Nearly packed, just a few small things to put in the suitcase. About thirty hours before take-off now. Its all getting very exciting.
Yesterday I paid a visit to the excellent map shop, Standfords in Long acre. So now I have Irish OS maps of Athlone (47& 48), and the Killarney National Park and Central Dublin. I also have a map of Kerry. I love maps, especially 25,000 and 50,000 scale maps. I could read a map all day. One can discover such a lot abourt the topography, land use and history of a place just from studying a sufficiently large scale map.
While I was at Standfords and as they seemed to have the complete set of Irish OS maps (often not the case as they sell out so quickly) I looked up the maps for Galway City. I wanted to see if Renmore barracks was still extant.They are. Galway will not be a place we can visit this trip. However it is a city I want to visit because Renmore barracks was once the Regimental depot of the Connaught Rangers and the place where William, my grandfather enlisted and did his basic Infantry training. I would like to go and walk over the training grounds and the live firing ranges to get a 'feel' of the terrain over which William marched and ran and crawled and shot.
I intend to write to the Department of Defence to see if it is possible to arrange to see the old Victorian Barracks (if they still stand) and to walk over the training grounds.
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