We’ve been languishing. That’s sad to report but the weather so far this year has been hardly conducive to heading off into the wide blue yonder. Yet here we are at the end of March 2024, with an early Easter weekend providing both reason and opportunity to reawaken the dormant Knumptywagen from its hibernation.
Outdoor over-wintering has not been particularly kind to our sleeping giant, as it had grown itself a mild dusting of interior mould, deciding perhaps that a light grey suede interior would be de rigeur for the new season.
Easily removed during a thorough spring clean, we also remember to re-road-tax ourselves, a painful experience as – on the 28th March – DVLC glibly inform us that we’re now road-taxed from the first of that month, the thieving robbing bastards.
And so we set about replenishing and revictualling with a vigour that suggests a serious trip is in the offing. As indeed it is.
But prior to this, we head north to Chester for a family Easter weekend which will revolve around grandchildren, comprising recently-arrived twin boys and their two cousins, both thriving at a rate which only serves to consolidate the aging process embracing us at the other end of the scale.
And – following a presumably mucky-chinned choc-fest – we will indeed catch a ferry – across the sea to Ireland, where we’ve deemed a fortnight’s touring the green lanes and rolling tuaithe timpeall (look it up, I had to) will thankfully blow away all forms of winter cobwebs, both literal and figurative.
In preparation and anticipation of this trip, we hoick out our notes from a previous visit and are surprised to note that Baltimore, a village in western County Cork on Ireland’s rugged Atlantic coast – features prominently in a strange coincidence with current news stories of its namesake on the eastern coast of the USA. From here, we are witnessing daily media images where the bows of a seemingly hugely overloaded container ship remain tangled in the twisted ruins of a broken, sunken highway bridge across the straits of Chesapeake Bay following a fatal collision.
In stark contrast, on our last trip, Ireland’s Baltimore provided not only safe haven for a discreet side-of-the-road overnight stop but also introduced us to Bushe’s Bar where a magnificent west-coast sunset was made even more palatable by the thirst-quenching delights of Hophouse 13. This welcome refreshment was a Guinness-brewed lager which your humble author claimed to be the best ever tasted (although it was sadly subsequently withdrawn from UK distribution post-Covid, when we all just stopped drinking a sufficient quantity of it to sustain its export to our fair shores, damnandblast.)
It was also nearby that we discovered a roadside spa, offering seaweed baths and steam rooms – of which we availed, as well as a much-lauded café of which we didn’t, since we had our own kettle and accoutrements within the perfectly acceptable (and very clean) interior of the Knumptywagen.
Casey’s seafood restaurant provided a romantic sunset supper that evening before we retired to our discreet roadside parking, only to discover the following morning that our presence had clearly attracted (and somehow legitimised) the addition of a further three vans which had heaved-to overnight, thereby creating an attention-seeking phalanx of motorhomes, the very thing we strive to avoid.
Stay tuned, the wheels are rolling again!