I was down in Galway for the Salthill air show over the weekend and clocked up 420 miles on the 306, mainly on Irish roads.
You don't know how good our roads are up here in the North until you have to travel down south. Even our crappiest country road with grass growing up the middle is smoother than the majority of their roads.
Here's some of the things I came across...
People really obide by the speed limits. Usually, there's one car driving at between 45-55 mph and a queue of about 20 cars behind it and then as soon as the car at the front sees the 40/30MPH sign, they stand on the brakes - not a gradual slow down, but rather like a paniced slowdown.
Whenever you say hello to anyone you pass when you're out walking etc - they don't even acknowledge you're there with a complimentary hello.
McDonalds costs more than up here - for two meals (usually £3.49 each up here cost EURO6.30 each which works out as nearly £10.00 for two meals).
Now the worst thing of all I came across - the Garda directing traffic. It took almost 2 hours to get out of the Salthill area because of the Garda directing traffic at EVERY set of traffic lights. Like, what is the need to direct traffic at working traffic lights? I can understand directing traffic at roundabouts etc where some lanes have more of a priority but Traffic lights aren't biased. Ejjits.
Probably other stuff too that I can't quite remember...
No offence intended to anyone Irish on here, it was just a real shock compared to motoring etc up here.
You don't know how good our roads are up here in the North until you have to travel down south. Even our crappiest country road with grass growing up the middle is smoother than the majority of their roads.
Here's some of the things I came across...
People really obide by the speed limits. Usually, there's one car driving at between 45-55 mph and a queue of about 20 cars behind it and then as soon as the car at the front sees the 40/30MPH sign, they stand on the brakes - not a gradual slow down, but rather like a paniced slowdown.
Whenever you say hello to anyone you pass when you're out walking etc - they don't even acknowledge you're there with a complimentary hello.
McDonalds costs more than up here - for two meals (usually £3.49 each up here cost EURO6.30 each which works out as nearly £10.00 for two meals).
Now the worst thing of all I came across - the Garda directing traffic. It took almost 2 hours to get out of the Salthill area because of the Garda directing traffic at EVERY set of traffic lights. Like, what is the need to direct traffic at working traffic lights? I can understand directing traffic at roundabouts etc where some lanes have more of a priority but Traffic lights aren't biased. Ejjits.
Probably other stuff too that I can't quite remember...
No offence intended to anyone Irish on here, it was just a real shock compared to motoring etc up here.