You’ll all be glad to know that the heatwave finally hit Ireland and that Kerry and I can report in as safe.  Obviously, there would always be casualties, and like the canaries in the mines, the tops of Kerry’s feet suffered slight sunburn from an extended beach walk.  The same walk also led to a small blister from her flip-flops.

The disasters continued that day because she also dropped her own reading lamp on her face and now has a black eye.  But that can hardly be blamed on the sun.

I use the term heatwave pretty loosely because on the coastal regions of Ireland couldn’t quite break above 20 degrees Celsius but if you could keep out of the wind, it was altogether very pleasant.

We’ve spent the past few days in County Sligo and then the Western fringes of County Mayo where the lush green of the interior soon gave way to windswept landscapes and rugged coastlines where Europe finally gives way to the Atlantic Ocean. From a geological perspective this is a fascinating place and I happily spent the better part of an evening snapping shots of strange rock formations as the sun went down and the colours changed dramatically.

When I last left you, we were in desperate need of a shower and the other necessities that come with campervan life; topping up water, washing clothes, draining grey waste and emptying the shitter.  Most of those jobs are mundane and one is deeply unpleasant.

We’d stopped at a lovely little campsite on the shores of Lough Arrow and while the décor in the toilet block was straight out of the 70’s, it was a delightful and well managed stopover.  The next day we visited the neolithic graveyard of Carrowkeel and I could hardly believe that we had access to the five-thousand-year-old tombs all to ourselves and a handful of sheep.  The whole complex spanned the hilltops south of Sligo with amazing views of the plains below.

We rejoined the Wild Atlantic Way and spent the night at the Beach Bar at Aughris Head before heading west the next day.  We’ve now clocked up our second Irish island and it was the deeply stunning Achill Island.  In fairness to us we wanted to sit out the heatwave on a beach and we found a campsite at Keel, where the beach seems to stretch on to infinity, I whipped out the shorts and we spent the day lounging like it was a beach holiday.  There was some sunburn as I explained earlier.

The weather was a bit colder the next day, and while it wasn’t beach weather, it was great for exploring and we spent that night wild camping on the most isolated rocky shoreline where phone reception was virtually non-existent. I expected to see a lot of nice things on this Ireland trip but the stark beauty of Achill Island was something else.

Anyway, we moved on and found ourselves in standstill Bank holiday traffic in Westport before moving out of town to find a base to climb Croagh Patrick tomorrow.  We found one in a quiet little town called Louisburgh where we blagged a parking space in front of the library  when we found out they were  hosting an Irish music festival.  I’m not as young as I once was, and I wonder whether I can manage the festival followed by the mountain the next day?