Fitzmaurice Caravan & Camping Park, Tramore, County Waterford, Munster

We have spent our last full day about Waterford in a most productive manner, leaving our map with a great many filled in lines. Tomorrow when we leave, we can be satisifed we gave the area our best shot, although one could come again for the same numberof days and fill them with new experiences. However these would not be spent here in this camp; hopefully we would be able to secure a site in one of the other camping grounds within the vicinity.

And while critiquing this particular accommodation,  I shall go further. First to note the positives: we have found it very well suited to explore the area, and it is well served by very good supermarkets. There is also a well stocked onsite shop although we have had no occasion to use it. The aged bathroom facilities are kept as clean as you might expect given their age, the toilet paper has not run out as has happened in some camps with the pressure of campers, but there is no soap or hand drying facilities that you might find in more formal camps. Several of the toilets have no functioning locks on the doors and showers cost one euro a pop.There is free wifi, which I have used a couple of times in an attempt to not fall too far behind with my blog posting. This is available in the shop, the games room full of noisy children and in the laundry where I set myself up on the top of a dryer. Litter blows about the camp, dropped by the campers who smoke and chew and drop litter. I did see one of the hosts about with a rubbish bag on our second day, so in fairness, wind blown litter is hard to conquer. 

When we returned this afternoon, there was a motorhome parked between us and our immediate neighbour with no consideration for the car that must surely accompany a caravan. Management should be monitoring that this sort of thing does not occur. 

This morning there was a general exodus of undesirables: one family of two useless teenage boys who thought it entertaining to either play extremely loud music, albeit of an acceptable nature, or to rev their father’s car to a screaming crescendo. During these times their father and his girlfriend were either absent, having walked up out of the park hand in hand, or busy dealing to more intimate matters in the smaller of the two tents. Rubbish and chattels lay about their campsite like a tip, and when they were all relaxing together, and had managed to pacify their little dog who spent most of the time tied up to the car steering wheel, they lay about on rugs on the grass, defining boredom. The “boys” looked quite menacing, their ears low on their heads, with faces that would win gurning awards, probably products of foetal alcohol syndrome. I had labelled the “girlfriend” Kim Kardeshian because she seemed to symbolise everything unseemly about white trash, however the senior male of their little camp seemed to be quite besotted. Now if you have not already guessed I have a talent, or fault, in making up scenarios of social scenes I view from the outside but do accept that I could be wrong in every little detail. It has been known. And I accept I am an awful snob.

Another family renting one of the  static vans seemed to fall into the same social sector, and while they did not inconvenience me in the least, I was glad I did not have to walk up past them this evening.

However, the camp is also full of lovely families and people touring about in their motorhomes and caravans; it is just the age old story of the few no-hopers spoiling the scene for everyone. We have been full time travellers for seven years and have found very few, if any,  to offer so little for so much. 

But this post is supposed to be about the wonderful places we have visited, and today we saw so many more. I will put aside my whinging, even though my travelling mate suggests, as I read this out, it is too diplomatic.

We set off promptly after breakfast knowing there was a lot of ground to be covered if we were to keep to the day’s itinerary. Our route took us through Waterford, around an inner ring road which gave us an alternate view of the city. Until now we reckoned Irish homes were most attractive and would, in the main, suit our style of living were we to give up the travelling life. However this morning we passed rows and rows of dreary single storied attached houses, all close to the street with nothing to commend them at all. This is the other side of Ireland and we are starting to understand that perhaps there is a big divide between the haves and have-nots. Having said that, we reckon everything is very expensive here and we could end up as have-nots ourselves if we stay too long.

We crossed over the River Suir, and headed north up the tributary, the River Barrow, all part of the waterways that flow out through the Waterford Harbour. We had read up on the attractions worthy of a visit, but decided we had too little time or inclination to pay for them today. There are plenty of other school holiday tourists to keep the tour providers busy, we will instead spend our euros in the supermarkets, on fuel and accomodation, with the odd bit tossed into the tourism coffer. In the end, it is all tourism income to the country no matter how it is spent. 

