On pecks, parking and pouring

August 9th , Day Ten
There was some discontent at our having to wake quite early this morning. However, it was important to get going early for a number of reasons and these would be gradually revealed during the day. We headed south down the N20 toward Cork. This is one of the best stretches of road in the country and we made very good time so that we pulled into the town of Blarney quite close to 9am. Meg and Wayne, however, both despaired that neither Brock nor Quinn had ever heard of Blarney Castle or the Blarney Stone and the ritual associated with it. However, if you were to ask either boy about totally fictional realms in the computer game World of Warcraft they could bore you to death on the topic. Honestly, if they weren’t both teachers they would be questioning what it is that the schools of today do actually teach.

Surprisingly, the ticket box at Blarney Castle only accepted cash! However, at this stage the car park was still relatively empty, so the whole family went for a wander across to the Woollen Mills and other shops nearby where we had been informed that there would be a cash machine. This proved to be true and gave Meg, Brock and Quinn an opportunity to browse through the variety of woollen products while Wayne got to wait in the queue behind a horde of German, English and American university students. Soon enough we had the requisite cash and headed back through the gate and into the gates of this beautiful castle.

The castle which we see today is just the keep of the third building which has stood on the site. In the 10th century the first building was a wooden one. This was demolished and replaced by a stone structure in 1210 which was itself knocked down to be used for the foundations of the current building, erected in 1446 by Dermot McCarthy, King of Munster. It was his ancestor, Cormac McCarthy, who is said to have assisted Robert the Bruce in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. It was in gratitude for his assistance that half of the Stone of Scone was given to McCarthy, which half is reputedly the Blarney Stone which has become famous even till today.

There have been millions of visitors to Blarney Castle over the centuries, many of whom have kissed the stone. Some of the more famous ones include; Winston Churchill (in 1912), Laurel and Hardy (a few years earlier), Mick Jagger, Billy Connelly, Sir Walter Scott (in 1826), Tom Horan (who played in the first Test Match between England and Australia in 1877 and went on to captain his country), Nellie Bly (journalist who went around the world in 72 days, made sure she stopped at Blarney along the way), and Milton S Hershey (the American founder of the chocolate company that bears his name). More recently, the men from American Choppers visited in 2005 and Michael Madsen (an actor, famous for ‘Reservoir Dogs’ among other films) who has been this year.

Kissing the Blarney Stone is much more difficult than it sounds. After a delightful walk through the gardens which form part of the grounds there is quite a steep incline up to the castle itself. Once there, you have to navigate your way through the castle and up numerous flights of stairs. The stairwells are very narrow and quite steep, although there are some iron and rope railings to help you pull yourself up. Meg, in particular, found this to be quite a challenge, but she was determined that she was going to make it to the top. Once at the summit of the castle, you then have to negotiate your way around the battlement, lie down on your back, grab hold of two iron bars to steady yourself, then lean backwards and down (with an attendant holding your feet) in order to kiss the stone. While Brock and Meg had done fabulously well just to get to the top of the castle, the act of kissing the stone proved to be beyond them. However, Wayne and Quinn both managed it and have photos to prove it.

As it turned out, navigating our way back down was almost more difficult than making our way up the castle. The steepness of the stairs made moving down particularly tricky, and this was added to by the combination of a number of other visitors who (having successfully kissed the stone) wanted to get back down quickly, while others found the going much tougher. Meg sympathised with another lady who had twisted her ankle earlier in the week and who was finding the going particularly difficult and well as with some elderly tourists who had not expected the journey to be quite so challenging. Fortunately, it was compensated for by some quite magnificent views of the surrounding countryside.

As we made our way down from the castle through the grounds and back to the car one of the reasons for leaving Limerick early became very very clear. By now there were hundreds of tourists pouring through the gates into the castle. When we reached the carpark (after a couple of toilet stops) we found that it was full and there were a load of coaches which had not been there earlier. Another hint, just in case you ever come here, not only is it worth arriving early but it is also worth bringing your own camera and someone to take your photo while kissing the stone. There is a photographer at the top who takes photos of the moment, but of course the charge for the ‘official photo’ is quite substantial. In fact all of the souvenirs at the castle were on the expensive side compared to other places we had encountered in Ireland. So we jumped into Kylie and drove the last part of the journey to Cork.

