Ireland Day 8 – Something goes wrong

It has been brought to my attention (thanks Etch) that things have been going far too smoothly for one of my adventures. I’m riding a 45 year old motorcycle that I mostly assembled myself, I’m camping for the first time in decades, I’m a drinker in Ireland, I have no plan and nothing pre-booked, I’ve never been here before and, once again, I’m on my own.

Yet here I am, still going, no idea where but with the general idea of seeing new things, meeting new people, riding new roads for the joy of it, not just laying down my snail trail on the map and counting counties. There are 32 North and south, I checked.

I’m falling into a routine that saves me stress, humdrum habits holding me back from the precipice. Balanced between boredom and chaos I’ll teeter from time to time. This day I decided to mix it up a bit and treat myself to a hotel, specifically the Galway Bay Hotel. I had to get there first.

The wind blew cold on the ferry across the Shannon, a coach driver told me a dodgy joke and that the weather was due to break on Saturday. It stayed intact mostly for the morning and pulled itself together in the afternoon.

Click bait warning, something did go wrong, I ordered a ‘Cloud cone’ from an ice cream parlour in Lahinch, not knowing what it was and alarmed that the assistant then donned latex gloves. I’d made a mistake, hurrah!

The hotel had a room free on the second floor, I was not expecting to be overlooked, stripped shaved and showered, I may have provided entertainment.

Smoking and tapping away at this nonsense I met Barbara from Maryland, we drank together then hit the restaurant for supper then on to O’Connor’s Famous Pub for Redbreast and Guinness. As evening cusped into morning we met Stephen and Steven and bantered our way home.