We parked up and wandered about the town, making our way down to the riverside dominated by the Dunbody Famine Ship. This replica of the original three masted barque built in Quebec in 1845, one of those tagged “coffin ships” sits against the quay wall to demonstrate to all how hideous the ships that took those emigrants to the US between 1846 and 1851 were, escaping the potato famines of Ireland. Death rates on these ships sometimes reached 20%, conditions were hideous, and perhaps they were worse than those on the convict ships to Australia or the immigrants shipped to New Zealand.  However we have seen enough of this over the years of our travel, particularly poingant given the origins of my own ancestors; I felt there was probably little to be learned here. 

Up the street we shopped for newspaper and pastries, still not heeding the healthy food - no sugar message out there to keep us all slim and long living. My husband admired the old fashioned sign writing on the town’s shops, with the expert eye of one who was once trained in such skills himself. We checked out New Ross’s Tholsel or market house, built by local Member of Parliament,  Charles Tottenham, in 1749. We had come upon him and his fame in Dublin; the story of how he raced to Dublin in 1731  even in his muddy boots and filthy attire demanding entry to the parliament on a crucial vote, having ridden all night.  The Sergeant relented, the vote was held and Tottenham’s side won, by that one crucial vote. He was known as Boots thereafter.

He also built a town house for himself up the street from the Tolsel, and it was yet another building we found to admire before heading up the hill to check out the cathedral, another religious location busy with both doers and those choosing to indulge in prayer, a less strenuous occupation.

From here we travelled north east to Enniscorthy, County Wexford’s second largest town with a population of about 12,000. This attractive old town straddles the River Slaney, its main commercial centre set steeply on one side, today vibrant with colour and people, no less the one street roofed with umbrellas, the left overs from a music festival held over the bank holiday weekend. But here they have major problems with their traffic congestion; streams of folk doing everyday business snaking through the steep streets at snails pace.

 

Here too in Enniscorthy can be found the National 1698 Centre which explains how the Irish were inspired by the revolutionists in both France and America, inspired by the principals of freedom, fraternity and liberty. It was this fervor that incited a group here and about Wexford to rise up and demand equality for all. Like so many uprisings, especially here in Ireland, this too ended in tears, or at least blood, guts and death. The Battle of Vinegar Hill, that which stands above Enniscorthy, the scene of one such and it was there we drove to explore for ourselves before enjoying our picnic lunch with 360 degree views all about the county.

Here on Vinegar Hill, over 16,000 rebel men, women and children, hopefully included only because they couldn’t find babysitters, camped in June 1798. So very poorly armed, they were doomed to failure, the British military assault so better equipped. With 13,000 troops it could have been total carnage, however there was a hiccup in the military plan and many escaped through what became known as Needham’s Gap, whether by total incompetance on the part of General Needham, or a blind eye turned in a moment of compassion. Apparently the jury is still out even after all these years, however the fact remains, hundreds of rebels died and this became another notch in the historical hate-fest.

On we drove now south through County Wexford to Wexford itself, set on the southern edge of a marvellous harbour. The Irish name for the town is Loch Garmen, and without expert assistance, I would hazzard a guess that this alludes to the fact the harbour is lake-like. We parked up in a multi-story carpark and wandered through the town and along the harbour shore past large fishing boats, their deep hulls empty and cleaned out, ready for their next voyage.

Near the shore is a prominent statue of John Barry and along the street a bit, is a pub whose name honours the same. This man, Commodore John Barry, was founder of the American Navy,  and was born near here in 1745 and now his bronze-self overlooks yet another lot of traffic congestion.

Other connections to the US forces relate to the fact that Wexford was one of five US Naval air stations in Ireland during the First World War. It was from here that American Curtiss H-16 seaplanes conducted antisubmarine patrols to counter German submarine attacking Allied shipping in the Irish Sea and St George’s Channel.

