Well, what can I say. Yesterday, for being a biking holiday didn't actually include the bike. Well, I say didn't, we still paid a visit to a bike shop in Dublin to get some chain lube!
The day was however taken up with a lie in, followed by a late lunch and a trip to the Guinness factory! Needless to say, the Guiness factory was great with the building even desinged, when looked at as a cross section, made to look like a pint of Guinness! Another fact that impressed me was that Arthur Guinness, when singing the lease, done so for 9000 years! Either he was a very confident or foolish man. Time and my expert opinion(!) say that he was as they say about Guinness - Genius!
Besides this, we had a soggy walk around the city taking in some of the tourist sights.
In all Dublin for me did not impress and just struck me as yet another city with too many fast food places.
Today (Sunday), we left, a little late - 2 hours!
After having consulted the Lonely Planet guide to Ireland, the Hill of Tara sounded like a must see as recommended by the book. Even better was that it was a 20 minute audio presentation and some looking around then we could be on our way again.
Having checked out, the rain, which had kept at bay all morning, started to come down heavily so as we prepared to get going, stopped again to get the rainsuits on. Not really knowing where we were going but having a good rough idea, we departed the hotel car park and made our way along the river that runs through Dublin (the name currently escapes me). We found our way out successfully along the N3 and found ourselves heading towards a toll booth. Easy I thought, they don't charge in the UK, presumabley because it would be a pain in the backside to get change out with gloves on etc. Nooo! In the Republic of Ireland, they like to do things the difficult way and charge motorcyclists a mere 70c for the pleasure of travelling along their road! After having to ask the man at the toll booth to pull my glove off, I managed to fumble my credit card out of the rainsuit and over to him. Putting gloves back on under pressure is never any good as I found out and passed the glove to Nikki as we made our way off from the booth to the hard shoulder.
We arrived shortly after at the Hill of Tara and rode straight past it! It is, quite literally, a hill! An ancient hill nevertheless, created by men between 4000 and 5000 years ago to possibly bury their royalty and wealthy. Unfortunately, with the rain coming down very hard and the visitor centre closed, we opted not to stay long and made our way towards Belfast along the coast taking in some spectacular distant views of the mountains.
Unfortunately, with time getting on, there wasn't enough time to take our detour round the mountains up to the hotel so we opted for the motorway eventually, and some how luckily (without the aid of sat nav and only a couple of looks at the map) arrived at our hotel.
The weather forecast is looking very poor for tomorrow with torrential rain and wind gusts of up to 70mph so currently we're unsure what the plan is. If it seems like the weather men have got it wrong and the rain is showers as we've had today then we shall carry on taking in the Giants Causeway and other sights along the north coast up to Derry. If they have the forecast right, then we may stay another night here and just do some short distance exploring!
Now to enjoy the bottle of Prosecco that is waiting on ice!
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