Day 4 - Wicklow Mountains

After 3 full days of city life, Kara and I are excited to pick up the camper van and start getting to get away from the noise of the city and begin our camping adventure. The van pickup location is unfortunately quite far outside of Dublin, about a 40 minute drive, so we have to leave by 10 am sharp to ensure we can make it to our pickup time. To be as economical as possible, our plan is to shovel in some food from the hostel breakfast one last time, catch a series of busses to take us 90% of the way to the van pickup, then take a short taxi ride from the bus stop to the van pickup. From there, we can hop in the van, grab groceries to through into the cooler, and make our way into the Wicklow Mountains, just south of Dublin.

Late to leave the hostel, Kara and I race with our backpacks to the first bus stop to catch the first bus to our transfer stop, and then wait for our next bus to arrive. We wait for abut 5 minutes, which is the originally scheduled pickup time. The sign with the arrival time shows that the transfer bus is 5 minutes late, then 10 minutes, then 15. So we wait, and wait, and then wait some more. Finally, we see our bus coming down the lane, excited to hop on and put down our bags. Once we hop onto this bus, we can sit and relax for about 40 minutes. Kara and I step up to the curb, ready to hop on quickly, but the bus is approaching the stop with alarming speed. As the bus approaches less than 50 feet away, it shows no signs of slowing down. As Kara and I stand at the curb, clearly waiting for this bus, it zooms right past the stop, with no intention of picking up more passengers. We try to chase it, hoping it will stop at another bus stop 2 blocks up, but it zooms right past that one too. After a short, unrealistic chase, Kara and I give up. Having no other public transit alternative, we give in and I order an expensive taxi to pick us up.

The taxi driver sympathizes with us and confirms what we’ve been told from other Dubliners—the public transit is shite. As we sit in the car, I suddenly realize I would be quite scared to drive in Dublin, and ask the driver for some tips. He says that once you get out of the city, driving on the roads and highways is quite easy and nothing to worry about. We pass some time with all of the small talk we can muster, but then sit in silence as we enter rural territory north of Dublin. The countryside is green, and we pass some interesting landmarks along the way. One of the weirdest are advertisements for the Tayto amusement park. Tayto is a potato chip brand in Ireland, and I can’t possibly imagine why anyone would want to visit a potato chip theme park.

When we arrive at our pickup, we come to a non-descript locked gate with no one available to open and no one to even call. I am suddenly worried we don’t have the right address, that the campervan pickup was a scam, and that I’ve wasted all this money getting us out here. Luckily my fears are alleviated as a pickup pulls in behind the taxi, letting us know she is the owner and she’ll get the gate open right away. We grab our bags, thank the driver, and I make sure to give him a good tip in the taxi app.

Evonne, the owner of this branch for the Wicked Campervans, is a friendly lady, clearly someone who enjoys living in the rural part of the country and doesn’t like venturing to the city if she can help it. The experience of getting the van and learning all of the tricks of how to run the sink or position the boards is very helpful. This is nothing like picking up a rental car, and I appreciate the set-up time and tourist recommendations she provides us.

Once we settle into the van, our first errand is to stop and get some groceries. We have a little butane stove and all of the essential cutting boards and cookware, so we plan to cook dinner out of the van most nights. We don’t know when and where we will have access to groceries, so we need all of the ice and groceries we can fit into the van. I pull the car off the dirt lot and begin driving, relying on Kara to give me directions to Lidl, a supermarket giant in Europe. Driving on the left-side of the road is hard to remember for the first few turns I take, but thankfully I am driving on empty rural roads to start. What is more difficult to adjust to is sitting on the right side of the vehicle. The blinker and the windshield wipers are opposite from all the other cars I’ve driven, so I accidentally turn on the wipers several times during our trip.

We drive into a small village where the Lidl is located, park the van, and I get my first taste of Lidl, the grocery store that I will come to love on this Ireland trip. As a European supermarket, I find that all of the Lidls we go to are much smaller than even my local modest Safeway or King Soopers. However, the bakery items look delicious, and my mouth watering over the memory of those scones even as I write this. What shocks me is how inexpensive the fruits, veggies, and staples are throughout the market. Even the fresh meat and fish are less expensive in Lidl than they are in the US. Whether this is due to everything being a smaller size or just that they’ve found a better economy of scale, I am not sure. I will learn throughout this trip that the fresh produce tastes much better in Europe, especially the carrots. The carrots are sweeter and have a more satisfying snap than those I buy at home, and they become a staple of our van. We also load up on Barry’s Tea, the name-brand black tea which we will drink in lieu of coffee in the van each morning. We get some chicken and oil and butter, sandwich bread and sandwich filler, and some other groceries, as well as some crisps to snack on, and pick the cooler.

The hidden treasure we discover from Lidl is a Chicken Tikka Sandwich filler. From the first time we taste this, Kara and I look at each other and know this is the only sandwich filler we will be getting for the rest of the trip. We add seasoned cucumbers onto the sandwiches to give them a crunch, but the filler itself is well-spiced and can stand on its own.

After filling up on the sandwiches and picking up a few flat whites from a cafe, we finally hit the road to head toward Wicklow Mountain National Park, about a 90 minute drive south. The drive is, to say the least, stressful as we drive around the outskirts of Dublin. I am still learning how the Irish drive, and figuring out the comfort level of the van itself. When we make it to some calmer roads, I instantly become aware of how narrow the roads are once you are off the main thoroughfares. In our campervan, some of these roads may get tricky to navigate. In many ways, the roads remind me of the country roads in Idaho my parents would drive me down to get to my grandma’s house. There are no lines, and it seems that staying to the left-side of the road is optional until you see another car veering toward you. Luckily, the mountain roads we are driving through are nowhere near as difficult as the mountain roads I drive at home. As we leave the outskirts of Dublin, we finally begin to notice that we are climbing in elevation and start to see hills around us.

By 2 pm, we enter Wicklow National Park. As our van climbs up the hillsides, we come to a scenic stop near a lake at Eagles Crag. Kara and I want to walk for a bit, so we get out of the van and carry nothing but our water bottles with us. We expect to do a quick stroll around the edge of the lake, nothing too strenuous, so we don’t bother with our packs. We follow the treaded grass (there is no clearly marked path) along the edge of the water. There are people who have laid claim to some camping spots next to the lake, and others are out paddleboarding on the lake. As we continue away from the campers, we find ourselves at the bottom of a quite steep, vertical climb up to Eagles Crag (whose name we did not know until looking it up later). Kara and I are both interested to see the view from the top, so we climb on hands and knees, carrying our water bottles, up the path. When we get to the top, we get to see a beautiful overlook of several peaks of the Wicklow Mountains, and find we can still see the ocean from where we are. It’s hard to remember how tiny Ireland is and that, as an island, you are never too far away from the ocean.