Once again on the road, we now headed south west along the minor R733, to Tintern Abbey, this the same name as that on the River Wye in Wales. Here we exercised our English Heritage cards in gaining free entry to this Heritage Ireland site, and were welcomed most warmly by a young woman who even after ten years settlement in the country still bore the very strong accent of her mother country. Chris struggled to understand her, I less so.

In AD 1200, William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke and Lord of Leinster, who we became acquainted with in Wales, was threatened with shipwreck off the south coast of Ireland. He made a pact with his god that if he were saved from perishing at sea, he would found an abbey. Reaching safety in Barrow Bay, he kept his bargain and granted about 3,500 hectres of land for the foundation of a Cistersian Abbey – hence the name Tintern de Voto, Tintern “of the vow”. Once established Tintern was colonised by monks from Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, Wales. Tintern acquired large tracts of land in County Wexford and at the time of the dissolution in 1536 appears to have been the third richest Cistercian abbey in Ireland.

When the Irish abbeys were closed down in the 16^th century, many fell into ruin and were quarried away for building rubble. Tintern is unusual because the main building, the church, was converted to a residence.

Shortly after 1536, the abbey and its lands were granted to Anthony Colclough, from Staffordshire, an officer in Henry VIII’s army. In the following centuries, the Colclough family modified the abbey church. The last member of the family to reside in Tintern, Maria Biddulph Colclough, left in 1859 and the abbey was taken into state ownership in 1963.

The Office of Public Works started conservation work at once, removing the 19^th century house that was built inside part of the original structure. Hence there is no evidence of Maria’s home at all, which I found a little disappointing. Apparently she lived there in her middle and older years without electricity, and surely would have been baffled by the mod-cons of the residence she moved into to see out the last twenty or thirty years of her life.

There is an excellent exhibition explaining the eccentricities of each generation of the Colclough owners in an upper room of the abbey. It reads like a book, or should I say, I would love to have a book filling out all the gaps. There were some that married and bred prolifically, varying the families religious preferences and so able to play all sides of the political game, one who drowned in suspicious circumstances without providing an heir, others who tried to procreate but were unable to, one who was dragged back from Canada to fulfil family duties, another beheaded, others who fought inheritance through the law courts for decades depleting the coffers in the process and so on. They were quite a family.

Chris had decided he wanted to visit the Kennedy Homestead, where the Kennedys of the USA are supposed to have come from. In our guide book it suggested that this was administered by Heritage Ireland, therefore would be free to us, and that the last tour of the house was forty five minutes before the closing time of 5 pm. We would be pushing it to get there from Tintern Abbey, but we figured they might squeeze us in to have a quick look, so off we headed, further west then north back toward New Ross. We spotted a brown tourist sign and headed up through narrow rural lanes, now with Tomtom having recalculated and helping us on our way. The lanes became narrower and the signs rarely there; finally we saw a little Kennedy head sign pointing in the opposite direction  to that we were being directed to by our navigational device, so we decided to follow this instead. After a few kilometres, we spotted another directing us back the way we had come, so we turned and went back, soon arriving at the “gap” in the hedge where we had initially changed direction. Back in Tomtom’s hands we continued on another road and thankfully found the entrance to a very smart and relatively new visitor centre. We parked and went in, now hugely late and cross with the run around the signage had offered. We thrust our English Heritage cards at her, but to our dismay she advised they were a privately owned and run set up and these would offer us no discount at all. We retreated to the car, now exhausted from the drama and set the Tomtom for home. I should have consulted Mr Google about this and we would have been better informed than our out-of-date guide book

As we made our way through a new set of farm lanes, we spotted major work being done all about; a new crossing of the River Barrow and a bypass of New Ross. This will be quite amazing when its complete however I am not quite sure who it will benefit. Today we pressed on back through New Ross, the day end traffic slow, then on to Waterford where we struck the traffic even slower. The one way system took us around and round the city and I thought we would have done better to have come by the toll road, however principles must be kept; so saith my husband.

It was late, or at lest late for us who keep regular routines. We settled for a rather strange dinner of canned hotdog sausages retrieved from the back of the pantry and another can of baked beans. I have to say this was not my favourite meal of the week!