Bus Ride in Ireland
Dungarvan
Dungarvan is a community in the south of Ireland, sitting right on the coast, east of Cork. I set out for Dungarvan at 8am – it would have been a 5 hr trip from the north of Ireland…. Well….
First of all, there’s this at a motorway interchange in Naas:
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This is surely being sung about in the pubs, because it is the stuff of ballads. I probably didn’t make the best of plans, but managed to just miss several connections, and of course the cascading effect was that I just missed the final bus that only comes every two hours. So I decided it was a sign I should find a cafe and get some lunch and chill. Then I got myself to the station for the next bus, going from Dublin – Red-Cow station to Dungarvan.
Long about Kilkenny, the driver announced that he was having some troubles and would turn off the bus and try to “reset the brakes.” Not sure exactly what that means, but one of the passengers asked what would happen if the brakes didn’t reset. “Well then” he said, “this bus goes no farther.” Mind you the driver has a very thick Cork accent. The passenger objected, to which the driver responded: “what would you have me do? Drive the bus with no brakes?” **sigh** Would I have to wait yet another two hours for the next bus?
Alas, with the luck ‘o the irish, the brakes reset. Then we made
our way through Kilkenny’s narrow streets with our big inter-city
bus. And the bus-driver was now under pressure because of the delay.
He started this vroom-vroom acceleration, screech-screech
breaking and toot-toot to communicate his haste to other
drivers. Occasionally he hung out the window and announced, and in
his thick Cork: “this is a two-way street!” The street was so
narrow, I was afraid to verify this.Now we are careening through the hills of county Waterford, still vroom-vroom, screech-screech, but not so much tooting. The fog is rolling in, the hills are covered in mist. Lo and behold, the mist breaks and we are overlooking Dungarvan harbor.
My computer battery is about to die, so I’ll have to add pictures from my adventure – you know, all the castles and such that dotted the way. And I believe we’re about there anyway.
… and when I arrived, they had fuzzy slippers and a hot-water-bottle in my room.
Amy
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