My dad still talks about cycling in the 50s in Ireland and how, when asking the distance to the next town, the person asked would look you up and down and provide an answer based almost entirely on your apparent state of fitness - if you looked tired it was a short distance and if you looked fit it was much longer. The real answer might have been between, or to either side of the one given.
In Ballylickey, little more than a bend in the road, we stopped for fuel and in the simple conversation involved were reminded that Irish folks really are just as friendly as people tell you they are. We were directed to a superb campsite at Eagle Point. It was open fortunately, but running at about 2% capacity.
Here we met "Bill", the owner of another white T3 (ours was white in those days), a very nice, but sad guy, a charge nurse from Gloucester whose wife, also a nurse, had recently died. They'd previously greatly enjoyed holidays in Ireland together, but I think he was perhaps wishing he'd gone elsewhere, all the memories were too much for him, we felt.
And he'd crossed from Pembroke Dock where, (despite him expressing severe doubts), staff on the ferry had guided him into a location on the ship where his roof-light was smashed. He'd been upset to find the "guide" and the bursar most unhelpful and totally unsympathetic, but on landing he'd gone to a builder's merchants, bought some adhesive tape and thick plastic, driven away a short distance onto an industrial estate and a most helpful builder had lent him a ladder and helped him to effect a temporary repair.
I was surprised to see our new friend using an electric kettle. He was surprised that we used a gas one. Ever since then we've taken an electric with us and used it wherever the electricity supply will allow, (and sometimes, in France, where it won't, which can cause a problem or two).
Well, Jo and I had to go for a stroll on an evening like this, didn't we. Which would you rather see, a skyscraper, or a skyscape like that?
We rather liked that mini-submarine too, the
one with the witch sitting on the front of it.