Republic of Ireland - Round The World Tour 2 2003 Day 166

Cork

Monday 25th August

Today ended up being somewhat of a rest day. Our isolated car park in the middle of the wood provided us with enough seclusion to afford us the confidence to simply lay in for the better part of the morning. By the time we got under way it was already nearly lunchtime. Just before setting off, we looked at the map to decide where we would be going for the day and agreed to head down towards Cork. We stopped off half way in a small town and had lunch. We stayed there for an hour or two and just chilled out in the van reading. It was very relaxing. No pressure, nowhere to get to before a certain time and nothing much else to do other than simply relax and enjoy the summer sunshine.

Just before we went to sleep last night, we noticed that the power inverter was switching itself off. It apparently does this when the camping battery is less than half full. If we were going to continue to use the TV and various laptop and camera battery chargers outside of a camp-site with external electricity hook-up, we are going to need to hook up to an external power source soon so that the on-board battery charger can re-charge the main camper-van batteries. This meant that we would need to spend at least the next night at a camp-site so helped determine where we were going to spend the next night.

We bought some food and other provisions whilst in town and then finally we set off again Southwards towards Cork. We found a nice little camp-site just up the road from the castle of Ballyscourt, which is located just outside of Cork itself. At just €15.50 for the night including electricity hook-up, it’s a bit cheaper that all the other places we’ve seen so far. The cost of living seems to be going down the farther West we go. We noticed this in town this afternoon also.

I finally found time to download several days' worth of photography this evening. I’ll probably spend the next hours or so categorising everything. Oh well, no rest for the wicked.