Cork is another fabulous port city on the south coast of Ireland and (like Waterford before it, which is only 119 kilometres away) we loved it immediately. The city centre is on an island in the middle of the River Lee which runs into Lough Mahon and Cork Harbour, and the bridges crossing this give fabulous views of the water and the town. Cork Harbour is, apparently, the second largest naturally occurring harbour in the world (after Sydney Harbour, so we have visited the two largest harbours within 9 months of one another). Cork is also the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland (after Dublin) and the third largest on the island of Ireland (after Belfast). It is also one of the oldest cities, having been established as a monastic settlement by St Finbarr in the 6th Century. Like many of the other coastal places in Ireland that we have visited, it also boasts a connection to the Viking traders that operated in the area in the 10th Century. The city was also once fully walled, and there are still some remnants of the wall remaining today.

We had a phenomenal time driving around the city, admiring the architecture and going backwards and forwards across the bridges. Cork is particularly strong in hurling, so there was an enormous Cork Hurling team shirt hanging from a building, ready for the final of the hurling championships which was going to be taking place that weekend. There was an extraordinary amount of public art as well (even by Irish standards) so it was hard for the boys in the back to know where to look in order to take photos. Quinn however managed to find something called the Naked Bus on the other side of the river at one point and did succeed in taking photos of it. We had initially thought of having lunch in Cork (we had purchased supplies the evening before in Limerick) however, the distance which we still had to drive and the size of the place saw us put this thought to one side so that we might instead stop somewhere smaller in the next part of the route.

We left Cork headed west with the intention of doing a loop around the south-western corner of Ireland heading back up to Limerick where we were to stay a second night. Of all the west coast of Ireland, many of our contacts had told us that this was the most naturally beautiful part. This is largely true, although it is particularly so if the weather is fine. One of the things that we had learned (and another of the reasons for leaving early) was that if there was to be any good weather, it would be in the morning with rain tending to develop as the day progressed. Sadly, particularly after some glorious weather down to Blarney and then into Cork, as we drove out of the city we saw clouds ahead, which would (quite literally) put a bit of a dampener on the second part of our day.

Despite the impending rain, we made it down to Clonakilty in relatively good time (although it was noticeable that the traffic in this part of Ireland was considerably heavier than in most of the rest of the country). Clonakilty is another in a long line of beautiful Irish towns in which we wish we had had more time. Among other things, it is the home of Michael Collins (about whom a movie, starring Liam Neeson, was made) one of the leaders of the movement for Irish independence in the first quarter of the20th Century. It is well situated on a lovely river and brightly coloured, with the shops fronts in the city centre being particularly looked after in this way. Traffic actually within and around the town was extraordinarily congested, partly because of some roadworks, so once again we decided to skip having lunch here and to head for Skibbereen instead.

At this time we began to feel the unfortunate effects of another decision that we had made previously. Meg and Wayne had purchased large bottles of drink for the boys to have in the back with them in order to save having to constantly stop and spend money on buying drink. What they hadn’t counted on was that both Brock and Quinn, rather than limiting their fluid intake and conserving some for later in the day, would drink virtually all of their bottles before we even reached Blarney. As already mentioned, this led to more than one toilet stop at Blarney Castle alone, and the rest of the day saw both boys (but Quinn in particular) frequently asking to stop so that they could use the bathroom. At one point later in the trip, having only stopped 45 minutes previously so that Quinn could use the amenities, he was heard to ask once more if we could stop, and when his brother challenged him as to why, he stated that he had been holding on for over an hour!!

Much to our dismay, by the time that we reached Skibbereen the rain was bucketing down, so we are unable to give you much information as to how that town looked (other than that the toilets in the services were quite clean). It seemed like a nice place, and it certainly has a fabulous name which features in a traditional Irish song about both the famine and the impact of British rule upon Ireland. Once again we could not stop for lunch (we were beginning to regret having put the food in Kylie’s boot by this point) because of the heavy traffic which we experienced around the town and the amount of water falling from the sky. A few miles further on, after we had passed Aghadown but before we reached Ballydehob, we turned off the N71 on to a side road headed down to Roaringwater Bay. Among some farms, on an old dirt road, we found a place to stop under a bit of cover from some trees so that we could jump out, get the picnic we had prepared, and then jump back into the car to eat.

