July 30, 2010

Ireland honeymoon post mortem, part 1

Posted in Travel tagged driving, honeymoon, ireland, travel at 7:55 AM by Brad

As I find time and motivation, I’ll post my thoughts about our honeymoon to Ireland. The first thing I would like to talk about is driving in Ireland. Take most of this tongue-in-cheek. The stories are true, and the driving was scary, but my tone is playful. We didn’t die or crash, and most drivers are actually quite friendly.

If you’re an American, I’m sure you’ve heard people marvel at the whole driving on the left thing. It’s really not that big of a deal. The basic rule is the same as it is here: if all the cars are coming at you, you’re going the wrong way. As long as you follow traffic, you’ll be fine. And when there is no traffic, you’ve got bigger problems, but I’ll get to that.

There are 5 basic kinds of situations you’ll find yourself driving in Ireland. First is driving in a city, such as Dublin. Let me say that it was perhaps the second worst decision I made to rent a car and drive in Dublin. Read this post to find out about my worst choice, flying with US Airways. If you are an American, avoid driving in Dublin at all costs, unless you love stress or want to kill yourself or others. It’s just not worth it. There are more buses than people, it seems, and they will take you where you want to go. There are twice as many cabs as buses, and they will take you places no one should go, I’m sure.

Why should you not drive? The lanes on all roads (except highways) are just wide enough to fit a typical compact car. The mirrors of your car will be over the paint marking out lanes. No joke. You will be passing cars close enough to count the hairs on the other drivers’ heads. It’s bad when you’re all going the same way. It’s worse when it’s narrow two lane roads. More on that in a bit.

Like I said, driving in the left lanes is no big deal. What really screws you up is that you’re sitting on the right side of the car. If you’ve always driven sitting on the left – for nearly 20 years in my case – then you’ve developed a feel for where the car is. You don’t even have to think about navigating narrow spaces, because you have an instinct for the size of the car. Sit on the the other side of the car, and throw all that out. You’re right back to being 16 again, and making stupid 16-year-old mistakes like hitting a curb (kerb in Ireland) with your front left tire (tyre in Ireland) at 30mph (roughly 48kmh in Ireland) and rupturing the sidewall of said tire. Yeah, that was me.

And let me just say it’s tough to get roadside assistance when you don’t know where you are in a town you’ve been in for all of 30 minutes and even the people walking by on the sidewalk can’t tell you what street you’re on. True story.

So, that’s city driving. If you decide to go touring, then you will face driving on highways between major urban areas. This is a pleasure. Wide lanes, and plenty of them. Pretty light traffic most of the time. As long as you’re not driving crazy fast, no one really cares how fast you go. I saw two police cars checking speed on highways in the two weeks we were in Ireland. I was speeding a bit both times, and neither decided to follow and pull me over. Nor did they pull over the people passing me. Go figure.

Once you get out of urban areas and off highways, you will come to the first of the truly exciting driving experiences: two lane rural roads. Remember those narrow lanes? Yeah…these roads are just barely wide enough for two cars and the paint to mark lanes. You know those pictures you’ve seen of Ireland with rolling grassy hills with stone fences marking out plots of land? They’re all true. What you don’t see is that those stone fences line almost all the country roads. Even better, the fences lurk like some slumbering beast in the foliage that covers almost everything. So you’re driving down this road at 80kmh – about 50mph, a little slower than the posted 100kmh (~62mph) because you are terrified – with cars coming the other way close enough to see the ear hairs of other drivers, and there’s this granite fence hiding somewhere in the bushes to your left. Is it 1 foot away? Five feet? Who knows? I guess that’s part of the fun.

It was at this point that I started to think that Irish drivers are crazy. Like I said, they drive 100kmh (or more) on these roads. The roads are curvy. They are usually wet, and often in bad condition. They pass within inches of your side mirrors, apparently oblivious of the violent and bloody death that awaits if they miscalculate by a just a smidge. If you are like me, you will start to edge off to the left a bit when cars are coming in the other lane. My rental, and many of the other rentals I saw, had marks in the finish from all the plants brushed against while trying to avoid certain doom. And just imagine how your passenger must feel with that blur of green smacking the window at 80-100kmh. But, hey, at least you have all your tires.

