MONDAY 28th MAY 2012

GOODBYE IRELAND

After having the great "room rate included" breakfast at the Maldron (couldn't bring myself to try the black pudding! It looked way too yukky!), we packed up the car, paid our parking fee and headed off to Dun Laoghaire to catch the ferry back to Holyhead in Wales.
It was only three quarters of an hours drive through the city and the traffic had eased off pretty well, so we got to the port very early for our check in! Found a shopping centre and had a coffee, then joined the queues to drive onto the boat! Lots of vehicles on this trip - even a few horse floats, race horses I presume! - but the Stena Line mob are very well organized and we were neatly lined up in the cavernous hold in no time at all!
The ferry was one of the high speed catamaran types and relatively new! Nice modern
lounges etc and we easily found a spot to while away the two hours of the trip, which turned out to be flat calm and quite painless!!!
So that was the Republic of Ireland done and dusted, another week on the road to see some of Scotland and some more of England!
We docked in Holyhead right on time and drove off the ferry straight onto the road and set off - there was no customs or security check at all!!! Hello?? Isn't there an Olympic games coming up? Isn't there the Queen's Jubilee this weekend? Not really very security conscious!
Heading west along the north coast of Wales we passed through numerous small seaside towns, seeing some huge wind turbines about a kilometre off shore! What a great place to put them - right in the path of the northerly winds and almost out of sight!
By about 5.30pm we got to Chester, which is just back into England, and found a Premier Inn to stay at. None of the hotels we have stayed at while we have been on the road have had air-con and this one was no different, and although the room was very comfy with brand new fittings, it was stifling hot and the small fan provided was making no headway in cooling us down! Opening the windows a bit gave a bit of airflow, but the room stayed very hot all night and despite having numerous liquid sleeping pills at the pub attached to the Inn, we had a pretty ordinary night!