Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Heading towards Dublin

It's pretty slow going on the backroads of Ireland. But once you get on the motorway, you can cover ground quickly, and you soon realize that Ireland is actually a pretty small country.

So, we had to make our way to the motorway, and that meant going to the city of either Cork or Limerick. For no particular reason, we decided on Cork.

But first, we had to get to the motorway!

Leaving Bantry at 7:15am.

We ended up on a route that included a rural road. Normally, the rural roads are very narrow, but also not very busy.

This one was both narrow, and busy!

We were following this truck.

When this truck came the other way!

We've had some close encounters, but this is the first time Ruth had to pull in her mirror to let that big truck get by.

He had a line up of vehicles behind him, and there were several cars behind us as well.

We made a stop in the town of Macroom and had some breakfast.

In Macroom, we had to drive Max through this entranceway to get to the parking lot!

It turns out that Macroom had a few charity shops as well, so we went and did some more searching for Ruth's shoes. She ended up with a nice pair for €7.50 ($11 CAD, $8 USD).

So in total, we spent €41.50 ($60 CAD, $45 USD) on Ruth's dress and shoes, and my blazer, shirt, pants, tie, and shoes.

Not bad.

The wedding is tomorrow, so you will see photos on Friday!

Leaving Macroom.

We headed for the southern Cork bypass, but made a short 3 km detour to fill up our other LPG tank. Then back on the southern bypass and onto the M8 Motorway. Traffic was busy, but flowing nicely.

Once we got outside the city limits it was clear sailing.

We made our way to Glengarra Wood Forest Recreational Area. Reviews said this was a great overnight spot, and that turned out to be totally true.

One of the last remaining old growth forests in Ireland, which had been pretty much deforested in the 1800's. By the end of the 19th century, Ireland's forest cover had been reduced from 80% to about 1%.