Brock and Quinn also took the opportunity for (yet another) chance to urinate by walking down the road away and finding some bushes. It was not long after they had got back that we noticed one of the mangiest dogs any of us had ever seen coming back up the road toward us. For those of you who have read Harper Lee’s novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ you might remember the scene where Atticus Finch is persuaded to shoot a rabid dog (and where the meaning of the novel’s title is properly explained). Both Meg and Wayne were reminded of that description by this old mutt as he shambled toward us. Despite his rather desperate look (and some fear expressed by Brock) he meant us no harm and Wayne was even able to get out of the car and feed him some biscuits before we went on our way.

Heading up the coast toward Killarney and Tralee presented us with a challenge. Part of the beauty of this area is the hilliness of the region, which gives way to breathtaking views down canyons into the bays and Loughs, filled with tiny islands, which constitute the coastline. As a result, the roads are quite steep and, at times, narrow and windy which is not conducive to travel at any sort of speed. However, it seemed that more local (we imagined) drivers were a bit more relaxed about the conditions and prepared to take more risks than we were. Wayne found himself (not for the first time) hoping for what Brock and Quinn call a ‘Wayne Lane’; a piece of road which we could drive along at any speed we felt comfortable with without drivers tailgating us and flashing their lights because we are sticking under the speed limit. That the weather was intermittently bucketing us with heavy rain was also not as fun as it might otherwise have been.

Despite all of the conditions, some of the views were absolutely astonishing. At times it felt like we were hanging directly over a valley or a bay which majestically appeared in front of us and was truly magnificent, even through a very wet windscreen. On another of Quinn’s comfort stops we were next to a large wooden statue of a druid overlooking a breathtaking valley which seemed to continue for miles in front of us, and which we were going to have to negotiate our way down into. While we cannot give you as much of a description of Killarney and Tralee as we would like (for much the same reasons we had for not describing Skibbereen) we can tell you that the scenery in this part of Ireland is stupendous and well worth visiting, especially if you can conjure up a sunny day. Wayne would also like to emphasise that there are still fingermarks in his leg from where Meg would clutch at it whenever she felt we were travelling too fast or where the land seemed to drop away from the side of the road at too precipitate a rate.

Because of the weather, the traffic and the roads, the trip around took us much longer than we had originally intended, so we consequently had to jettison a few of the possible destinations (such as Dingle, which is out near the westernmost point of Ireland) that we had wanted to explore. After an impressive drive but a slightly long and tedious one because of the inability to stop and walk around, we found ourselves heading back into Limerick. Brock and Quinn had slept quite a bit in the final few hours, so by the time we arrived back at the hotel they were full of beans, whereas Wayne and Meg wanted nothing more than to have some dinner then climb into bed. With that in mind, after we had eaten, Brock and Quinn were given the opportunity to do a little exploring around the hotel, possibly to find the reputed Playstation 2 which was supposedly part of the Games Room.

While the boys were out exploring, Wayne and Meg quickly checked emails and then, both being extraordinarily tired, climbed into bed at around 9:15pm. Meg thinks that Wayne fell asleep first, while Wayne is not so sure. What is apparent is that at 2am they were woken by the return of Brock and Quinn to inform us that they would be not sleeping in our room that night, but that they were going off to spend the night in the rooms of some girls that they had met as they explored. It seems that the people participating in the International Baton Twirling Championships tended to be aged in their mid teens and the boys had spent the previous few hours meeting up with, getting to know, and exchanging phone numbers and email addresses with a number of young people from different parts of the globe.

Among other things, Wayne and Meg were also informed that the next International Baton Twirling Championships were going to be held in Australia, possibly on the Gold Coast in Queensland. However, they were soon disabused of the notion that they were going to be sleeping in the rooms of girls that we had never met, without any parental supervision (we imagine that the parents of these baton twirlers were as tired as we were after a week of driving their cherubs to and from the championships). Instead, Brock and Quinn were ordered to say ‘goodbye’ to their new best friends and come to bed immediately. With muttered phrases to do with the unfairness of parents who were condemning them to lives of boredom, both boys complied and soon made it to bed as we all prepared ourselves for the penultimate day of our trip.

