Daylight was well before 5AM.  After breakfast we checked out of the Donabate hotel in a brisk 11C.

Our first port of call was to Cavan.  The Lonely Planet Guide had recommended a flour mill where you could bake your own bread.  Unfortunately when we arrived, we found this attraction had been closed for a year.  We also tried to find Cavan Crystal.  This was Ireland's second major crystal manufacturer, below Waterford Crystal.  The economic conditions in the past decade in Ireland have seen Cavan Crystal close and Waterford move to rebadging crystal that is made in Eastern Europe.

Next on the list was Enniskillen.  I couldn't find it on the GPS until I realised that it was in a different country, the UK, and then the GPS was happy.  On the way we stumbled onto a Lace Museum.  There were literally thousands of items of exquisite antique lace in this small shop.  Across the road was a Post Office, but it was closed as today was a public holiday.

About the time as we crossed into Northern Ireland, the sun came out, but was chased away on and off, by rain.  The temperature also rose above 15C.  Almost time to remove the thermals!

The roads, off the motorways are similar to many NZ roads.  The main roads have a speed limit of 100kph in both countries, but the smaller roads in the Republic are limited to 80kph.  Generally the road conditions are good, but the road widths vary.  Most roads are about the same width as the Waiheke roads, that is, two buses can meet an pass each other but there is not a lot of room to spare for cyclists. These roads all have a white line down them.  In the Republic, the better 100kph roads have about half a car width of spare shoulder on the left of the road.  When a car is being overtaken, it moves left into this space to give the overtaker a bit more room.  That's applies to most cars, but none of the tractors, who simply sit in the middle of the road at 50khps, ignoring the traffic building up behind them.

Then there are the roads that don't have a white line. These require you to find a hole and sneak into it if you see a bus or truck coming towards you.  The rule "Might is Right" applies here.

Moving from one country to another means continuing to drive along.  There's no Customs or Immigration checkpoint. The only thing you may notice is the road gets a bit rougher near the border.

At Enniskillen, we stopped for a wander around the antique and craft shops.  Not many were open and we got frightened off by the rain.

Then it was on to Belleek.  That's where some very nice and also so some very ordinary china pottery is made.  We took a factory tour.

The basic process is quite simple.  They make moulds of the items they want to produce and create two hundred copies of the same mould.  They use a mould for eight weeks and then throw it away as it is losing detail.  They pour a clay slip, a liquid, into a mould and after time pour out the mix. This leaves enough clay in the mould to create the item.  The clay is left to dry before the mould is split apart, and the formed clay withdrawn.  It then goes through a hand process where blemishes are removed, bits, like handles etc are added, and then it is inspected before being fired.  After another inspection, it's coated in a glaze and fired again.  If it's anything other than utility china, like tableware, it gets painted and glazed then sent back to the kiln.  After a final inspection, it's ready for sale.

The china that Belleek really excel in is either straw china baskets or stuff made from flowers.  (That's besides the really expensive items like presentation vases, ewers, urns etc.  One was there and had a price tag of 75,000 UK Pounds on it.  Well over the limit on our credit card.)  For the china straw, they pop a lump of clay in a cylinder, and press the clay through a small hole in the bottom of the cylinder.  This makes a long continuous bit of clay string.  The craftsmen weave and fashion the clay string into intricate bowls etc.

Flowers are hand made.  The craftsman pops a little bit of clay into a piece of rubber about the size of a door stop.  This rubber has the profile for one side of a leaf in it.  They make all the leaves they want, all the same size.  Then they start to assemble a flower from all the leaves (or petals) that they have made.  Some flowers can require sixty individual petals and many pieces of china have more than one flower, so you can see that there's lots of manual labour required.

The kilns for heating the china were interesting.  Normally you have a static oven and put pottery into the oven.  Here they built up the pottery on ceramic shelves and then ran the kiln over the pottery, closed off the ends and heated the whole thing up to somewhere between 70 and 1200 C.  The mobile kilns were about the size of a small container.  While one batch was cooking the previous batch could be taken down for processing or sale.

After the tour, we had a wander around the sales area and a nice afternoon tea off Belleek china.

As it was only 4PM, we decided to head towards Sligo in the Republic. We eventually checked into a very nice motel and had dinner next door.  I set my antenna up on the landing and tried to work a number of people, but they couldn't hear me.  Ham radio does not seem to be very active here.

We had a  couple of camera battery malfunctions so check back on this day later for photos.