Riding the Rails to Kerry
We always knew it would be an adventure to drive in Ireland on the left hand side of the road, but little did we realize how much of adventure we would experience on the first day. To cut to the chase van, let’s summarize by saying that one of four vehicles is down for the count and at least one other is due for some rental company settlement. We have no physical injuries to report, but several anxious nauseous stares and more than a few pairs of underwear to rinse out.
When we arrived at the Hertz counter at Shannon airport, the wee Irish lad who was doing the paperwork got a big kick out of our Bank of Dad jokes when I told him I was renting both 9-passenger vans for two weeks. When he HIGHLY recommended the insurance and I gave him my standard line about having coverage through my Chubb accounts, he just laughed and said that was fine. When he hadn’t stopped snickering and shaking his head for several minutes and asked how he could open an account at the Bank of Dad, I decided to override my insurance agent’s normal frugality and I took the added local insurance on both vans. Good thing me thinks.
We had a sunny day in Shannon and were anxious to go, so when the paperwork was done he sent me scurrying over to the rental lot to retrieve the vehicles. I took nephew Jason along as the designated driver of the other van. The deal was that he would drive the other van and cousin Pete had rented a small car of his own. Sister Kathy was driving in with hubby Bennett from Cork, and we would all converge on Westcove in the afternoon. Both Jason and Pete beseeched me to drive slowly enough so they could follow since left hand drive combined with Gaelic road signs were worrisome to the less-wizened travelers. Not to worry, I would be on my best roadside behavior.
If the paperwork guy and his casualty sneers didn’t concern me, the car wranglers at the lot should have. They took multiple pictures of the vehicles on an iPad and had me sign my financial life away that the vehicle was in tip-top condition when handed over to me. There was a bespectacled gent from New Jersey checking out a car ahead of me and I became rather annoyed at his persnickety attention to the details of the car inspection as he rubbed every little mud spot and took close-up photos. This should have been another clue that Hertz Ireland has an entire revenue category on its budget for tourist damage incidentals.
We were all set in our two monster vans, me in my Ford and Jason in his Citroen (being a car guy, he was pleased to be driving foreign heavy metal, where I just wanted the damn thing to work). We had a simple maneuver of three lefts to get back to the terminal and the awaiting hordes. After the first left out the gate, I lost Jason. Instead of exiting, he chose to inadvertently drive through the car wash backwards rather than try to reverse from the right-side steering position. In the 400 yards we had to go to start, we already had one man in the rough and this was a bad sign of things to come. When he finally pulled up behind me near the terminal, he pointed out that there was a hitherto unnoticed crack in the windshield, presumably from a stone ding. I immediately did the math and realized my insurance acceptance had already earned its keep.
So we loaded up the vans with the usual array of “Who sits where” and people generally unable to do the simple math that with 15 people to fit into two 9-passenger vans, we pretty much should be splitting up as 7 and 8 per van. Call me crazy, but that was higher math for this crowd to handle so I had to do my usual autocratic Dad thing. And off we went with me in the lead van, Jason in the chevroned Citroen and the family Massicci in their rented car in the rear. Noteworthy was that driving the car was Number One Massicci son Re-Pete, who is a law enforcement officer for the greater Buffalo New York metropolis, so I expected good sweeper activity from him.
Out of the other seven in my car, I quickly realized that I had only one qualified navigator who knew how to use a GPS. Luckily that was enough to get us pointed in the right direction. We quickly realized that driving on the left has certain challenges, particularly at roundabouts (of which there are many), but that skill is actually the least of the worries in this fair and emerald land. The real trick is in the combination of road width, van breadth, bus and car speed in the alternative direction and the nearness of the hedgerows (if you be lucky enough not to have a stone wall instead) next to the left side of the van.
When we finally stopped after about 90 minutes and our first pee-break request (What’s Ap texted from the other van), the van and cars exploded in a cacophony of loud exclamation about the fact that Jason had managed, on one particularly narrow lane, to obliterate his mirror and the mirror of some innocent parked car. The explosion of molded plastic sprayed into the road behind for Officer Pete to swerve around. I believe all the loud chatter at the rest stop was a primordial release of all the pent-up emotions of a family group who had traveled overnight, jammed into three vehicles, were in a foreign land, and were all worried about the vehicular transport arrangements and relative safe passage to the cottage of our repose. In other words, they were heretofore psychologically constipated and needed a release. Again, I was pleased with my insurance program.
The next two hours of hills and dales gave us a great view of the Irish countryside, but by the time we got onto the actual Ring of Kerry we were ready for the barn. Unfortunately, that was the most challenging bit of driving since the Ring is particularly narrow and the blend of moorish hillside to the right and cliff to the sea on the left made it more than a wee bit harrowing at times (particularly when an oncoming bus and a curve coincide). At one time we called the Cork excursion for a locational update and got a volley of Bennett expletives. Apparently, they had actually been run off the road and over a boulder that had destroyed one of their tires. The spare was only so useful, so that vehicle is planned for the shop in Sneem, where the local mechanics have presumably dealt this road runoff situations on a daily basis in this, the land of the Kerry Rail Raiders.
I happen to enjoy British television and signed up for amazon’s ‘BritBit’ option. I have been disappointed that many shows are much older and new ones not so plentiful. I still enjoy most of it. However I am always looking at where the driver sits and of course the side of the road he’s on. I get disoriented just watching it on TV, much less having to do it in person. I am amazed at the narrowness of the roads and the speed they drive. Often down the middle. Happy trails the rest of the way.
This is me again to tell a short story about my building. A customer of mine whose family had lived many generations in our area brought in a very old picture from about 1915 or so. It showed a number of Model T-s and other cars that were in front of my building. He told me how in those days many people who were headed to Albany made it about halfway before the auto would act up. Guess where my building was located.