Packing for Ireland

 Lisa and I fly out of Johannesburg on Monday night for Dublin, via Abu Dhabi. Am I excited?  Yes I am…. This holiday has been in the planning stage since mid January and now that it is just about here I can’t keep the excitement butterflies down.

For the last 2 weeks I have been checking the Irish weather reports; hoping that by looking at 3 different sites I might get a better report than: nice warm weather with a high of 18 degrees… Nice? Warm? One of the Irish guys we are meeting up with says they almost strip naked when the temperature reaches 20.

And who are these Irish guys? Well, they are people Lisa has met from adventure races in various parts of the world and they have opened their houses and handed out invitations to us whilst we are there – it promises to be a nice social time. Lisa is racing in the 24 hour Rogainne with one of them and he will meet us when we arrive. I also have long lost cousins with whom we will be staying – after all the sporadic letters and emails over the years it will so nice to meet fact-to-face.

So far all the packing has been done in my mind. Suitcases, backpacks and so on can only be hauled out of storage on Monday because little Bracken cat gets quite anxious. We have Sarah coming to look after her for most of the time, but Sarah has to go off to race in Slovenia 4 days before we get back. Then Jess and Kate (my neighbour’s daughters) will be coming to look after her. The house is fine – it doesn’t need looking after – just Bracken and it is quite reassuring to know that she will have these attentive girls to care for her.

I am off first thing this morning to finalise the medical kit. I like to know that I can cover any emergency like removing an appendix or performing open heart surgery. Needless to say, Lisa then chucks out about 90% of my kit; I guess I have to concede that I have never died or had to remove an appendix on my travels - yet!

 After my Camino walk I know that I can get away with a very small amount of clothing – so my list is very small and everything very practical. I think my suitcase will weigh in at about 15kgs and that includes my 3 rather large guide books.

At the back of one of the books are some handy Irish phrases like “Dia dhuit” (pronounced jee-a dich) which means Good day. My firm favourite which I think I will use frequently is: “Ta me I mo idirgalacht-ach bhithiunach” which means “I am an inter-galactic space criminal”  Hahaha – someone had a sense of humour when compiling this list.

And Max, shown in the picture here, will accompany us. He was tucked away in a small pocket of my back pack on my Camino walk. He is tiny, about 5cm high, and his tough guy image is comforting. Nice little travelling companion!

Stay well and happy!