VALHALLA BOUND- Part 1

 

Introduction

There’s something about travel and I’ve always recognised the opportunities it presents to compare and contrast. In fact, travel is one instrument that helps point you to the regions of experience, understanding and reason. Rather than merely providing locations and natives to adorn photos, status updates and predictable recounts, travel at its best challenges, confronts, comforts and condemns in ways that make descriptors like ‘quaint’, ‘iconic’ and ‘awesome’ child-like and inadequate. If it’s a straight blow-by-blow description of the Regans’ 2018 European campaign that you’re seeking then you won’t find it here.

The content sample and logistics

Our journey took place in August and September of last year and included traipsing around parts of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

The first three target areas featured car travel while the rest were incorporated into a cruise which commenced in Bergen and finished in Copenhagen. Most of the places we visited were for the first time but we did have prior experience with parts of Germany and Copenhagen. The Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland phases took about five weeks and the cruise lasted for twelve days.

Ireland

Dublin was great. The keys to the hall of Odin could have been found very early in our trip given Dublin’s Viking origins. Rory Gallagher’s strat was nailed to a wall and Sailing to Byzantium dissonance reared its head and would continue as a recurring thumbnail/ nightmare over the next three weeks or so. Trinity College, the Book of Kells and the Chester Beatty Library only added to the confusion. Yanks and Ireland seem to have a history but more instances of that follow. St Patrick might have taken on the asps during a city walk but the session at Boxty on the second night in Dublin was, for aged me, a very cool and hip thing. Kerry might disagree.

On the road we soon discovered that Lucifer’s lair lay in a church overlooking Cobh. This structure was ‘menacing’ and supervised every bloody corner of the town from its Mayfair position. Cobh was the Titanic’s last port of call and I’m wagering it picked up some dark stowaway there.

The chapel of the damned

We camped in Killorglin at a guest house for three days and the host had this really impressive collection of golf memorabilia that he kept in a special room on the premises. Seems he was the captain of the local golf club at one stage and had met Tiger, Mark O’Meara, Monty, Seve and many others over the years. He also possessed a seriously good autograph book and an outstanding library of golf instructional primers. From what I could gather, the tykes seem to be as keen on flog as the Scots.

Motoring around the Ring of Kerry was very good. No, it wasn’t sublime, surreal or ephemeral! But the excursion was well worth both the effort and the petrol. The landscape was ever-changing (well, maybe ‘ephemeral’ a bit) and as you approached the perimeter of one ‘scene’, another slowly or quickly appeared. I still hadn’t worked out the windscreen wipers’ set up in our hire car and the entire journey on Ring Day featured the wipers operating on intermittent mode under broad blue skies.

The Dingle Peninsula

I’m like most other bogans and crude stereotyping is my main tool when processing and accommodating new info. We were eating at a tapas bar one evening on the Killorglin leg of proceedings and our accents attracted the attention of a couple of other diners. A conversation started with these two yank women. They were a mother/ daughter combo and were in Ireland for a wedding. ‘Mom’ was at veteran status but hadn’t quite travelled through the ‘60’ weir gate by my reckoning. She looked bloody good but her attire was definitely aspirational even allowing for the image. The daughter was about twenty or so. They had the appearance of what you’d imagine Paris Hilton and her female sprog would present as. Articulate, responsive and friendly are accurate descriptors of how that half-hour encounter group proceeded. Trump wasn’t mentioned once and an example of why travel can be gripping was logged into the diary.

Jethro Tull’s Cold wind to Valhalla was soon located and I can’t remember a stronger buffeting than the one we received at the Cliffs of Moher. The gift shop was the only haven and a solid session of senior farting in public was reasonably safe given the competing noise of the swiftly moving air and the associated immediate dispersal of any tell-tale odours. At one stage I was almost blown sideways but the cliffs themselves were impressive and oblivious to the howls of both nature and punters.

A sign outside of Sammy’s Café at Inch Beach value-added to the firming and slightly disturbing Sailing to Byzantium theme…..

Dear Inch must I leave you

I have promises to keep

Perhaps miles to go

To my last sleep.

Kerry and I both reasoned that Valhalla and Byzantium must be in adjoining neighbourhoods so we decided to follow the prominently displayed advice and press on. The agony of old age may be a reality but Northern Ireland was beckoning and there were temporal concerns regarding the hire car.

-To be continued-