Ireland Trip - Car and Roads

The speed limit signs looked a little different than we are used to.





On the motorway headed out of Dublin.  Speed limit was 100 kph.  About 60 mph.




There were three signs like this for each exit off the motorway.  The first one had three slashes, the second had two and the third had three.  Don't know what exactly them meant.   Just an indication of the upcoming exit, I guess.



The 2012 Ford Focus we rented with Jolene in the driver's seat.  Yep, she was driving a manual transmission vehicle on the wrong side of the road while driving from the wrong side of the vehicle.   A challenge but she did a great job!!!  Better than I did as a navigator! The picture above it is one of the many different kinds of vehicles we saw on the road.  There were lots of these Toyota pickups/SUV/???

 

In the states, green indicates diesel and black is unleaded.  Had to be careful to put the right fuel in the car.  It was a diesel.



Look Ma, no fuel cap.  Yup, you just stuck the nozzle in and started pumping.  Wonderful.  Much better than misplacing gas caps.



Typical N road (national road).  There's M roads (motorways), N roads (National), R Roads (regional) and L roads (local).  Width and condition degrated with each lowering of the designation.  Notice the two tour buses.  It was real interesting when two big vehicles met. 

Over a bridge where the road got even narrower.



Tunnel of trees were common.



Following a semi through a small town.  Most times there were cars parked on both sides of the street.

RV's in Ireland aren't very big.  This is typical.

We saw lots of car makes that aren't seen on the streets in the USA.

Colorful small town but only one car at a time when there were cars parked on both sides of the street.

The curves didn't have speed limit signs.  Just SLOW, SLOWER or VERY SLOW painted on the pavement.  This photo was in the one of the Gaelic speaking areas so, I think this is SLOW in Irish.  I didn't even notice that when I took the photo.  I was trying to show the red-flowering bushes on each side of the road.

A typical curve sign.  The road really wasn't as curvy as this sign shows but we did go down Corkscrew Hill and it as a series of switchbacks.

I bet the semis were only about 60' long but they all had a Long Vehicle sign.

All the semis were cabovers too.  It's apparent why once you get out on the roads in Ireland.  The bushes grow up to the edge of the pavement and it's difficult to see if it is save to emerge from an intersection.

Traffic calming sign.  We just figured this was a reduced speed sign.  

We saw a few large, power-generating windmills in the country.

Thru a tunnel



Typical exit sign.



The towns were listed in the reverse order that you see in the states.  The town the furthest away was listed first.

Another make you don't see in the states.

There were a lot of roads that had stone fences on each side but most of the time there were covered in vegetation so you couldn't see them.



We saw lots of Flagger Ahead signs but this is the only flagger we saw.