about a spare pet carrier (she even shuddered at the thought of her own company’s onboard kennels – “bloody awful). Soon, hubby was retrieving The Pup from the van, while a staff member erected a metal dog crate and I paid £20 for the privilege, though we were told we wouldn’t be able to do this on the return journey. We sat in the peaceful and private Pet Lounge (you had a door code to get in) with our hound (albeit in a cage – she was not impressed) with free tea and coffee with about 8 other people. Blimey, I would pay for this without a dog. Our brief forays out into the rest of the ship were an assault on the senses. Loads of people milling around, the noise of everyone chattering (a particularly loud Hen Party could be heard even in the Pet Lounge) and just the general chaos of a ship full of excitable passengers. I even managed to skip the huge queues for food – I grabbed a couple of sandwich packets and went to join the back of the queue, when I got called back by staff at the counter who took my money (I also got a cheeky order of dirty chips in) and I was back in the Pet Lounge within minutes. Result. After our lunch, I took The Pup for a walk out on deck – we didn’t linger, very windy and sprayed with sea water – before we were soon approaching Belfast and headed back to the car deck, ready for disembarking.
We were burped out into sunshine as we followed the mass of vehicles piling off the ferry – the satnav took us and most of our fellow travellers through the congested streets of Belfast before connecting us to the motorway in a southerly direction. Our ultimate destination was Kinsale – for the start of the Wild Atlantic Coast – but it was too far down on the southern coast to do in one afternoon. So we had a plan to head about halfway to a place called Mullingar and hoped they had some campsites. We had a pleasant drive along motorways and A roads, through pretty countryside, the Mourne Mountains on our left and other notable hills dotted along our route. We crossed into the Republic of Ireland without noticing until the next road signs were written in Gaelic as well as English and we were suddenly dealing with kilometres rather than miles. Weird. From the UK into Europe without dropping below 70mph.
We went onto smaller country roads, through rolling countryside and broken sunshine. Finally, Mullingar appeared and we drove through its long and interesting High Street – well no, we crawled. There was so much traffic that it was almost at a standstill. We needed a campsite, so on spotting the local Tourist Information office, I hopped out and scuttled back to sort something out while hubby went to park the Van. The young lady was pleasant and helpful, and between us we contacted the Lough Ennell Caravan Park, some 7km down the road and ascertained we could stay the night. A brief visit to the local Aldi for more provisions and some teatowels (I had failed to put the original towels back after washing them -duh) we headed for the site. On the shore of Lough Ennell we were greeted by Eamon and after signing in, we were shown our spot in a little area with four other campers. Perfect.
We settled down for tea and some wine before having a little wander around the site and along the road outside. By the shoreline, there were a heap of paddleboards with fairy lights and the young girls unpacking them, said they were doing a paddleboarding sound bath on the water around 10pm. That sounded interesting. We’ve done sound baths before, but in a village hall – a paddleboard would be a different experience! The Pup wet her feet in the water as we wandered back and made friends with a lovely family from Dublin who had a static caravan on site, who made a big fuss of The Pup and we made a big fuss of their ancient Golden Labrador. We waddled back to the Van and settled in for the night. We’ve slept well even with a immovable 25kg Labrador hogging most of the duvet.
apathtosomewhere 