Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Round Ireland (2016-20)
Background
A
few years ago, I had the pleasure of reading Tony Hawks'
excellent book Round Ireland with a Fridge, one of the most
engaging and entertaining travel books I have ever come across. It's
the story of a feat undertaken by the author as a result of
accepting a bet during a night at the pub, whereby he committed to
hitchhiking round the coast of Ireland within a month, with a
refrigerator in tow.
While I had no desire to try to emulate the precise details of his trip, and no conceivable wish to do it under the same constraints, I enjoyed the read so much that a seed was planted in my imagination. Forget thumbing a lift, forget the pressure applied by a ticking clock, and most of all, forget large kitchen appliances; I simply wanted to execute my own idea of a grand, circular tour of the island of Ireland. While coastal scenery would obviously feature heavily, I wasn't prepared to commit to a fanatical attempt to trace the shoreline as closely as available roads would allow - and I don't think Tony Hawks did that either. I was happy enough with the concept of a round trip (Dublin to Dublin) where the route, for the most part, followed the overall shape of the island.
A further key difference was that, for my own convenience, I saw the journey being split into three distinct chunks, so that I could return home on completion of the first two sections and later pick up where I had left off. Thus we have:
| PART 1: Dublin - Shannon | PART 2: Shannon - Donegal | PART 3: Donegal - Dublin | ||
| (April 2016) | (September 2018) | (TBA) | ||
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