Ireland

  Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland
Saturday, June 2, 2007

Let me tell you about RyanAir which takes the concepts of "air travel" and "no frills" to new heights. You cross the tarmac apron on foot to enter the 737 by stairs at the front and back of the aircraft. (Two doors mean that you can load the people in half the time.) There are no allocated seats so if you want to sit together, you'd better run. There are no bulkhead partitions, so you see right from the back of the plane all the way to the front. The blue-and-yellow seats are made from plastic and have no seat pocket - the safety instructions are imprinted into the seat back. Sitting near the back and looking forward across the heads and plastic seats, I felt like I was on a roller-coaster waiting to start my ride. Maybe that's why the seats are plastic - they can be easily hosed down.

While you're in flight, you're a captive audience and an automated PA system markets at you every 10 minutes. They sell "scratchie" gambling cards. They sell duty free. They sell car rental at your destination. They sell hotels. They sell insurance. (Yep!) They'll be selling weddings soon - mark my words. Oh, and the overhead lockers all have advertising on them. I guess they have to do this though - the flight cost us one British pound per person. (Plus taxes of course.)

Despite all this, I'm told they have the highest profits in the airline industry - and growing - and pay their pilots well. They fly into almost every destination you can think of in Europe and there are rumours of trans-Atlantic flights. The future of air travel? Maybe so. It's fine for an hour, but I just couldn't imagine being on the aircraft any longer than that before having stroke.

And so, to Ireland.



The focus of Ireland was really all about catching up with family.

At Dublin airport we grabbed our hire car and set off to my Aunt's house at Carrick-on-Shannon. Melissa and Joe had organised a Collins family bash at their beautiful 300-year old house which they have stunningly renovated. (The weather was dicey when we arrived but cleared up shortly thereafter and stayed clear the entire time we were in Ireland.) On the way, we stopped at my cousin Daryl's new house which had an interesting setup: Apparently, just a several metres underground the temperature is pretty much constant - as it is everywhere in the world. In Ireland it's around nine degrees or so. Water is pumped around small pipes under the ground and it picks up the warmth which is then brought back to the house to a heat-exchanger. It doesn't keep the house hot - just warmish - but the idea is that it reduces the need for electricity or heating oil, so the government springs for about a third of the cost of the installation and with that subsidy, the system pays itself off in about 5 years or so. Nice. Given the fact that Melissa and Joe's were saying it costs them around NZ$8,000 a year in heating oil alone, you can see why people would be keen to have some way of lifting the base temperature and reducing their dependence on heating oil.

At Melissa and Joe's place, the family arrived in force - cousins, aunts and uncles. It was great for everyone to come, especially on a bank holiday weekend. It was good to hear the Irish accents again and I certainly settled straight into it like I'd been there a month, both in terms of being able to hear and understand everything as well as just a feeling of welcome from everyone. Bridget, being uninitiated to the Emerald Isle found the pace of speech a little quick but within a day was fairly up to speed - helped immensely by the fact that all our cousins speak incredibly clearly. Head to the local pub and the dialect is a lot more tricky.... but it doesn't stop you getting a drink ordered. :)
After desert was served and everyone was fairly well on their way, we trotted out for a few quiet ones in Carrick town.... which turned into a few pints of Guinness, shots, dancing in the rain, the obligatory Haka and a 3am finish.

Day 2 in Ireland saw us heading to the family farm in Elphin to see Uncle Noel and his wife Helen. The family farm has been farmed by the Collins' troop for a few generations, so it was good for Bridget to get a look around and understand what my father's stories relate to. Helen served a fantastic three-course meal for lunch and then they took us out for a drive of the area, then a solid walk around the farm. After the excesses of the previous night, it was great to get some exercise. We also went to the bog to see where the "turf" is taken out. Turf is compressed peat, which when dried burns very well for heat. Thankfully Noel had already stacked the turf into "footings" which is how it is dried before storage - this was my first time in the bog without having to stack turf so I was stoked. It's hard, hard work.

The following day it was off to see the Kennedys. Aunty Aideen had arranged for outstanding weather so we relaxed on her new patio area and ate like kings while catching up on the latest, then a brief catch up with Aunt Mary when she arrived and we were off with cousin Brian and wife Eithne (who visited NZ about 4 years ago) to see the local sights. The first stop was the famous climb to Maeve's "cairn" on Knocknarea. (Knock na Ré in Irish. Maeve is the legendary warrior-queen of Connacht.) The tradition is to take a stone to the top and throw it onto the pile there. The walk was err... "invigorating" and the views were stunning so it was awesome to get up there, especially in such good weather.

Then it was down to the beach below (Strandhill) where, would you believe, surfing has taken off. Brrrr..... chilly. It's west coast NZ-style waves with a couple of pubs right by the water. Waves are world-over but a good Guinness isn't, so I was pretty keen to have a pint and before long we were having our 2nd. Cousin Louise joined us and we finished up with dinner.... and a few more drinks. :)

Day 4: Goodbyes and then back to England via Ryanair. :) So that was Ireland 2007 for Bridget and Ando. The hospitality was outstanding and I ate and drank so much that I had to be rolled out of the country. Ireland has clearly developed massively, even in the last 7 years since I've been there. There were three things I noticed:

1) Loads of new houses being built: Understandable given the tax breaks to do so, but really.... you'd want to be a builder in Ireland right now.

2) The cars: Since 2000, there has been a proliferation of Porsche, Audi and Mercedes... and not the standard models either.

3) Boats, lots of boats, especially being towed on trailers: In 2000 I might have seen two, this time there were dozens of boats being towed around - surely a sign of a huge increase is disposable income.

Oh, and on the way back to Dublin, we witnessed a high-speed car accident that demolished one car and sent the other into the trees - but that's another story.....