Day 82: The road is made to connect people

Day 82 - Monday, June 18th 2018: Westport to Old Head 19 km / Total 1724 km, 15°C, cloudy

After a day resting in Westport, writing my diary, and doing some food shopping, I went on my trip. Westport is pretty nice, especially on the docks, Croagh Patrick on one side, the Bay on the other. Good atmosphere, very peaceful. I liked it and understood why it's been named one of the best towns of Ireland by the Irish Times.

In the morning, the walk was pretty cool, with a footpath along the road, leading to the Croagh Patrick visitor centre. There were a few hikers there. I didn't climb the mountain, first, because my thing is just to walk the coastline, and it was cloudy and a little bit rainy, so it wasn't worth it. A girl in Westport told me the view from the top was great above the Bay with all its little islands, but with such weather, there'd be no view.

So after a warm soup of the day, as the weather was getting cooler, I went on. No more footpath, I had to focus on the traffic, which was not very important, and I finished on the beach to reach Old Head Pier. There, Dorian & Amélie were waiting for me. They discovered me on Instagram, and we realized we were going on the same way, and our road crossed there in Old Head. They invited me for dinner in their camper van. It's the way they had been travelling for eight years now, with their 2 border colliers dogs, across Europe. They're "Full-timers" which means they travel all the time, home-office working in their camper van. It was great to share a very good dinner with them, and I really enjoyed my evening. They told me so many stories about their life in a camper, how they managed it, how many time they got stuck, how they fix it, etc. It was really interesting and made me think, maybe one day, I might go on a camper van trip as well.

For the night I slept in an Airbnb, as I try not to use my broken tent too much. I took the wrong way to find Anne's house, but she helped me and was even ready to pick me up with her car just in case I didn't find it. She had a lovely house, very quiet, with a great view of Croagh Patrick from the bedroom and on the bay from the living room. Very nice place!