Corinne CrawfordSally kept driving while I navigated to our next location called Arbor Low, which was an ancient stone circle in a farmer’s field. The route took us through the rural areas, so rural we even had a cow crossing that stopped traffic for a few minutes. As we pulled into the driveway of the farm, we noticed we were the only ones there with one hour left for visiting. You had to walk right in the middle of this working farm, paying a £1 “donation” in a box before making your way through one gate, through a cow field and then a second gate where there was a sign explaining what you were looking at. It was a large circular area with mounds built up around the whole thing.
There were some stones still within the circle but the ones that were vertical had all fallen so unless you really knew what you were looking at, you might not guess that this was an ancient ceremonial site dating back 4500 years. I am always fascinated by the extent that the ancient peoples went to for ceremonial and ritual purposes. I always imagine that so much energy and effort must have gone into just survival and yet, so much time and resources were put towards building these sort of structures for art and ritual in general. My aunt made a great point and said that building and creating these sort of things must have been for survival, making me wonder what sort of thinking and experience these peoples had that made them believe that survival was tied these rituals and practices.
After visiting the stone circle site, we continued driving in the direction of Holyhead. We were now in Wales and I noticed the strangest signs in intervals along the freeway. It was a triangle sign with an exclamation point and the word “Badgers” underneath it and then words that I assumed were in Welsh below that.
After seeing a few of these, I was compelled to use Google translate to confirm that the words in Welsh were indeed “badgers”. Confirmed. What the heck is going on where they just yell “BADGERS” to drivers multiple times on the freeway? Not “watch out for badgers”, not the normal silhouette icon of an animal indicating a crossing like you see for deer or cows, just the word “badger”. I guess they love their badgers. Click here for more information.
As we approached our target, we used the car navigation to find a gas station to fill up the car before returning it to the rental company and after two failed attempts- one was just simply not there and the other was closed, we finally found an open gas station within minutes of the terminal and right next door was a large supermarket so we popped in to get some snacks that would tide us over for dinner and the overnight ferry ride. We still had hours to wait until our 2:15am ferry so we relaxed in the car before returning the keys in the after-hours drop box and then waited in the terminal for a bit before checking in to board the ferry. We got our boarding passes and I asked about the key card to our pet cabin like we got on our initial ferry and the woman at the booth told me that our reservation did not include a pet cabin. How could this be, I booked a round trip ticket? And we might be in trouble because a pet cabin was the only way to get a dog on the boat. Uh Oh. This mistake of mine could be a big one. Luckily, Sally had the service dog vest on Maverick and normally, if you want to bring a service dog on board, you have to produce paperwork that shows it is certified in the UK, which of course, we did not have. But because it was the middle of the night, and they had already given us our boarding passes, they let it slide. Boy, did we get lucky. Well, not that lucky, this meant that we had no cabin to get some sleep for the 3-hour ride and we were relying on this trip to catch a few Z’s. We got on the ferry and like many others, found cushioned benches to lie down and try to sleep even though it was pretty chilly and all of the lights were on. I managed to sleep for about an hour but I don’t think my aunt did.
We arrived on the Irish side and not a single person ever cared about the paperwork for the dog as we had been warned when making the plans. We took a taxi to the airport even though we had plenty of time because where else were we going to go with all of our luggage and a dog. We got Sally checked in then waited in a café at the airport for an hour or so until it was time for her to go through security and customs and wait for boarding. I had booked a room in Dublin to get some sleep before heading back to the UK on a ferry the following day. I was starting the solo portion of my journey with a visit to Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds before heading to Scotland for about a month. I waited around until I got a message from Sally that she was at the boarding gate and then found a bus to the area of Dublin where my hotel was. I was hoping I could do an early check in because it was now going on 30 hours with only 1 hour of sleep. I got lucky and even though it was just noon, my room was ready and I immediately crawled into bed and slept for the next 4 hours. I got up, showered and found a bite to eat at a pub near the hotel before going back to the room and sleeping for the night as I had to leave the hotel at about 6:45am the next morning to get to the ferry terminal for the 8:00am departure back to the UK.