Then it gets worse. If you get into even more rural areas, you will find two lane roads with no paint marking the lanes. And since there is no paint, the roads are a little narrower. I guess the logic is that if you don’t have the paint on there, why waste the space? Ireland is a somewhat small island, after all. Because of this, you are even closer to oncoming traffic. As you might imagine, it becomes an even more sphincter-puckering experience. Probably the most vivid memory I have of the trip is driving down one of these roads lined by large, old trees. I’m coming down a hill and there’s a corner up ahead. And coming around that corner is a full-sized semi truck (white flat front cab, chromed grill, blue open sided trailer) too large for one lane. And it’s all in my lane, thanks to the curve. My car got real familiar with the foliage on the left side of the road at that point. I think I actually yelled out, incredulous, “Oh come on!” This is the point where I decided that no, the Irish aren’t just crazy. They simply do not fear death. And maybe they all secretly want to be rally car drivers.

In my opinion, those are the most frightening roads, though that’s not the end of what you will encounter. If you get way out there, say in The Burren on the west coast, you will encounter one lane rural roads. And the traffic goes in both directions. It’s generally not that bad, because most people tend to drive more slowly on these roads. Some locals might get up to 80-100kmh, but I found that to be rare. How do these roads work? If you encounter another car coming the other direction, one of you will have to pull of to the side to let the other person pass. One of you will be close to a spot with a little extra room between the road and the ubiquitous stacked stone fences and will pull off while the other car edges by, the driver waving and smiling grimly as if to say, “Yeah, this is effed up.” It’s a bit like when you are walking towards a person and you both try to step around each other, but you both keep stepping the same direction, until one of you just stands still and lets the other person pass.

At one point, I was climbing a hill, and another car (old yellow sedan, circa 1985) crested it just as I neared the top. He slammed on his brakes, because he was going about 80kmh. I can remember hearing Beth’s sharp intake of breath and thinking, “Well, it was a fun trip.” No crash, though, and we were able to get around each other. I believe it was this instance that made me think that it’s not that the Irish don’t fear death; they are actively seeking to die in a horrible car crash. It’s probably the economy and the 25% unemployment.

The actual act of driving can be pretty terrifying until you get used to it. After two weeks, I got a feel for the car, and was getting comfortable. Had we spent a month, I’d probably have been driving like a native. Going to fast in lanes that are too narrow, and drifting around curves in the country. Just kidding.

The one other peculiarity about the driving experience is that the Irish apparently hate signs. We Americans like our signs, and display them prominently, so they are easy to read from a good distance. In the city, when they decide to put the occasional sign up for a road, they put them on the sides of buildings. This means that you’ll be in the wrong lane, looking for that one road that will take you where you need to go, and you will pass it because you couldn’t see it until you were right on it. This leads to some interesting adventures driving all over town because the maps you have don’t quite match reality. In Dublin, at least. Like I said, don’t drive. Bus, cab, walk or bike if you know what’s good for you.

In the country, it’s a little worse. You’ll drive miles and miles out of your way because you were looking for route R-blah-blah-blah, and it wasn’t labeled. It’s not your fault, and it’s not your navigator’s fault. I have developed a hypothesis: in Ireland, the signs have their own gravity. They tend to attract each other and cluster up at odd places. So you’ll drive ten miles out of your way without seeing a single sign or landmark to come to a T-intersection with about 30 signs; none of which point to what you are looking for. I am not kidding. I will post a picture Beth took of one such occurrence.

The upshot: get a GPS and use it. Buy one as soon as you get there, or get one from your car rental company. Remember that the GPS you’re bringing from the states has US maps, not Ireland maps. Although you may be able to download them once you get there.

That’s all I really have to say about the driving, except that roundabouts are cool, and we should have more of them in the states. My advice if you’re going to drive in Ireland: don’t panic, breath deeply, and pack extra underwear.

Peace,
Brad

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