Irish Ramble - Part Two
Created | Updated Jul 10, 2009
After the London Meet this year, Malabarista and King Bomba took their travelling roadshow on an unplanned and haphazard tour of Ireland. The second installment deals with their mercifully brief sojourn in Wexford.
Dublin was all well and good, but there comes a time when you just have to get out of the city and move on. So back at base on our last night in Dublin, maps were spread out, stout was opened to oil the wheels of deliberation, and we resolved to start the next leg of the trip the following day. Wexford was chosen as the next point of call1.
We stumbled out of bed and headed for the train, only to find out it didn't go where we wanted it to. This had the advantage of allowing us to wake up, have coffee, and enjoy a nice scenic bus ride a few hours later. As we approached Wexford town, we were struck by the number of graveyards to be seen on the outskirts - this turned out to be an omen of things to come!
"Oh, now this looks like it could be a nice, interesting place to walk around", said Mala as the bus rolled through the little towns of Country Wexford, "Not too touristy!"
We drove over the River Slaney and into Wexford town, with everything looking rosey. Little were we to know what lay ahead...
We disembarked at the Wexford train station, between the waterfront and a little square with trees and a statue. There was a Chinese restaurant just to one side, and KB went to look at the prices. We decided we'd best look elsewhere for our evening meal, a venture that would prove....interesting. But first, we had to find a place to dump our bags and rest our heads. Fortunately, there was a sign pointing to the tourist information office, so we set off thattaway along the water, pointedly ignoring the taxi drivers - the standard of wit we encountered in Wexford was of a lamentable poor quality, and this first taste was no exception.
The standard of signage, too, was definitely wanting. The information centre signs led us on a merry chase past the back of a boarded-up ufo and our first go round a semi-circular street with a statue facing the water that we would grow to loathe. We finally located the tourist office, a thoroughly designed glass-and-wood cube by the water that was obviously built very shortly before Wexford has ceased being prosperous – so shortly before, in fact, that while the new tourist information centre was built, the funding ran out for new signs...
Where The Streets Have No Name
The map we were given at the information desk turned out to be nearly useless as well, since none of the streets had signs, either! On we went, and finally found a hostel. It didn't appear to have any guests, so we could have had our choice of rooms. It also meant the woman running the place was prepared to drop her prices more and more the closer we got to the door on the way out, but we decided to try somewhere else, assuming that the other places would do the same, and would have proper breakfasts.
"I think she was German," says Mal, outside.
"Oh, why?"
"Well, her accent, for a start. And her name. But mostly the fact that she said "Scheiße!" when my backpack knocked everything off her table..."
At last we found another guest house, where we decided to stay – the bags were getting heavy! We settled in – not up quite so many stairs this time – rested for a bit, and headed out again. A broken row boat on the beach bearing a spray-painted message that it was on sale for only €2000 was further evidence of the former wealth of Wexford town, as were the numerous holiday cottages. These did have signs, many of which made our eyes twitch – we're both sub-editors! For lack of the ski masks required for a proper guerilla sub-ed mission, we simply concluded that St Brigids must be a house where a lot of saints named Brigid meet to play poker, and with this rationalisation, all was once more right with the world.
We made our way on past Selskar Abbey – an interesting ruined building on the hill behind the town centre. It was the site of the first treaty signed with England in 1169, and reduced to its current state when Cromwell's troops got there 500 years later. We managed to get into the grounds later for a look around purely by chance: the gates are usually kept locked, but we happened to pass while the man with the keys was there. He later threatened to lock us in if we didn't rush through because he was in such a hurry – yet he found time to stop outside and speak at great length about how he'd been to London and to the USA, and his son had been to Belfast with his hurling club, but he himself had never been north of County Cavan.
We passed a supermarket near the guest house and had a look around for a snack, but decided it was time for a proper dinner. Restaurants in Wexford turned out to be a bit of an enigma – they all seem to close for the night at five pm. Eventually we found an Italian restaurant which was open – but despite the hectare of empty tables within, they assured us they were booked out and we wouldn't be served. After another lengthy circuit of the town, passing that same old white cantilevered building for the umpteenth time, we managed to find a chip shop. A specially-advertised vegetarian taco meal was available, so Mal opted for that. When it arrived, she opened the container to see lots of minced beef in it.
