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Car Hire while on holiday in Europe

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Hiring a car gives you the freedom to go where you like and not be tied to public transport timetables. It is probably a bit more expensive, but with two of us sharing the cost it is worthwhile. More passengers in the car makes it a no-brainer. We could go off the beaten track to visit friends in out-of -the-way places, and detour into tiny villages to have coffee and cake with the locals. The down side is worrying about the traffic, accidents, and parking. In our case, these things weren't as bad as we expected.  We have hired three cars over the last two months, through the car hire broker Argus Car Rental.  We've used Argus on all our holidays for the last couple of decades. This time, in all cases, we ended up with cars from the Europcar agency. We try and choose a small car but not the smallest, and look at the reviews to make sure we are using a reputable car rental agency.  It saves a lot of dosh to use a firm that generally has a depot outside the airport, meaning...
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Old Blighty, green and pleasant lands....

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Our overnight ferry crossing to Liverpool was easy. After a pub meal north of Dublin we navigated to the port OK and parked the car on the top deck of the ferry. We were told by the concierge the food was free for the sea voyage so I had a second dinner and, helped by a sea-sick pill, slept through to the morning wake-up at 4am. We were like zombies at the breakfast bar with all the truckies but the coffee worked and we quickly got on the motorway to the Lakes. The lack of sleep caught up at about 8am and we had to pull in to a service area to sleep in the car for 30 minutes. Slightly rejuvenated, we carried on and arrived at Jon and Annies at Horseshoes by Lake Coniston for a second (much healthier) breakfast. As we found in Ireland, people don't change and we quickly resumed our long friendship as though we'd never been apart. They live in a beautiful part of the UK, in a forest by the lake, in an old stone house, guarded by extremely narrow roads and dry-stone walls. What el...
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Killarney; jaunting cars, castles, and forts. And rugby!

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The long spell of fine weather we'd been enjoying finally ran out on our last night in North Wales. It rained heavily on our early morning drive through Anglesey to the ferry terminal at Holyhead. Dublin looked dismal when we docked at the harbour, but the rain stopped and we had an easy drive across to the touristy town of Killarney. Well, it used to be a town when we passed through on our honeymoon 37 years ago.  It is a busy city now and the most common language we heard in the streets around the apartment was Polish. Why is the sky so low? We woke to see a grey sky but no rain. When Billy Connolly first took his children to Scotland they asked "why was the sky so low?". Well, our sky was low too. We set off for Kate Kearneys Cottage to walk through the Gap of Dunloe. While mainly a walking path it is a shared space, with bikers, some locals in cars, and quaint jaunting cars.  These little horse-drawn carts are really popular here, and care is needed walking up the roa...
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