On quaffing, quiet and a quarrel

TotS Irish Adventure

August 8th , Day Nine
All of us are big fans of movies, whether it is for escapism, intellectual stimulation or simply a little light entertainment as a distraction. Because of its size, its relative positioning in relation both to the United States and to the United Kingdom, and the fact that the inhabitants speak English, Ireland has long been a place where filming for movies has taken place (even if the movie itself was not set in Ireland). Before the break Wayne’s senior English class had been watching the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan which (although set on the Normandy Beaches of France) was filmed at Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe in County Wexford. The Cliffs of Insanity from the fabulous film The Princess Bride, as actually the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare. Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, was used for the filming of The Italian Job (the original 1969 version) as the jail that held Mr Bridger.

We all slept in this morning but once up and awake were able to eat the fabulous breakfast already mentioned in the previous blog. It was a lovely sunny morning which made the first part of our drive down the N5 to Westport a very easy one to negotiate. Westport is one of only a very few planned towns in the country, having been designed by James Wyatt in 1780, at the commission of Lord Sligo, as somewhere for his tenants and workers to live. Interestingly, the people in the area are known (somewhat disparagingly) as ‘Coveys’ and there was a whole separate dialect in existence until very late last century. Although we spent quite a bit of time in the town here we were unable to hear (or perhaps distinguish) any remnants of this.

Parking the car we got out and walked along the Carrowbeg River, which runs through the centre of town. Like so many other towns we have visited during our trip, flowers feature heavily in the public decorations. Here there were plantings in baskets on either side of all the bridges across the river, as well as a number of pots outside the post office. Old stone buildings and bridges added to the picturesque nature of the place, as did the various types of birdlife that we saw in the river and by its side. One of the houses had ivy taking up the entire wall facing the street. You might have heard at the beginning of the year that Westport was the first town in the world to be featured in 3-D on Google Earth, now that we have visited we can understand why it was chosen. Some of the photos that we took are now on the Google Earth page for Westport so you can see exactly where we were.

Also interesting was a statue to Major John MacBride, who was born and raised in Westport. Involved in the early days of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Celtic Literary Society he was labelled a “dangerous nationalist” by the ruling British authorities and eventually moved to South Africa where he fought on the side of the Boers and rose to the rank of Major. Returning to Ireland he took part in the rebellion of 1916 in Dublin, almost by accident in that he was in the city on the day it began. He was executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin on 5 May 1916, two days before his fifty-first birthday. Facing the British firing squad, he refused to be blindfolded, saying "I have looked down the muzzles of too many guns in the South African war to fear death and now please carry out your sentence." His death features in the Yeats poem ‘Easter, 1916’ although it is not overly complementary as Yeats secretly loved MacBride’s ex-wife, Maud Donne. Their son, Sean MacBride, went on to become a prominent Irish politician and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

We drove through the main shopping district of the town on the way out to our first detour of the day and were impressed by how colourful everything was. Shops, pubs and houses were all painted in lively colours and featured decorations to make them even more interesting. Even the statue of St Patrick at the Octagon in the centre of the town had floral decorations around it. One of the members of the musical group ‘The Chieftains’, Matt Molloy, owns a pub in the town and it was today that Brock commented on the fact that so many of the pubs throughout the country featured the name of the proprietor. We were to continue to notice this for the rest of our trip. It was interesting in contrast to pubs in England which tend to have more obscure names.

From Westport we travelled out to the much smaller hamlet of Murrisk which is at the foot of Croagh Patrick. The top of Croagh Patrick is 764 metres above sea level and is another site of pilgrimage for Catholics within Ireland. St Patrick apparently fasted on the summit of Croagh Patrick for forty days in the fifth century and built a church there. At the end of Saint Patrick's 40-day fast, he reportedly threw a silver bell down the side of the mountain, knocking the she-demon Corra from the sky and banishing all the snakes from Ireland. However, there is some debate about this last detail with a number of other places in the country claiming to be the site of the snake banishment. They have built a chapel at the top and there is a flourishing trade in climbing equipment at the base. With his recent climb to the top of Mount Snowdon fresh in his mind, Wayne would have liked to accompany Brock and Quinn (who both purchased walking sticks) to the top. Given that it would have been at least a three hour climb, during which Meg would have been left at the base, we opted not to do the climb, but may return at a later date. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Croagh Patrick is that, when gold was discovered in significant quantities during the 1980’s Mayo County Council decided not to mine, reckoning that the gold was ‘fine where it was’.

