Ireland Hike & Bike Dublin to Rathdrum

Planning a fall trip this year, and see that Westjet has direct flights from Halifax to Dublin.  After a little research decided to book August 26 to Sept 6.  Andre has never been to Dublin, Wendy was there for a couple of days for work.  After speaking to our friends Susan and Roger we realize our dates are overlapping in Ireland and we arrange to meet up with them at the end of our trip in Dublin for a couple of nights.

Carry on luggage only, and no computers allowed as we are shipping luggage along by van as we do a walk and bike tour.  We will rely on cell phones for the trip.

Aug 26

Drive to Halifax and park our car at the Quality Inn which has much better rates that the airport park and fly. Free shuttle to the airport even though we aren’t staying there.  Uneventful flight to Dublin, overnight so arrive early in the morning.

As we are leaving the hotel to shuttle to the airport we get a phone call from Susan that they need to cancel their trip.  We will try to make new arrangements for Dublin when we arrive. So disappointed they will not be joining us.

Aug 27 – Dublin to Rathdrum (Stirabout Lane B&B)

We find the luggage leave place at the airport in Dublin, we had read they also sold SIM cards, perfect.  Andre hands over our old phone, he puts the SIM card in for us, make sure it works.  Fo 20 Euro for 30 days data that we will never use we now have a phone number that we can use in Ireland. 

Happy we have not rented a car this trip, always tough the first day driving on the left side of the road and merging

First thing on the agenda is to find hiking poles as we weren’t allowed to carry these on to the plane.    We know we have a lot of hiking with hills coming up and had made a list of sports stores to try.  Well, hiking poles are in high demand, but no one seems to be carrying anything.  Finally settled on some after a lot of searching, first thing checked off the list.  We will share a pair, one pole each. Next off is find some breakfast.  Lots of Americans around as there is a US football (not soccer) game being played in Dublin.  Funny seeing so many US jerseys on people walking around. 

River Liffey

We also visited the tourism center in Dublin, there was some sort of police parade going on which brought quite a few people out to the streets.

We have booked the Wicklow Way walking tour with a company called Hillwalk tours.  We chose to add an extra night at our first B&B to get used to the time change and recover from the overnight flight before we start walking.  We had a train ticket booked for our first stop in Rathdrum for this afternoon, the owner of the B&B Daphne decided to pick us up at the train station, a nice surprise.

Rathdrum is a very small little town centre, exactly what we dreamed about when we decided to do this walk.  We stepped out of our little B&B and there is a hairdresser shop right across the street.  I was overdue for a haircut, was able to get it done on the spot, while Andre went in search for 1 of the 3 pubs in town.  Had a lovely chat with an old man getting his hair cut beside me(actually he had moved on to his tea that they provided with a cut), heard all about his 11 kids. 

The pubs/restaurants are really busy, it is day 2 of a local wedding in town and seems like everyone is out! Decided we better make a reservation somewhere for tomorrow night. Andre is of course excited as he has found 99 ice cream in town, that of course is no longer .99

Train Station 

We could not find Rathdrum on the board, ended up talking to security and there is another board for the little local runs off to the side

A few pictures of the train ride from Dublin to Rathdrum

Parking outside our B&B in Rathdrum

Stirabout Lane B&B, at the crest of the hill

Nice courtyard in this pub, we would visit a couple of times :)

Cartoon Inn in Rathdrum, a great pub