Ireland Day 12, Dingle, across the River Shannon, to Ennis

Our morning in Dingle was actually the first morning we woke up to find it raining. In all honesty, it added to the charm of the city as we did some quick morning shopping around town in the rain. Along the main street, I found my “map of Ireland” (that I’ve been searching for in every town along the way) and we tried Murphy’s Ice Cream – which is supposedly world famous (it was pretty good, but I still prefer Murphy’s Irish Stout).

Having a new lack of trust in our GPS, we decided it would be a great day to just basically ignore the GPS and see what we found if we took as many back roads as we possibly could to find our way up north to County Clare and our final destination of Ennis.

Our first attempt was well, a failure. After turning off the main road and just heading off in the direction would hoped would take us off over the mountains, we spent 30 min on a road that only led to a dead end.

But, not discouraged, we still managed to find our way by other means back to the coast and made a quick stop on the beach in Inch (yeah, the town is called Inch).

From there we cut up across A few quick thoughts for anyone who ever plans to visit the town of Talbert: 1) it’s not really a town at all, it’s more like an intersection 2) don’t believe their lies – this includes signs that say “food served all day” 3) they take their lunch hours very seriously, and 3 in the afternoon is not lunchtime – therefore, none of the 5 places in town would serve us anything to eat.

From Talbert, we decided to grab the car ferry cross the River Shannon up to Clare County. We’ve really put our tiny little car through quite a lot – between the gravel trail over the mountains, to the very popular twisting and turning single lane forest roads for duel direction traffic, and now a choppy 30 min boat ride.

Once on the shore, we again decided to “find our own way” to Ennis from our ferry point in Killimer. Along the way we came across field after field of free running ponies, and one pack in particular which just as interested in seeing us and we were in seeing them.

Before long we were exhausted from a long day or travel, and were happy to be in the town of Ennis. We watched the big European championship football game, and called it a night.