Driving

Thank God for Garmin.

We rented a Garmin with the car, and if it weren't for that we would have had one hell of a time navigating our way through the city and countryside. Having that as a security blanket has made the driving far less stressful than it otherwise would be.

As for driving, it is surprisingly easy. The rules of the road differ only slightly from our own, and after you manage to get through three or four round-abouts, you realise there's really no great mystery to them. Basically, you have to yield to any traffic already in the round about, which means you don't need to rush to get into it, and once you're in, you have the right of way to any other cars that would like to get in, so you don't need to worry about oncoming traffic either. The only trick is reading the road signs in advance of entering the round about because it can be pretty disorienting if you don't know when you're supposed to leave.

The trickiest part of driving at first is learning to not flinch at oncoming traffic. You just aren't used to having cars pass so closely to your right, so you tend to shy away from them, which means you run the risk of driving onto the shoulder of the road, which is easy enough to mistakenly do when you don't know the points on your car. However, you must learn exactly where your left wheels are as well as how wide your car is if you are to have any hope of surviving on the country roads.

The country roads that you must navigate in order to get to the more scenic areas such as the Ring of Kerry (a 170 km scenic drive) are absurdly narrow. The paved part of the road is no wider than two parking spaces, and the shoulder is at best six inches of grass, and then a rock wall or hedge. In some parts the road narrows so severely that your left and right wheels are driving over the reflectors on the shoulder and along the center line of the road at the same time. Imagine driving 50 mph around roads that are twisting and turning constantly such that you have very little reaction time when you are confronted with an oncoming car, and then you both have to squeeze through what little space you've been provided, avoiding each other by mere inches. Now imagine that car is a bus.

When we chose to drive the Ring of Kerry, I struggled with whether we should proceed clockwise or counter clockwise because I did not want to have to confront any tour buses, and I was certain they would run the buses in the same direction because they couldn't possibly pass each other on the narrow roads. We guessed clockwise. We guessed wrong. There's really no way to describe what goes through your mind when you confront a bus on these roads. You have to put your left wheels on the shoulder, knowing you have six inches of insurance room, and at the last second, you take seven of them.

Needless to say we have survived all of the near misses, and the VW Golf we've been driving has been brilliant. I've rather enjoyed driving since there are plenty of opportunities for adrenaline rushes, and driving a manual with your left hand requires your brain to think differently. Driving is a very active experience. Well, it's time for dinner now, so I'm going to take a break. More on Castletownbere tomorrow!