Saturday 20th June Day 33
Right let’s start with booking tonight’s campsite, Barb phoned them while we were on the road and I guess we were used to the Ireland way of checking if a site has space, the calls went like this, ring ring hello, hi have you got space for a campervan for tonight, yes what name is it, Barbara, ok see you later. You now know you are back in the UK and it goes like this, ring ring hello, hi do you have space for a campervan for this evening, yes we have do you want to book, yes please, name full please, address, phone number, email address, card number, oh hang on how much is it, thirty five pounds, card number, what time will you be here as you have an hour booking in slot, welcome back to the UK, the most expensive site in the last 30+ days. As soon as we drove into Northern Ireland we noticed that we were back in the UK, retail shopping parks, rammed roads, main roads, loads of people, bad driving and we weren't sure that this was for us, we had two plans and the first was the giants causeway but we have been there before and it won’t have changed much, and a trip into Belfast which I was really looking forward to but and I know this is probably silly but with the recent problems that we are sure have finished and where in isolated area’s, we still weren't sure about going and we have found during our trips that if you don’t fancy it, just don’t go as we won’t enjoy it, we can although for a weekend break. That left us with the option of travelling through NI back over the border to Ireland after a couple of stops in NI on the route, obviously this is only our thoughts and we were probably overthinking things and I guess that after being out in the easy going countryside, we weren’t ready for full on stuff. I guess that this wasn’t helped by our first retail experience as Glo needed fuel and we found a station with reasonable priced diesel, pump in hole nothing happens, trigger squeezed nothing happens, walk in to the tills, hi is pump 4 working, yes it is but you need to prepay, ok here is my card, oh you will need to put the filler thingy back in the pump, ok back to Glo and thingy thing put back in the pump, back to the till, hi here is my card, how much do you want if you don’t use it all we give you a refund, oh let’s call it a hundred quid, back to Glo trigger thingy back into Glo’s hole but she wasn’t that thirsty and didn’t want all of the 100 quid, back to the till, hi it didn’t use the 100 quid can you put the refund on my card, no we do the refund in cash, ffs get me out of here. We arrived at the Marina, were shown to a pitch, parked up and plugged in. The sun was out and so were the chairs, I thought that I would catch up on the progress of the rally but rather than seeing who was in which position I read the tragic news that a young boy had been killed while spectating at the Donegal rally and two other spectators had been injured, my thoughts are with the boys parents and family, the two injured spectators and also the driver and navigator who will also be suffering. After reading that sad news my mind wasn’t in the mood for any planning, that would just have to wait, instead we went for a walk around the Marina and into the village which wasn’t that far away, after returning to Glo nothing much else happened, we are only just over the border and we were going to figure out our plans tomorrow morning we will all have to wait until tomorrow to find out what we finally decided to do.
Stopover Ballyronan Marina, Margherfelt, Mid Ulster NI
WTW romantics.shakes.player