9 July: Athlone - Dublin
We stumbled on Athlone by sheer chance just to break the journey back to Dublin. It seemed to be in the middle of the island. Got hopelessly lost finding it and then making our way around it and then getting out of it again. Peter needed what we hope will be his last supply of medication. The doctor took pity on us and prescribed a repeat to get us across Europe. It's all been difficult enough in English let alone keeping him breathing in a foreign language. Then on to the obligatory Friday hairdo, and then off to yet another Celtic ruin.
Well,  blow me, this was no ordinary ruin. It was the remains of a monastery set up by St Ciaran (Kerryn) in the 5th century on the River Shannon at the crossroads of the centre of Ireland at a place called Clonmacnoise. It was a comprehensive enterprise based on Irish Catholic Christianity and a much sought- after centre of academic and skilled craft training. It was the pinnacle of training for scribes during 8th - 10th centuries. St Ciaran himself died aged 33 of the yellow plague and his High Cross has been restored and is enshrined now (see FB photo). Every year on 14 September there is a pilgrimage to Clonmacnoise to commemorate St Ciaran's Day. People have been coming for 1400 years. Various attacks were made on the monastic centre by folk such as the Vikings, but the whole was totally destroyed by the English garrisons in 1552. And there it stands today as a major tourist centre. About 6 coach loads of Germans come every day as it is particularly significant to them. And we just stumbled upon what we now regard as the most impressive relic of Irish history.

So we returned to the primary route across Ireland, the M6, and drove past Horseleap  Ballinabrackey  Bungalow  Kinegad
Maynooth  Leixlip to the chaos of  Dublin where after many wrong turns Peter got the car back to Avis in pristine condition after having driven 1000km through Ireland.  We headed straight for the bar when we got to our airport hotel.