Gypsy Life

After our first week on the beautiful West Coast of Ireland, we made our way via public transport – a novelty in itself – to Port Laios, pronounced Leesh – and Kilvahan Caravans. We are not campers, and we didn’t know one end of a horse from another, so it was to be something of a learning curve.
 
We put our two hold-alls of pretty much, clothes, toilet bags and a few games, in the caravan and watched our fellow gypsies unpack estate cars loaded with everything from sleeping bags to Tupperware boxes of prepared, good food, in cooler boxes to… a swing bin !  “Oh no, we’re just amateurs at this camping milwarkey!” So we called a taxi and headed back to town for more supplies.  You only really need to take food and towels, but in retrospect a cool box would be very useful, as would a few decent pillows, and a small transistor radio might have been nice.  We’d enjoyed listening to the local radio whilst staying in the castle.
 
The caravan is about half the size of our kitchen back in Dubai, and this was to be our home; where we would be living, cooking, eating and sleeping for the following week. There’s a two ring hob and a grill, a sink and a cupboard of crockery and cutlery.  Facing “the kitchen” there’s a bench seat (pictured here) which converts to a double bed, with the option to pull down a shelf for an extra single bed above it.  Across the back of the caravan, there are two bench seats with a table between them.  At night the table collapses, and together with the benches forms the second double bed.  Sheets, duvets and extra blankets are provided. We were generally very lucky with the weather but for the family from Dubai, some nights got a little cold! Two small gas lamps were enough to play cards by, or read a goodnight story.  And for all that the caravans, and Kilvahan in general, lack a certain love and attention/basic maintenance, yep, we felt we could do this!
 
Saturday, was settling in day and we went to meet the horses, enjoying their day of rest.  Sunday morning, we had a 30 minute group tutorial about how to “catch your horse” and get him ready for the road, and pretty much, that was it.  Within an hour or so we were off, on our own, (here, our first tentative steps...), map in hand! We’d chosen our route the night before, picking five overnight stops from a choice of around eight.  Each day we would be on the road for 2 – 4 hours, covering 10 – 15 km, assuming we took the direct route and didn’t get lost too often (… only a couple of times). It’s all within a very limited area so it would have been easy for someone from Kilvahan to come out had we had a problem. 


Once we were on the road, we took to gypsy life immediately! We were a little nervous of driving the horse properly but soon relaxed into that.  We may not have had any experience but the horse had plenty. The boys were really involved from the outset, sitting up front, helping with the driving, or walking along side.  Without any prompting from us, the Gameboys stayed in their bag all week. The countryside slowly unfolded before us and we were much more involved than we could have been passing through by car. Cows would stop grazing and slowly turn their heads as they watched us pass!  Getting Popeye ready in the mornings was also a new phenomena for us.  None of us had groomed/been responsible for/been that close to a horse before, and Popeye is a big horse.  Again, he’d done it all many times before so it was reasonably straight forward.  They are big animals though and you have to be aware.

We were fortunate to have chosen the same route as two other caravans – a Dutch family and four Swedish ladies, who were great fun.  We were soon “one big happy, gypsy family”.  We taught each other games, enjoyed the local hostelries, and teamed up with the Dutch contingency to do the driving together, which meant one horse always had its nose in the other caravan’s food bag, and if we got lost, we all got lost together! I would imagine that you also would be open and make friends like this Eurocamping; its something inherent to camping that you don’t get staying in a cottage for a week.  It was great for the boys, and for us.

 
We stayed the first night, behind a pub.  This was a ‘big village’ in that it had a high street, featuring a small supermarket.  We didn’t quite grasp at the time that this would be our best food shopping opportunity of the week. We found local people to be very welcoming and friendly and given we were a bit of a hazard on the road – slow, and not always easy to pass – and they see the caravans every week (16 out during peak season) – then the numbers of smiles and waves from passing motorists bears testament to the easy going way of life in the region.  I guess all things are relative, but it seemed to all of us, that the Irish people we met had time to chat, time to be helpful to strangers, and time to wait for us to pass.  And children are made welcome.  There’s a law that they cannot be in pubs after 9pm.  A couple of times we were in quiet village pubs passed this hour, but we had been in from earlier in the evening, and the children were quietly playing cards not bothering anyone. 
 
 
Our favourite stops were undoubtedly the two farms, where we found lovely people, enjoyed excellent facilities, and more playmates.   At the first farm we met Michael, age 7, his four puppies, 2 weeks old, and his go kart and consequently, hardly saw the boys for the rest of the afternoon. That night we all went along for the not-to-be-missed Irish music night at the local pub – a 3km walk away – and met two Aussie couples and two Norwegian couples, on canal barge holidays.  How funny for us all to be drawn from all over the world to this tiny little pub, in a one pub, one church, no shop village ! The singing went on ‘til 1am and thankfully there was a taxi service to get home.  
 
 At the next farm, we met Matthew, 8, and again we lost the boys.  We couldn’t have had a warmer reception, and really enjoyed meeting the family.  Anne provided a taxi service into town, ferrying us all back and forth, and cooked a great breakfast. We’d have been quite happy to stay there for a few extra days but it was time to head back to Kilvahan. 
 
Actually, at the end of the week, I have to say, we were not sorry to say goodbye to the caravan (one week is enough!) but that doesn’t detract from the fact that we’d had a fabulous time.  We all really enjoyed it and would warmly recommend it. Moreover, we certainly fell for Ireland and the Irish, and will surely return. If you are truly attached to your creature comforts then this holiday is not for you.  But if you’re prepared to rough it a little, then it’s well worth it.  There are companies both in Ireland and The New Forest, England, operating the horse drawn caravans.  They soon book up for the six weeks of the UK school holidays, so if you’re interested for next year, you will need to start thinking about it now.