Murrisk is also the site of the National Famine Monument which takes the form of a ship made from, and crewed by, skeletons. It was designed by the artist John Behan and represents the loss to Ireland both of the people who actually starved to death during the famine, and those who fled the country to other parts of the world as a consequence. Despite the seeming gruesomeness of the image, the was a sense of serenity in the place, which also had a fabulous outlook across Clew Bay. We took some time both to view the monument and to walk around the parkland that was part of the area, which had been opened by Irish President Mary Robinson in 1997. Sadly, and we are not sure that we would prefer it to have been tourists or locals, there was graffiti scattered around the park.

From Murrisk we went back into Westport, looking to take the R330 through Partry down to Ballinrobe. Unfortunately, while Westport was beautifully laid out, some of the signage suffered from the problems we have encountered in much of the rest of Ireland. Meg, looking at the map, got quite confused and ended up passing it back to Brock. We found ourselves heading along the road down toward Leenaun and the Connemara National Park. While we would have loved to have gone there out to Clifden, time was against us and we have determined that we weren’t going there. This part of the trip was made more interesting as we encountered the town of Drummin. Over a stretch of about 10 miles it felt like we were continually passing turn offs to Drummin, all with the appellation ‘3 miles’ attached. While it felt like we were in an episode of ‘The X Files’ it was explained by the curvature of the road and soon we were able to turn at Leenaun, down through what is known as Joyce Country and out along the edge of Lough Corrib.

In 1952, John Ford won the Best Director Oscar for the fourth (and last) time and, once again, it was not for a Western (despite that having been the genre that he most frequently worked within). Instead, it was for ‘The Quiet Man’, a movie starring John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara and Barry Fitzgerald about a champion American boxer who returns to Ireland, the country of his birth, after accidentally being responsible for the death of a man in the ring. While it was set on the island of Innisfree in Lough Gill, County Sligo, much of the filming was done in the town of Cong and particularly at the nearby Ashford Castle. From our impression of the town it would seem that they have been living off this brief moment of fame for the following 56 years because almost the whole economy seems to be based on tourism related to ‘The Quiet Man’. We elected not to take any of the multiple ‘Quiet Man’ tours on offer, but did look through ‘The Quiet Man’ gift and tourist information shop where, unsurprisingly, among other items for sale were DVDs, Soundtrack CDs, postcards, posters, coasters, pins, stuffed toys and probably (although we may be exaggerating at this point) commemorative ports celebrating the movie, ‘The Quiet Man’.

Ashford Castle now combines the roles of 5 star hotel and clubhouse for an amazingly scenic golf course. As we were driving through the grounds we crested a rise and were blown away by one of the more beautiful castles that we have come across since we left Australia. If we could have stopped and watched someone play a few holes (or better yet, played a few ourselves) we would have done so, but the road was one way down to the Golf Course Car Park and then out on a different road. This led through another fabulous stretch of woodland and, crossing an old stone bridge, past the remains of a ruined abbey into the town of Cong. As a means of entering a town, it would be hard to beat.

If it is ‘The Quiet Man’ economy that has meant that Cong (and Ashford Castle) have been so beautifully preserved, then every small town should have someone make a famous film within it. You can’t fit two cars down one street in opposite directions, so all the roads we encountered within the town were one way. Although the abbey is in ruins (thanks to King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell) they are lovingly looked after ruins, containing fascinating graves dating back centuries. Some of the houses still had thatched roofs and, probably for the sake of tourism, some of the townsfolk were dressed in clothing that wouldn’t have looked out of place 50 years ago. This nicely contrasted with some of the other tourists (many of whom were American) who so flawlessly captured the stereotype of bermuda shorts, loud hawaiian shirts and even louder voices. We even saw someone wearing a safari suit!!!

Leaving Cong saw us head down through Cross, Headford and into the city which was to provide our biggest disappointment of the entire trip. Galway is a name which both Meg and Wayne had associated in their minds with some of the beauty for which Ireland is renowned. There are old songs related to Galway. You can catch the ferry from Galway out to the beautiful Aran Islands of Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer. One of the bigger of Irelands airports is in Galway. In fact, Galway is the fastest growing of Irelands cities with a population (as of the 2006 census) of 72 414. However, our initial impressions of the city (perhaps because of the direction from which we came) was that it was very industrial. Approaching from the north on the N84 one of the first sights that we saw was a McDonalds. In fact, as a city, Galway wouldn’t have looked out of place in England, America or Australia. Perhaps this is why it is growing so much and it is obviously popular with young people but it seemed to us to have lost a little of the distinctiveness of Ireland in the process. Maybe we need to give it a second chance.

