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Let the Adventure Begin!

August 28, 2021 / 21 Comments
Leaving Rosslare on the Ferry to Bilbao

It’s was a dirty, misty morning on the way to Rosslare for the 10.15 am ferry. There was a reasonable amount of work traffic and we sympathised with all the poor devils making their way to offices and factories.

We arrived at check-in gate in Rosslare, handed over passports, Covid Certs, Spanish QR Health Code Cert that we had got the day before. We thought that we were all organised but there was a problem! We had filled in a group form to get the Spanish QR CODE, inputted both our details on this FCS form and the Spanish Authorities had sent us the QR code which we presumed covered the two of us….not so. It only covered Caoimhin. So I had to fill out a form to get my code sent to me. This form is not the most straightforward as the drop down boxes kept sticking …we had arrived on plenty of time but I was still panicking and my fingers were sticky…with hand cream and sweat but eventually i got the QR code on my phone. But if you are a couple or group, fill out individual FCS forms and ignore the group option to get your Spanish QR code.

Before I could recover from all that excitement, we had more …. we were in the ferry queue and the car wouldn’t start, the battery seemed to be dead😯. Luckily, three burly bikers from Cork and a barefoot German in a campervan gave us a push so we got on the boat. At this stage, I was devouring the food supplies that we brought with us for the journey with the stress.

The boat, the Connemara, was described as a ‘no frills’ service. This ‘no frills’ was on the website and on the tickets. We had to book a cabin, no option to just get a seat or portion of floor. Our cabin was a 4 Beth but the other top bunk beds were folded away giving us plenty of space with a porthole which gave lots of light and views of the ocean. The sheets were clean, the pillows were good and the beds were comfy. Towels were supplied and the ensuite shower was hot and powerful. There was a bar, self service restaurant and a little shop that only opened at a few selected hours and sold souvenirs, wine, spirits and perfume. But not bad for ‘no frills.’ There was no WiFi (there was an option to pay between €5 and €25 depending on data)

This slow transitioning from one country to another was restful. We looked at Google maps and followed our relatively slow progress, a blue dot in the ocean. The rocking motion of the boat and the dull sound of the engine was soothing and it was even restful not to feel the urge to look at our phones. We were lucky that the weather was good, the sea was calm with hardly a ripple except for the dolphins that somersaulted near the bow on the second morning in the Bay of Biscay.

There was a little flutter of unease as we sat into our car after almost thirty hours on board. Would the car start? But the engine turned over without a bother and we negotiated the steep ramp to disembark and head into Bilbao driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

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