Ireland Vanlife- 3 epic places to explore!

Van and RV trips around the world
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2 Video Views·Apr 17, 2025
My Ireland motorhome trip continues and this time my daughter Jade joins me. We explore the area around Cork, including the Blarney Stone, Cobh, Mahon Falls and the Rock of Cashel. But my personal highlight was driving the famous 'Magic Road' with the fairies.
It proper goes up! That's so cool!
Hi, I'm Cat. I live and travel in my motorhome full-time with my dog Matt, but currently we're
exploring the wilds of Ireland. If you missed the start of my series, I'll leave the link for it in
the notes, but on this episode my daughter Jade joins me for a few days whilst we explore Cork
and kiss the Blarney Stone, and then I start the Wild Atlantic Way proper, going from Kinsale,
which is the start, all the way down to the spectacular Mizzenhead. But first we stop for a
visit at the incredible Roc de Cashel. I found a rock! You found a rock? Oh wow, look at it!
All right, you want to try and stick it? Oh, that's dangerous. I know,
just you can do it, I have faith in you. Uh, don't.
The castle is incredible and well worth a visit. If you can, be sure to book onto a guided tour
because the knowledge the guides have really brings the place to life, and it's definitely
worth paying a little bit extra to go inside the chapel. This is the place that's just been
restored and they've restricted it to a certain number of people each day, so if you can get in
there, really do. It's also got one of the world's oldest spiral staircases. What do we think of the
rock? It was more than a rock. It was more than a rock? It was more than a rock. It was amazing,
it was stunning, it was very windy, but it was amazing. So now where are we off to?
I, uh, you know this, you do know this. Uh, Tipperary. Yay!
We had a lot to fit into a couple of days, so we didn't stay in Tipperary much longer than it took
to take this photo of us next to the sign, but then we headed out into the wilderness to the
stunning Mahon Falls and the Magic Road. We were initially planning to sleep in the car park up by
the falls, but it was so windy that the van was shaking all over the place, so we headed back
down the hill and asked the cafe right at the bottom if we could stay there for the night,
and they were very happy to, as long as we came and had breakfast the next morning. Oh,
twist our arm. So the next morning we were up very early because I wanted to test out the Magic Road
without any other traffic around. Good morning! We are up stupidly early, I don't know if you can
see the sunrise, it's just, it's like half six in the morning, because we've just discovered that
we're like a hundred meters from the Magic Road, and the Magic Road is where the fairies or the
leprechauns live, and basically, yeah, so you drive up there, you put the engine in neutral, and then it
rolls uphill. Jayde's gonna film it. Yep, so I won't be in the crash.
Um, so we're gonna do it early before anybody else turns up, so yeah, watch this space. Apparently there's two
stones somewhere that says Fairy Tree on Magic Road. There it is, that tree. That's the tree.
That tree, that little, little tree. It's got the Hades on it. Where? On the left. Oh yeah, Magic Road.
There's Jayde running, you don't see that sight very often. If you stand at the back,
like behind me somewhere, go up that little bit of hill, and then I'm gonna roll. Okay.
I'm not turning the engine off, but it's just out of gear. Okay, so that's the Magic Tree,
and this is the roll. Oh, it's rolling quite quick! Oh no!
She's just...
It forever goes up!
That's so cool! And away she goes, off with the fairies.
I'm definitely having to steer. Do not do this
without somebody in the car driving! It's going really fast!
And if you're doing it in a motorhome, please keep the engine running in case somebody comes
or something, but you can just do it out of gear. That was really fun. Do you want to come in?
Magic Road testing completed. We carried on up the road until we reached the car park by Mahon
Falls. This is a fantastic hike, it takes you about an hour or so, quite flat, unless you're
Jayde and you go scrambling around the waterfall. And then it was back down the hill to Coonies
Yard Cafe to fulfill our promise and enjoy a delicious breakfast. It's a tough job, but we
did it valiantly. I don't know, I'm just filming b-roll. And then I realised what an absolute tip
our van was. Yeah. But yeah, stuck two ADHD girls in a van together and this is what happened.
To be fair, most... actually that's not even true, now half of that is mine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
you're about to blame it on me. I was. My stuff is mostly there. Do we believe this?
As long as you don't look here, it's mostly there. Yeah, well as long as you don't look
anywhere else, it's just all the mess is mostly there. Next up, it was time to fulfill a lifelong
ambition and kiss the Blarney Stone. Now, don't think I'm stupid, but I didn't realise that the
Blarney Stone was actually at the top of Blarney Castle. I also didn't realise that you were
supposed to get there as early as you possibly could in the day, otherwise you had to queue.
Luckily, because it's out of season and it's only March, we didn't have to queue for longer than
about 25 minutes. If you've never been to the Blarney Castle or kissed the stone,
you have to lie down on your back, bend over at some ridiculous angle and kiss the stone
that's a good foot below where you are. It is a bit of an athletic achievement.
Thank you.
That was a bigger smooch than I planned for. I had a proper smooch too.
Do you feel like you have the gift of the gab? I don't know. Are you eloquent? No. You did it though.
Yeah, that was, it was, I was hanging upside down. For dinner, now that she's got the gift of the
gab, she persuaded me that fish and chips and a battered burger was the only option.
Better than a burger, right? I'm just spending all my life filming you eating and drinking.
You are. Right, so what have we got? It's a battered burger. A battered burger. Yeah.
There's a literal beef burger in batter. I guess so. Go on then. Very messy. It's gonna be really
hot. Tell us this Irish, I would have thought battered stuff was more Scottish than Irish,
but perhaps I'm wrong. I don't know, it just makes me think of the battered Mars Bars.
Yeah, but I've never had one of them either. I haven't either. I don't think it's gonna be that hot.
Okay, my bad. I mean yeah, it's pretty good. After I put JD back on the air coach to Dublin airport,
I spent two days at Cove Harbour, spelt Cobb. Don't miss the incredible cathedral there and
also a trip into their Titanic museum is well worth doing. They've got a fantastic air at Cove,
which has got all the facilities you need for just £10 a night.
And that was it. I was on my way to start the Wild Atlantic Way, the world's longest coastal
road trip. Join me on the journey as I find epic roads, truly mesmerising beaches and seaweed baths.
If you're new to the channel and want to carry on with the journey,
then feel free to subscribe and I'll see you on the next video. Thanks for watching.
