Ireland Day 13 – Snowdonia

Vicky from work texted kindly offering to extend my unpaid leave. It was time to go back. To face the music and put this House in order. Irish Ferries sensible option sails to Holyhead at 08:00, there is a ‘swift’ service at 13:50 and a cheaper, mainly lorries, option at 14:30 that lands at 18:00. I chose the latter, later, intending to camp on Anglesey ahead of a morning run down through Wales.

Insanely early at the ferry terminal I chatted with Stephen and John, brothers on nearly identical BMW GS motorcycles, John had a piercing, a 2 inch self tapping screw lodged luckily and unluckily right through the tread of his rear type. Dripping with technology, the bike’s tire pressure sensors where sounding no alarm. Sensibly they were taking it a little easy and the earlier ‘Dublin Swift’ ferry. A ‘breakdown’ of Triumph Stag sports cars arrived in convoy and we mused, amused, at how retired all the travellers we’d met were. Perhaps a quirk of term times or the distribution of disposable income in our times.

Ferried across the Irish Sea uneventfully the bike and I were the first off the boat. No customary delay, no queue of motor homes clogging the A5 artery south, the sun was shining, I made hay.

Motorcycling in the rain brings a watershed moment, a tipping point, beyond which stopping to don wet weather gear will do no good. You’ve gone too far, hope evaporated, jeans saturated, you carry on. So it was on the glorious dry empty roads, the campsites that we passed, incrementally luring me less, we were going home.

A day waiting for and riding the ferry spared me the energy for this long haul and I got in just after midnight. Louise was pleased to see me and rubbed herself enthusiastically into my face, pretty friendly, for a cat.