Thursday, 18th of May, 2017.
The decision now was about come back to the road for where I came, or keeping moving around the coast. At that moment I had to be honest with myself: with The Monster I could not go too far every day. I barely could walk three hours with my feet totally screwed and my ankle as the size as a potato. So I decided to find the road from where I was and try to go to the next town, Sligo.
I was trying to get some water (again) in this beautiful huge house that looks like a hotel, when I saw a car passing. I moved my arms, hoping that the person could see me and it worked! Ha! A nice old man stopped and waited for me. He was not going to Sligo but he put me in a nice place to hitchhiking again.
It was when Eunan took me. An Irish name according to him. My favorite ride (forgive me all the other ones) until now. A very cute old man, who knew so much about everything. He told me about Sligo and the regional stuff, about when he used to hiking and climb some mountains around and about this beautiful one, called Benbulbin (the picture which opens this post). He was not going exactly to Sligo but to the airport to collect his sister, but he left me in front of the W.B. Yeats Institutional (William Butler Yeats was the most famous poet from Sligo). The tourist information was a few metres from there and since it was raining, I decided to take a coffee, a soup and some bread before going to see the place while waiting for the weather gets better.
It is a very small space to the one who suppose to be the most important celebrity of town. Just a few pictures and sculptures in one single room. I understand it is also a small town, but still, they could do something at least a little bigger. The best part of the building is actually the coffee, where there are poems of him written all over the place in the walls.
Sligo is a cute town, with beautiful streets and old buildings and old walls. Unfortunately, I did not had the same lucky with the people. Maybe I just met all the crap ones of the town, I do not know. But at the coffee, the waitress was kind of rude; at the tourist information, the attendant was a bitch (and that I know it was bad lucky, because the other one, a young lady, not just looked nicer, as I even heard the people who she was helping, saying beautiful things about her when they left); and at the pub where I asked for wi-fi (how can all the pubs in Northern Europe look so beautiful inside?) I have almost pretty sure that some men where laughing at my plan of travelling the world for ten years. Anyway, after sitting for a while outside the Cathedral, I decided the best thing to do would be to leave Sligo. It was when everything started to go crazy: like the town it was not allowing me to leave.
First I tried to leave by the road and hitchhike. I walked until a place which looked like the beginning of a motorway. Afraid of being taken by the cops again, I decided not keep going and come back to try a better place in town. At town, I walk until the entrance, which was in a bridge, and could not find one single good place where the cars could stop for me. What I am going to do? I thought. I have to leave, I have to leave. So I decided for taking a bus. At the station, a rude attendant, said do not have any routes to the next town I was mentioning and the other routes were not available anymore that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, for Loki’s sake!
Pissed off and very tired, I decided go to that pub I mentioned before, get connection and find a cheap Hostel to spend the night. The place was called The Beehive Accommodation and the receptionist who received me it was not bad but not as good as the other ones in the places I had passed before. I went to a Tesco, bought a beer and some tomatoes to make a pasta and some mini chocolate muffins. What a wonderful meal I had that night!
Funny fact then: another receptionist came, a very nice one this time (and kind of cute) with a strong accent (that I could not identify from where) and talk to me about his concern with the other guest in my room. It was an old man who was completely drunk. I said I appreciated his concern, but everything would be fine. And it was. I talked a little with the man, he told me he was a fifty five years old man and a few more things that I do not remember. I saw a few books in his bag and that was it. Apart of the fact he slept naked (thank Loki he was covered by the shits) we do not had any problem. He was a gentle man.
That night I Google it and found out about the road / motorway I had in earlier. There was this little space where I could hitchhike. Next morning, when I arrived there, I found the first hitch-hiker since I had started: a French guy with a huge warn written down Dublin. He told me about been in there for like an hour and I thought – What?! After a few minutes a pick up stopped to me and I ask if the French guy could came with us and the driver said yes. Unfortunately, there was not enough space for our stuff and the driver said that he would take just me because he had stopped for me. I felt so bad. I mean, I know he stopped for me but even so, I could not even look to the French guy and say that I feel sorry, I just get inside the car with my shame and leave. If you are reading this now, French guy, I am truly sorry for that.
At the end, the best thing of Sligo it was not even from there: Eunan. He just looks like those kind of grandfather from the movies, who everyone wants as grandpa. At the coffee shop, after my leek soup, I realized that probably left one of the parts of my camera in his car. At least now he has a part of me too because from him I will always have this thing in my heart: tenderness.