on the road less travelled in Ireland and france

With time ticking away, Fran and Conal discover a washing machine and a dryer are not a good combination.

Wednesday, October 11, 2023 (Breakfast). Raining in Dublin: This is our last morning in the Cowper Road Airbnb. Fran and I have to be out by noon.

This is day we lose our usual morning connection – via the apartment WIFI – back to Australia. Yesterday we were hopping between public WIFI connections in the centre of Dublin.

This afternoon we are out in the real world and driving across Ireland, so we needed an internet connection.

The night before Fran decided it was time of do a small laundry wash, using the apartment’s combined washing machine and dryer.

This combination was new to us. How good, we thought, throw in dirty washing, come back a few hours later and take out clean, dry clothes.

When we woke up we discovered the clothes had washed, but were still damp, despite the intervention of the drying cycle.

We waited until after breakfast to hit the Spin Dry cycle button. This was a mistake. The machine clicked into action but locked us out for three hours. It was 8.45am, so the clothes would be available by 11.45am.

That is cutting it a bit fine, we thought. It was close to the noon check-out time.

There was nothing we could do.

We packed our bags, did a check-out tidy up, got our bag of rubbish ready to be dumped and had our recyclables separated too.

The next item on our To-Do List was to buy Irish sim-cards for our Australian phones.

A trip to the upmarket Dundrum Shopping Centre, a visit to the (Irish) Vodaphone Store there soon sorted our telephone situation (with the bonus Irish Vodaphone could be used in France too) and we were in both back online.

We got back to Cowper Road with 30 minutes to spare. As we waited for the washing machine to open, we did a final sweep of the apartment.

Bang on time, the machine clicked over. Fran reached in and found the clothes – after a three-hour cycle – less damp than before. In fact they were steaming.

Steaming hot, but still damp. Fran was dumbfounded!

We swore. And threw the damp laundry into plastic bag and left the apartment with our luggage, rubbish and the box of recycling.

Outside (in the rain) we looked in vain for the apartment complex’s rubbish bins … in vain.

We would have to take them with us and hope we could find a suitable spot for them on our trip across Ireland. We threw everything into the back of the hire car and set off for the Wild West Coast.

The hire car began to smell of rubbish, empty wine bottles and steaming damp laundry but we were on the rocky road from Dublin.