Days 31 - Cobh, Ireland
Sunday 14th September, 2025 - Cobh and Mallow, Ireland
Awoke to another bleak day - windy and rainy ! Left after our home made breakfast at 9:30 and set the GPS for Blackrock Sunday Markets - an outer suburb of Cork. It was a 54 minute drive during which it was raining all the way, when we arrived - nothing - no markets ! I guess we didn't get the memo telling they had been cancelled ! Google still quite boldly said they were open ! Not one stall ! Oh well move on to plan B !
Cobh is a very pleasant harbour with lots of history. It was the last port the Titanic left Ireland on it's fateful voyage and it was also the safe harbour where survivors of the torpedoed Lusitania were rescued and brought back to land in 1942. There was a Cunard Shipping Line office there established in the 16th century and overlooking the town is a huge cathedral.
We stopped in a very busy cafe and shared a table with a delightful American couple from New York State, we chatted for quite a while but didn't mention Trump once !
To be fair, the weather did clear a bit while we were in Cobh and it enabled us to have a good look around.
It was time for Tania to get a much needed haircut, and as she had sussed out a barber shop in Mallow when we were there yesterday, we headed back. Graeme waited in the car and Tania returned, pleased with her new do, but seeking cash as the barber didn't take a credit card. We raided our spare cash from a hidden compartment in our belt and all was good.
Bought some more supplies for dinner from the nearby super market and headed back to our BnB to repack our laundry. Our Irish self tour is coming to an end tomorrow as we head to Kilkenny for our last 2 nights stay in Ireland.
After experiencing wet weather throughout our nearly 14 days travelling in the Emerald Isle, a fun fact about rainfall in Ireland...the average number of wet days for the month of September is 10-20 days with an average fall of 100mm. In contrast, Adelaide in the corresponding season being the month of March experiences an about 2 rainy days and an average rainfall of 37mm.
Another thing we have noticed in each city is that the streets in the shopping area are quite vast and there is always a really high volume of pedestrian traffic. The population for example of County Dublin is 1.5 million and Greater Adelaide is 1.4 million, but the number of shopping streets and people around the city of Adelaide are far fewer than the city area of Dublin. We have realised that unlike our cities in Australia where we have multiple regional shopping centres, Dublin and other cities here don't have these alternative locations and the city centre is their only option.