It was getting late in the afternoon as we travelled further down inland through Ennis and Shannon to our destination for the evening, the town of Limerick. Apart from prompting a sudden outpouring of verse of the ‘There once was a man from Nantucket’ style, Limerick also restored our faith both in the beauty of Ireland and in the confusion of its maps and signage. It seemed like only seconds after entering the environs of the city that we were crossing the picturesque River Shannon over one of the impressive stone bridges that span its meanderings. We had a map and a set of directions provided by an earlier tourist information office but strangely nothing seemed to fit. We pulled over outside King John’s Castle and St Mary’s Cathedral which are opposite one another, virtually in the centre of town, and Meg went to ask directions from a truck driver. Our suspicions that Irish people, in their desire to be friendly and welcoming, will give directions to somewhere even if they have not a clue where the place itself is, was reinforced at this point because even though the truckie drew another map, it bore little resemblance to what we confronted by.

Trying to follow the directions we had been given did at least give us a good look at Limerick, even if they did very little as far as finding the hotel at which we would be staying. The city itself dates from at least the Viking settlement in 812. The Normans redesigned the city in the 12th century and added much of the most notable architecture, such as King John's Castle and St Mary's Cathedral. During the civil wars of the 17th century, the city was central. It was besieged by Oliver Cromwell in 1651 and twice by the armies of King William in the 1690s. It became a key shipping port during the latter part of the 18th Century, but the Act of Union and the Famine devastated the region so that Frank McCourt’s ‘Angela’s Ashes’ describes a place in the 1930’s and 1940’s that is crippled by poverty. Fortunately, the phenomenal growth of the Irish economy in the 1990’s benefited Limerick particularly and, despite the presence of ‘Angela’s Ashes’ tours, there is little remaining of the way of life that he describes, so that there is even some resentment of the portrayal of the city from more recent locals.

As we headed south of the city we drove past the University and were struck by the fact that the International Baton Twirling Championships were taking place at the University that week. Meg also noticed a lady walking down the street who had a haircut that captured what she wanted to have done to her own hair upon our return to England. By this time it had passed 5pm and we were in the middle of peak hour traffic so we maintained pace with the pedestrians for a couple of blocks. Eventually Meg took some photos to take back and show the hairdresser while Brock, Quinn and Wayne did their level best not to look like stalkers.

After significant frustration at being caught in such traffic, being unable to find our way, and running very low on fuel we eventually spotted a services where we were able to solve all three problems at once. Within minutes we found ourself at the Maldron Hotel (which was very impressive) and had Kylie parked in the undercover car park. With Brock and Quinn firmly ensconced in the room (which had both television and WiFi access) Meg and Wayne decided to take a walk across the Southern Ring Road to some local shops and a supermarket to see if they could get something reasonably cheap to eat for dinner. On their way back, with some hot food ready to go, they happened to witness an accident. There were three cars present but only the middle one had made contact with the car in front. However, when they crossed the road they found the driver of the middle car claiming that she had been pushed into the car in front by the driver behind her. Not wishing to allow an injustice, particularly given that the accused driver was a Learner, they stopped to intercede on that drivers behalf and wait for the Guarda to arrive. The lady in the middle was still prepared to argue with them until another pedestrian (who hadn’t actually witnessed the events at all) heard us and convinced the woman that with 5 people against her (the driver at the front was appalled at her behaviour and sided with everyone else) she would be better simply exchanging insurance details with the front lady and leaving.

Happy that they had in some way helped in seeing right prevail, Wayne and Meg returned to tell the boys the story. On the way they noticed that many of the competitors and their families from the Baton Twirling Championships were actually staying in our hotel (a fact which would soon come back to haunt them). After a somewhat cooler meal than originally anticipated and some time on the internet for everyone to catch up with emails that had not been looked at almost since we left England, it was then time to get some sleep with not too many days left of our holiday remaining.