Trying to share my experiences with you without writing a novel is difficult, but here I go! I didn't want to give you a "blow by blow" travelogue of Ireland (or of England, Paris or the U.S for that matter) and I hope I've managed to avoid that, but if you're after that, go to a Pilot Guide or Lonely Planet. If you want a travelogue with lots of laughs, read Pete McCarthy's "McCarthy's Bar" (which my friend Glenny kindly presented me with before I left Bath, and I'd read in three days it was that good), but you won't get any of that from me. You'll get some personal insights, some observations, some gentle irony and hopefully a laugh or two along the way. We saw far too much and went to far too many places on our week long road trip for me to tell you about them all...........after all we covered 1600 km in a week and still we skipped places we really wanted to visit, but that's the sacrifice you make when you want to truly experience a place. I'd rather have done select places on the west coast well, than have done it ALL and not experienced any of it! I'm really not one for ticking off places on a map, just so i can say I've been there, when "being there" means driving past and taking a photo out the window of the car. I want to get out and sink my boots in the mud or the sand and trip over rocks and stand on the edge of cliffs and get wet and cold and dirty and feel the place and hear the sounds and see the hidden things.......SO that's what we did!
So I've agonised about how to report all of this to you and after long reflection I've decided to talk about places by the impact they had on me personally. I can't say if Phil felt exactly the same way (though at times I felt him in exactly the same emotional space as me, particularly when we were in places that tore at our hearts, or made us laugh out loud), but then this is MY blog, so you'll get MY feelings and that will have to do!
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