Puffins Galore

Monday 5th & Tuesday 6th August 2013

Ireland Trip - Days 12 & 13

We were up bright and early on Monday, excited about our boat trip. When we arrived at the harbour at Portmagee, there were about 6 quite small fishing boats all tied together, ready to take tourists over the the Skellig Islands. We checked in with a chubby Irishman who seemed to be organising the passengers. I didn’t understand a word he said, but Claire told me we had to get on the second boat in line. This involved climbing down the side of the harbour on an iron ladder, into the first boat, and across to the second. We managed fine, but there were quite a lot of other people who were on the verge of falling in or having panic attacks.

The weather seemed perfect - blue skies and sunshine, and not much wind. The crossing to the islands took about an hour, as they are quite far out. I spent most of that hour terrified the boat was going to capsize, or that the woman next to me was going to be sick on me. Despite the good weather, the sea seemed quite rough to me, but it might have just been that we were on a small boat. The boat was full, but there were only 14 of us, plus the captain, who spent most of the crossing reading the paper. Despite Claire’s seasickness on the ferry, she seemed to love every minute on the small boat. I was glad to get off.

We saw a few seabirds flying around during the crossing, but the gannet colony on Little Skellig was our first glimpse of the birds close up. Apparently, the rock hosts the worlds second largest gannet colony, with around 60,000 birds there. Claire rather poetically said it looked like a snow globe, with the white gannets flying around above the rock, and the white poo all over the rock looking like a dusting of snow. 

It didn’t smell very poetic, and I was relieved and amazed not to get my head pooed on. We didn’t land on Little Skellig (it’s closed to the public), but after a quick tour round it in the boat, we were soon docking at Skellig Michael.

This was the island we’d been looking forward to, because that’s where the puffins nest. We were pleased to see that the puffins hadn’t left the island yet, and in fact were all over the place. I’ve seen puffins before, so I already know they are my second favourite seabird (after penguins), but Claire had never seen them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so excited as when she saw her first one on land. They are very cute, and not really scared of humans, so you can get pretty close to them. As puffins don’t tend to come to the mainland, they haven’t encountered any problems with humans to make them scared of us.

We took loads of photos - Claire of the puffins, and me of Claire taking photos of the puffins. We walked up the 660 steps to the monastic area at the top of the rock, where there are some tiny stone huts that used to house monks in the 6th century. We didn’t linger there though, as the area was crammed full of people, and was extremely boring compared to the puffins.

We had our packed lunch overlooking the puffin burrows, before spending the remainder of our time on the rock mingling with as many puffins as possible. We didn’t see any pufflings, so we think they must have still been in the burrows.

We were sad to leave, and I was somewhat apprehensive about the return trip when the captain told us to put our bags in the cabin because they were going to get wet. We didn’t have to do that on the way there! The sea was rougher, and I was glad (not to mention smug) that I’d got my waterproof trousers on as the water was splashing all over us. I was actually less scared than on the outward journey though and quite enjoyed the return crossing.

When we got back to the mainland, we got changed, scoffed a couple of scones, and started our drive back home. We stopped for the night near Portlaoise, which was about 3/4 of our way across Ireland. It was about 8pm by the time we started looking for suitable overnight spots, and we knew we hadn’t got time to be too fussy. We settled on one of many small laybys off a tiny road alongside a canal. It was pretty quiet and no-one gave us any problems, but we did find that on the few occasions a car went past, it actually made George shake slightly! In future we will have to try and pick spots a bit further back from the road.

All we have done today is driven to the ferry port, hung around, got on the boat, ate loads more complimentary biscuits, and driven home. We got home at about 7pm, and, at nearly 11pm, I am still waiting for Claire to pick her favourite puffin photos out of the millions that she took. Hopefully I will get this blog posted, with photos, before midnight!

Our next trip in George will hopefully be in about 10 days time when we have a weekend off together. In the meantime, we will be giving George a good clean and polish, and adding a few more items to his inventory.

Terrier Racing

Sunday 4th August 2013

Ireland Trip - Day 11 (and a bit about days 7-10 too)

Sorry about the lack of blogs over the last few days. I haven't been in the right mood for blogging, and if I'd written one then it would have been boring at best, or upset someone at worst. I find it hard to write about social gatherings.

