Our final stop before heading home, a place I have been meaning to visit since being in Ireland.  We booked a tour to the House of Waterford Crystal.

After a tricky drive to Waterford and finding parking for our large motorhome, we explored the area on foot.  To our surprise, there was an art street festival on the road outside the Waterford Crystal factory. There was some lovely street food music and entertainment.

The tour inside the factory was very interesting and slightly stressful, making sure the children were not touching anything.

We wrapped up the day by heading on to our last campsite in Saint Margaret’s.  The campsite was somewhat crowded and had some dodgy characters. We decided to take a walk to the beach as it wasn’t far away. It was rather cold and blustery but that didn’t stop the children running about.

Getting towards the end of our travels, we moved on to Cobh which is a small seaside town on the south coast. It turns out it was the final port of call for the RMS Titanic before she set out across the Atlantic.

Alas, there wasn’t much in this small seaside town but we did have a lovely walk along the waterfront.

Back in the town, we did stumble on an escape room place and got a good deal for a family of four.  We were handcuffed together and locked in to a prison cell. There, we scrambled to find clues and managed to get out of our cuffs though still locked in the cell.  Thankfully William didn’t use the old prop toilet in the cell. After a few helping hints, we managed to get out and proceed on to the next room. Rebecca even managed to work out a few clues and we succeeded in escaping.

We also paid a visit to the Jameson distillery nearby in Midleton.  Sadly, children were not allowed in so we skipped the visit.  However, we were allowed in to the shops, Tony brought some whiskey (no surprise) and Jameson socks. There was also a micro distillery called Method and Madness attached to Jameson, I picked up some preserved black lemon gin which is lovely. Of course, Tony got a few more bottles of whiskey.

We drove to Blarney and set up on the campsite, we had a great idea to get on our bikes to head in to town and see the castle.  Little did we know it was easy getting down as it was a BIG hill!! The return journey was going to be interesting.

We got to Blarney castle and stopped off in a cafe for some lunch, unfortunately we got attacked by a lot of wasps and as Rebecca got stung by wasps, she was very reluctant to be bait again.  After lunch we made out way to the castle and the grounds were immense.

We walked around the grounds and the castle was the typical Irish square building but there were a lot of interesting nooks and crannies of the out buildings surround the main castle. The grounds were vast and there were some interesting trees, one was massive and I couldn’t get on to it. Tony and the kids managed to get on to it.

Explored Blarney castle and Tony and the kids went on to kiss the Blarney stone but I declined.  To hang upside down so far up put me off. We visited the poison garden afterwards which showed the everyday plants which are poisonous and some which we never even heard of. We were talking to an American and learnt a saying of “leaves of three, let is be!”

There were waterfalls, witches caves and gardens which were surprisingly spread out. Rebecca went down a set of steps called the wishing steps, you had to walk backwards and close your eyes to make a wish.  Tony thought it was a recipe for disaster, thankfully no accidents,

Alas, it came to the end and we had to cycle back to the campsite. Rebecca and I struggled and at some point ended up walking our bikes up the blasted hill. William was a little trooper and managed to cycle up with Tony. As you can imagine we were shattered when we got back. We found a disposable BBQ at reception and managed to defrost some meat. We ended up having a lovely dinner outside the campervan and kids loved it.

Having now completed the Ring of Kerry we headed up to the Dingle Peninsular, and more specifically Dingle it self.  A very busy little town with very little parking for our campervan it turns out.  We ended up parking next to the worst distillery (in terms of serving customers!) in the world.  Who has ever heard of a distillery that you can’t by whiskey at?  What’s the point!!

Continuing into Dingle we had sights on a fish and chip restaurant that’s mean to be one of the best in Ireland.  The portions were pretty good to be fair and the environment, sitting outside in the sunshine, was very pleasant, and reassuringly expensive as everything is in Ireland

On the bright side, we also found a brewery right next door to the restaurant, and I managed to obtain a nice flight of beer; happy days.  Then, even more interestingly, a pub on the way out had over 250 whiskey’s to drink.  I did a bit of deal with the barman and ended up being able to taste a few of them.  Rebecca and William were being absolute stars during the whiskey tasting, watching a man make leather belts in the pub (yes, a bit odd!) but they were being so good and polite that the man made a key ring free of charge for both of them. One of those proud dad moments!

