Following the M25 and M4 we made our way to the west deep into Welsh soil arriving at St. Davids’ Porthclais farm campsite. We made it ourselves comfy while it poured catch and dogs every now and then outside! An old leaking problem which we had at one of the windows in the van showed up again unfortunately. When it stopped raining we walked into town for a beer which we found at ‘The Bishops’. A pub which we visited also on our Wales tour a couple of years ago.

Next morning when we woke up, the weather was dry but foggy. Actually good weather to run for half an hour… and by returning at Porthclais Romy was waiting for having breakfast. A nice procedure which we can keeping up!
Today we actually will head to Ireland by the Stena ferry Fishguard – Rosslare, but instead of directly drive to Fishguard, we drove the backroads following the rugged coastline. We still had some time left so at Abercastle we parked and catched up the trail of Pembrokeshire Coast NP enjoying the foggy cliff views. Right on time we left for Ireland with the Stena Nordica.

Actually not to be much changes after arriving to Ireland from the UK…we changed Sterling for Euro but continued driving on the left hand side.

 Our will first port of entrance was the county of Kilkenny. We bought some strawberries and raspberries on the road and through the lovely Kilkenny hillside and villages we stopped at Nora Valley Park. This camping is actually a kids paradise with loads of animals to feed and cuddle with. Because we arrived after business hours, the reception already closed down. We parked and happily enjoyed the last sunrays of the day…

Livestock at Nora camping
Livestock at Nora camping

The kids enjoyed the playground next morning from 7am on giving us no other option to wake up early and start a new day…with sunshine! When we left home and we checked the weather forecast for the last time it basically would rain every day…so every day which we could enjoy breakfast outside was great!
Today on our schedule we wrote down ‘cycling to Kilkenny city’. We grabbed the bikes and drove down the narrow lanes towards Bennetsbridge where we crossed the river Nore and drove further southbound to Kilkenny where we had a look at The Parade and castle, High Street with pub after pub and at the end of the road we visited Irelands 2nd. biggest cathedral St. Canice and its circle tower just next to it. To come back to the place where we parked our pushbikes we crossed the Nore river once more to make a loop back, but before we got back we jumped into McDonagh shopping center to learn about the Irish Famine which took place roughly between 1840 and 1850. On the exact place where the shopping center has been build, a workhouse was founded to vacate the poor without any food and future. All this has been recovered after finding a mass grave at the construction site of the shopping center. Otherwise this history would still has been forgotten…


To get back to Nora Valley Park we followed the Kilkenny trail south loop. First cycling on the busy N9 without any separate cycling lane with cars passing by with over 100kmh. After a couple of kilometers we took a right turn and got back into silence mode. The Kilkenny trail got us to the village of Kells where we visited the local Priory and just after Stoneford village we smelled the animals of Nora Park again. In the evening we watched the womens world champions match Holland – Japan and confident with the day we felt asleep.