For all my planning and timetabling, we woke up on day 7 to torrential rain, which didn't stop all day, so we didn't do much walking at all. I got soaked just going for my morning wee (by the rain I hasten to add), and again while filling George's water tank up, and again while turning his gas cylinder off. And so on. It was a very wet day. We had lunch on Inch beach again, without the disasters of the previous visit, and arrived in Cahersiveen late afternoon.

We made the most of the laundry and bathroom facilities at the house Jen and Andrew had rented, and slept in a proper bed in an actual bedroom for the first time in what seemed like ages. I did wake up the first night, really confused, thinking I was in George but unable to open the sliding door to get out. I figured it out in the end, but not before I'd turned all the lights on and woken Claire up.

We had a lovely meal with Jen and Andrew at a local seafood restaurant the first night. The following day, the rain continued. It was getting quite depressing. We put our waterproofs on and walked into town, and went to what was probably the worst museum I've ever been to (The Barracks in Cahersiveen). The best I can say about it it that it looked exciting from the outside, and it was dry inside.

Things improved on the Friday, as not only did the weather pick up, but it was the start of the annual music and arts festival in the town. The event we'd been looking forward to most was the Terrier Racing (not sure what this has to do with music or arts, but, who cares!).
This takes place on a side street in the town, and basically involves anyone who thinks their terrier stands a fighting chance, unleashing their dog and hoping it will chase after a stuffed rabbit pulled along on a rope. There are several races, and I have absolutely no idea how it was decided which terriers were in which race, whether there were heats, semi finals etc, or indeed who won!
There was one big fight on the track, between two white and brown terriers, resulting in them losing the race to the underdog, a chubby black terrier. There were several races where either the dogs couldn't be bothered to run, or all ran off the wrong way, and a couple where only one dog crossed the finish line, and that was because it was chasing it's owner!

I felt a bit sorry for a nice little Westie who was clearly well prepared and focused on the race, but was unfortunate to be up against 4 other terriers who were much better built for running. It was the only race in which all the dogs finished. The Westie finished last, but I could tell it's owner was very proud.

The following day (Saturday), we decided we were missing George, and were over socialised, so we moved out and went to stay at a camp site the other side of town called Mannix Point. We've got a waterside pitch in the motorhome and caravan area, although to my relief, there are more campervans and motorhomes than caravans. We're glad we've got George and we're not in the tent area, because they're all a bit close together.

Today we've been over to Valentia Island and had a good look round. It hasn't rained all day and we got some pretty good views from the highest point. We decided to walk up, as it was €5 per car to drive up, plus the price of a new clutch from the smell of other people's cars. I was a bit peeved to find that we still had to pay €2 each to walk up there (not exactly encouraging people to exercise are they?), but we coughed up and enjoyed the view from the top, along with the smug feeling of having burnt off maybe half of one of the bacon rashers we had for breakfast. And the freedom of not having all those 20c coins jangling round in my purse and weighing me down.

We came back to the campsite at tea time, and I achieved yet another personal best in the token operated shower. 5 minutes!!! No time for shaving this time though. We've enjoyed a barbecue and a glass of wine whilst watching the sun go down across the sea.

We're both very excited about tomorrow. Weather permitting, we are going on a boat trip to the Skellig Islands, which host seabird colonies several miles off the coast. They also used to host some monks, but we're more interested in the seabirds, in particular the puffins.
This will be our second attempt this year to see puffins. The first (Skomer Island - Pembrokeshire - in April) was a nice trip, but rather disappointing in terms of puffin spotting (we saw about 3). Tomorrow should also be a nice trip regardless, but will be a whole lot better if the puffins, and the recently hatched pufflings are still there. We've made some enquiries, and they were still on the island on Friday, so hopefully they won't have moved out yet.

When we get back from the boat trip, we will have to make a start on the drive back across the country, as we have to catch our ferry home at lunch time the following day. We'd like to get the majority of the driving behind us tomorrow, but we'll have to see how tired we are after all the sea air.


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Location:Cahersiveen, County Kerry