DAY 10 - Sunday / Camac Valley Caravan Park - Guinness Factory, Dublin - Powerscourt, Enniskerry, County Wicklow - The Trading Post, Enniscorthy, County Wexford / 80 miles

27/07/2014 / Sunday / Camac Valley Caravan Park - Guinness Factory, Dublin - Powerscourt, Enniskerry, County Wicklow - The Trading Post, Enniscorthy, County Wexford / 80 miles

The rough plan, for today is for me and Alex to take ourselves off on a tour of the Dublin Guinness factory, as Mike and Alexa are not having the best of starts with and are full of the flu and so have decided to take it easy this morning, whilst slowly packing and loading their bikes. Alex and I pack up ready to go and leave the bags with Mike and Alexa, to pick up when we get back from our tour. 

Once packed up, I go find out where the factory is located, by asking the receptionist. Using a paper tourist map, I translate this into the GPS, finding it again annoying that there are no postcodes to go by. Post trip I’ve since learned, that there will be a postcode system, introduced in the spring of 2015, that’s similar to the UK system.

Fig. 1 - The Guinness Factory.

Fig. 2 - Guinness Art.

After a bit of trial and error, we eventually find the factory and park up in a nearby manned car park, then walk a short distance, passing between large Victorian factory buildings to find the entrance to the museum. We leave our helmets and jackets at the information desk and embark on our journey into the Black world of Guinness, which is actually a Dark Ruby Red, as I later learn. 

Fig. 3 & 4 - The architecture of the

reflects the shape of a pint glass.

The tour, takes you from sourcing and harvesting the of the grain, through to distribution and advertising and most importantly the taste testing, using cute Mini Pint Glasses, with a lesson on the correct way to drink Guinness, to enjoy its full range of flavours. The most interesting part however, that we both agreed on, was the coopering. Which is the hand crafting of barrels, of which Guinness apparently still uses today, be it presumably, in a more automated system. The looped videos on display from the 1950's show a craftsman, crafting a barrel from scratch, through to the finished product and show the remarkable skill of these craftsmen, that could craft a water tight vessel by eye without a measuring tape in sight.

Before we left, we stopped in at their small café, to have something to eat. Everything was, as expected, a little expensive but hunger won out, over sensibility. Most of what was on offer, had Guinness used, somewhere in its recipe. They also, have a larger restaurant, on a floor above, which I’ll remember to sample the next time I’m there, if not I’m sure there are if, I look, recipe books around with using Guinness? The buildings architecture is also very interesting to look at, as through the use of a lot of glass, the building takes on the shape of a pint glass!

After navigating, back down to the ground floor again, we peruse the merchandise that was stacked around us from floor to ceiling. I’m not one to buy anything tacky but I did want to at least get something, so I looked for something practice that we could potential use on the trip, and opted for a pack of Guinness playing cards. At checkout out we had a small competition, in chatting up the ladies behind the counter. On the way out, we suddenly realised, the we'd missed out on our complementary pints. I went back to ask about them, but as it turned out you had to drink them in house, which was not going to happen, as we were riding, but I did valiantly, try to swap our pint tickets, for a couple of cans, to no avail.

We got back to the campsite, at around 1pm and after loading up, we all set off, but not before I put the campsites location into my Satnav, for a possible future use.

Fig. 5 - Picnicking at Powerscourt House and Gardens

Fig. 6 - The gang; Alex Kerrison with 

Mike Jensen and his partner Alexa Wagoner

Our first stop was for an hour to explore some rather pretty enclosed gardens at Powerscourt House, originally a 13th century Castle, which was extensively altered during the 18th century, then in 1974 it suffered an extensive fire, leaving the house as a shell, until its restoration completion in 1996.

Fig. 7 - View of Great Sugar Loaf Hill.

Fig. 8 - Another view, this time from Powerscourt's courtyard.

The entrance road, provided another great view of Great Sugar Loaf Hill, where I stopped for a few photo, letting the others get ahead of me, unnecessarily panicking a little, having lost sight of them, I soon find them in a car park further on. We had lunch under some trees, somewhere within the extensive gardens and sat near a pond, with a large water feature in its centre. The weather, sprinkles us with a little rain, a few times, but nothing to dampen the day.

Fig. 9 - Short stop in the Wicklow Mountains.

Fig. 10 - Short rest stop again in the Wicklow Mountains.

We then ride the L1011, which turns into the R115, through the Wicklow Mountains National Park. The R115 is known, as the Military Road and was built by the British Army during the 1798 rebellion, being used to flush the rebels from the hills. A third of the way along this road, we ride through 'Sally’s' Gap, a cross-roads, where the R759 and R115 meet. The surrounding area here, reminds me of Scotland’s highlands, covered in blanket bog. It spots with rain a few times, from a slate grey sky, giving the place a bleak feel, until the sun shines shards of light through the grey clouds, giving me a nice moment, as I ride along. A rainbow soon appears, over the hills and seems to fall into an enclave between two hills, quick get the spade out! I soon have another nice moment, as I’m watching the sunlight glint off the spray, being kicked up by the bikes rear tyres, in front as I watch my friends splash through puddles following each other whilst bounding around the corners and zipping past the hedges. It’s just one of those lovely moments, that makes me fall in love with riding all over again.

After the Wicklow mountain road, the roads that flow down to our next campsite, called The Trading Post, located near Ballaghkeen, where mostly unremarkable.

Mike and Alexa, both have Bluetooth connected intercoms, Alex also, however he cannot figure out how to connect himself to the others. I don’t have this technology and mostly don’t mind. However, in this instance, it would have been useful. Mike was leading us, when I started to worry about my fuel level and coincidentally so was Alex. Alex managed to catch Alexa’s attention, too ask her if we could stop at the next petrol station to fill up. Mike got relayed the message and somehow started panicking, thinking that we needed fuel immediately and also at the same time, somehow forgetting that we had only, just, passed a few petrol stations. We followed he’s lead and visited a Tesco extra, naturally thinking there was fuel however there wasn’t. I could see Mike fretting, so I got onto my GPS and chose the nearest likely one, to be open. Unfortunately, my GPS had been set to include the tiny single track rutted roads, that where no problem for me, but the others were riding more road orientated bikes and found this shortcut difficult to handle, oops! But at least I was redeemed and managed to get us to fuel, so all’s well that end well, right? Continuing to lead, I plot in our campsite.

Arriving at the campsite and which ironically, had its own petrol station! The place also, had all the facilities needed, plus in addition, featured peacocks in the next field over, which woke the other’s much too early, than they would of liked the following morning, somehow I never noticed.

The cost was a little odd, as it was £10 per tent, with £5 per person. Now I ask you, who just pays for a tent only! We ended up stopping there for two nights. I helped Alexa set up the tents, whilst Alex and Mike went hunter gathering for our evenings meal, which consisted of a fish and chip supper, with a rum chaser provided by Alex.