Moving on, we walked the back to the campervan via the aquarium, which was very interesting on the basis they also had a great butterfly area and even otters! The kids had some great face painting done, which was nice. We left dingle after a nice day, with the though that it would be great place for a boys trip!

On the way back we stopped for short period, ice cream length, at a nice beach, although I wasn’t going to drive on this one!  Back to the site and we ended up with a lovely BBQ care of the Mrs and then we turned it into a campfire which the kids loved.  A good day was had by all

You would think finding a cafe for breakfast would be easy but after many attempts we finally found a cafe serving breakfast.

Once breakfast was done we embarked on our Ring of Kerry tour.  We started off  on the ring but Tony decided to take a detour as he wanted to go to a specific site.  We saw the Cliffs of Kerry which was rather spectacular compared to the Cliffs of Moher.

After a tight narrow drive afterwards, we came to Skellig chocolate factory which Tony wanted to go to for the children.  In the process, we took out the left side of the campervan windows with scratches from a freshly cut hedge which had sharp points sticking out.

The chocolate factory was free to get in and gave out free chocolate as well, William did however, point out he was not a fan of mint chocolate and even tried it again just in case his taste has changed.  Sadly he said no, he still does not like mint chocolate!

We headed on to a town recommended by a friend for dinner and the children were hungry so I made up some instant noodles for them as that’s what they wanted. We finally got a move on to find somewhere to eat and at one place they asked how old were our children in disgust, needless to say we left before we got an answer and another customer chased us down to say the restaurant could fit us in,  We decided to bypass that place and we ended up in a lovely bistro, The kids had a second course of mussels and they were happy to do some colouring while Tony & I enjoyed our meal.

We left quite early and headed down towards Killarney.  The site was quite close to the town so we headed onto the Ring of Kerry in order to try and tick some of it off before the big tour the following day.

One of the interesting things to do was a nice walk alongside a river and a waterfall.  All very pleasent and the walk through the forest was very nice, although I wasn’t very happy with having to park our camper up on the verge as the car parks were all full.

On the return from the waterfall we happened upon a number of horse and traps for hire.  It seemed a bit of a bargain to use them to explore the local country house and gardens so we hired one.  The kids really enjoyed the ride, and at the house we had some time to look around the gardens, plus, some amazingly huge ice creams were consumed!  On the way back both William, and a slightly reluctant Rebecca climbed to the front of the trap and learnt to drive the horse.

The site wasn’t great as it was really on a main road, but it did have a bit of play area which the kids liked.  The end of another day!

We set off to visit Bunratty castle which was surrounded by a number of 19th century style shops and houses that they have moved from their original locations to be included as part of the experience.  A nice pub was included as well as sweet shops and some general convenience stores.  There were quite a few animals there as well as a nice play area for kids and ice cream.  The whole experience was quite nice although the castle itself wasn’t amazing

Off we go again and headed to Limerick via the Cliffs of Moher. After 3 hours of driving we unfortunately couldn’t get in as it was full so we headed in to the a nearby town and stopped off a pub specialising in seafood. We managed to park up and sat out in the beer garden and had a couple of platters.  Rebecca & William was overjoyed to get crab claws and smoked salmon.

We headed back to the Cliffs of Moher and managed to get in 2nd time round and the views were amazing. We called ahead to the campsite to tell them of our late arrival and they suggested taking a ferry route which was quite scenic.

We arrived at the campsite, or so we thought we did but had to drive another few miles to get to the main section.  We ended up on a forest campsite in a national park which had a double decker bus on their children play area with a slide.

Before dinner we took a long walk to the lake and old house, along the way was a fairy trail as well which the children loved.

Another day in Galway, we set off on our bikes again and headed off back to the town to explore properly.

We visited the aquarium and the kids really enjoyed the rays and sharks. We carried on to the main part of the town and even fitted in some shopping (Rebecca got a new rain mac and fleece). William managed to persuade Tony to get him a green dinosaur balloon (I ended up carrying on my back on the bike).

There were a lot of street shows and the kids sat and watched an escapee act from chains. We opted for something different for dinner and had Thai fusion which gave a serious amount of food, we took a doggy bag with us as we couldn’t finish it all.