"Excuse me – it said on the sign the taco was suitable for vegetarians..."
"Oh, there's no meat in it", said the woman behind the counter.
"So what's this then?"
Long pause.
"Not meat."
We knew we just weren't going to win this one, so she bravely forced it down, whatever it was. The ironic thing was that the 'chicken' in KB's chicken curry consisted of strange little cuboid strips which quite clearly were anything but meat, so perhaps we should have swapped. Throughout all this walking around, we noticed that the town seemed to be conspicuously lacking in one commodity: human beings. There wasn't a person to be seen on the streets. If you spot one in the photos please post below – you'll win this week's star prize! There was only one answer: it's a town of zombies. It all added up – all those graveyards, the lack of human life, the 'meat' of dubious provenance, and even human hands stuck to the walls!
After gorging ourselves on breakfast the next morning, we set out with one goal in mind – getting the heck out of Wexford! We weren't due to move on until that evening, so we simply bought a picnic at the supermarket and started walking west. As it later turned out – much later, when we finally saw a map – this was the worst direction we could've picked, but we hadn't got a map and had assumed we could walk parallel to the river, cross it, and come back across the bridge that led right into the middle of town. After we'd finally left the row houses behind us and the cars going by were fewer and fewer, we decided it did look like we were getting away from it all – and spotting a rare wild elephant confirmed this!
We eventually crossed the railway line and reached a bridge between two towers – the further tower looked quite reachable, so we crossed, and climbed up. It was locked, alas, but a little cave just below by the waterside provided a handy place out of the wind for our picnic. Since Mala had, by then, found a spare piece of green chalk in the pocket of her anorak – left over from the days of working for a professor who never remembered to carry any himself – we finally got to let our inner sub-eds have free rein correcting the graffiti, and left a message to future visitors to the effect that they should keep an eye out for nighthoover, though he had failed to show himself to us. A path led away from the cave in just the right direction, below the street, and so we followed its idyllic meanderings through the ferns, bluebells, and wild garlic, watching the birds on the tidal flats.
The lovely walk ended abruptly in the car park of a large and very pink resort hotel that seemed like a cross between a wellness spa and a survivalist militia compound, well-guarded and with no way out unless you had a vehicle. We walked along the verge of the road for a while, anyway, but it was multi-lane and definitely not safe or pleasant for pedestrians – especially not for someone from a country where they drive on the other side, so walking against the flow of traffic made it sound like the cars were coming up right behind! Mala was rather shaken by the time we turned off, and refusing to set foot on that road ever again. The small country lane turned out to be a dead end, so we finally caved in and asked directions – though we did have to ring someone's doorbell. Fortunately, the lady of the house was home as well as the children, and revealed that it was possible to sneak into the lower end of the hotel carpark via a small, steep path past the gas tanks and rubbish skips. We'd decided to phone for a taxi from the hotel lobby, but there was a wedding reception in progress and we didn't feel like hanging around there waiting, wet, muddy, and bedraggeled as we were – so when we were informed that it would be half an hour before the taxi would get there, we decided to just walk back. At least we got an encouraging wave from a seal in the water when we crossed the bridge again!
By the time we'd finally trudged back to Wexford, we'd missed our bus, of course. We knew better than to try looking for food, so we dipped into the picnic bag again, then explored what passed for Wexford town centre. The general impression was one of boarded-up boutiques, cheap shops full of teenagers in school uniforms, and sweaty construction workers tearing up the road wherever they were most likely to be in the way. The town does go on record for the most terrible souvenir shop window we encountered on the entire trip2! Its one saving grace is that it also had a shop selling dry socks. Orange and blue striped socks with dancing frogs in sparkly blue tutus! To a sock devotee of long standing like Malabarista, this proved to be some compensation for the trials endured that day – though the highlight of our trip to Wexford was certainly watching it recede behind us as we finally sat safe and warm in the last bus out of town.
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