Dublin to Dingle

Jan and I met Gill at Bristol Airport rather early on Wednesday morning to catch the 0815 Aer Arann flight to Dublin - a bit of forethought had identified the meeting point as Starbucks so we could have some reviving caffeine to get us going. Dear little twin turbo-prop high wing aeroplane and only 24 passengers so loads of room but sadly rather hazy so not much in the way of views on the hour's flight.
We met up with Mary and Ann by the car hire desk and things started well with an upgrade to a 7-seater which we thought would be better for 5 of us on the long drive to the south-west. But, when we got ourselves and our bags onto the shuttle bus to the pick up point as instructed, the driver got all concerned and decided we should be picking up in the short term parking and went to check - good thing he did as he was right! Apologies to other passengers who had been kept waiting and we trekked about half a mile to the far end of the car park to find out big wine coloured monster. 4 of us packed the bags in the back while Jan concentrated on finding how the seat adjustment worked so she could see over the steering wheel.
By now it was around 10am and we headed off round the M50 and then down the motorway towards Limerick, which went on quite a bit further than our 10 year old road atlas indicated and even quite a bit further than the satnav thought it would (lots of 'recalculating' and 'please drive to highlighted route' as we apparently headed across uncharted and roadless tracts of countryside until I switched the sound off). Absolutely NO service areas though - not even laybys! We deduced a policy of not taking custom away from local hotels etc and accordingly, around midday, headed off at a junction and found a nice little restaurant in Birdhill where we enjoyed a good coffee outside in the sunshine ... yes, I know it is Ireland, but we sat out in the sunshine! In April!
We then ate our sarnies in the car (mean things that we are!) before finding our way back to the N7 which bore every resemblance to a very shiny new motorway and got quite a bit past Limerick before it finally turned itself into an ordinary main road.
Decisions.... which way to Dingle? A bit of consideration of potential field locations suggested that we weren't too likely to be doing much on the northern side of the peninsula, so we headed that way - there was a green line along the road too which was encouraging. Means it is lined with leprechauns or something I think. Nice drive though we didn't see any of the little chaps, and then we headed on up to the Connor Pass where we not only got more pretty views, and bumped into two more of the party - Janet and Trevor, but persuaded ourselves that an ice cream was essential for our well-being. Then down on into Dingle and Marina Lodge to meet up with the rest. Ken, our leader, turned up around 7pm and gave us an intro to what we would be doing and we fixed a very civilised start time of 0930 in the morning (couldn't get breakfast earlier than 0830).
A reccy of pubs and restaurants revealed that the Dingle restauranteurs are doing their best to save Ireland's economy by making sure that visitors spend lots of money there but eventually we found somewhere not too pricey and dined well - I had a great plate of mussels, washed down with Guinness.
Tomorrow - off to west Dingle