Republic of Ireland - Round The World Tour 2 2003 Day 171

Cahersiveen

Saturday 30th August

Since we’ve been on the road almost without pause for the past couple of weeks, a little rest didn’t seem like such a bad idea and so we stayed here an extra day to just relax and unwind a bit.

We had a rather late start to the day. By the time we had finished breakfast and cleared up it was already noon. Just across the bay from our camp-site are the remains of a castle ruin and a couple of stone forts. We drove over to take a closer look but the clouds moved in after a short while and we had to cut our visit short. It did clear up later on in the day and we ate lunch in a nice pub in the middle of town.

Probably the highlight for the day was a small family of seals that we spotted basking on a mud-bank a hundred metres or so from the shoreline near our camp-ground. Hopefully, we should get to see a lot more seals either tomorrow or the day after when we visit the Basket Islands at the end of the Dingle peninsular. Neither of us has ever seen seals in the wild before. We were presented with the opportunity to do so in Namibia but this would have been at the cost of the sand boarding.

After idling the day away pottering around town and the camp-site, we had a late dinner in the brick and decided to chance our luck again in town this evening in the hope of finding some traditional music. Being Saturday night, we had high hopes that there would be some music being played somewhere and there were a few taverns posting sings to that effect. Unfortunately, it was to be another disappointing night. The one place that we did find where music was being played turned out to be country and western style that is hardly a fitting substitute. It’s ironic that we are currently here in the West, the traditional music hub of Ireland, yet can’t seem to find any traditional music being played anywhere. Our quest continues, however.