West Waterford is a great part of the country. Years ago when I used to do rowing in college I went to Cappoquin a couple of times for a training week. The first time was in early January one year and there was about 40 of us (girls and boys) staying in this old orphanage which is now a B&B, which had pool tables and a dartboard. The woman who ran the place, Sandra, was like a surrogate mother, she’d remember everyone by name and keep offering you more food, and the food was fantastic. In the morning we’d have a huge bowl of porridge,and a fry-up and then go down to Villierstown and row up and down the glass-like Blackwater for three or four hours, nearly making it to Youghal a couple of times. Then back for lunch and out again for more rowing in the afternoon, followed by a massive dinner, games of pool and darts and the pub each night. Dan Shanahan’s uncle was one of the people who used to organise the whole thing for us. Savage stuff. We went back at Easter the next year though and the water was rough as fuck. The last night on the second time I was there, I had about 10 pints and almost puked in the boat the next day. Then going home in afternoon, we got a bus from Cappoquin to Dublin which had a stop at Waterford. The driver announced that there would be no more stops after Waterford and if anybody wanted to get out to go to the toilet, to do so. I did. but a German lad who was travelling with me didn’t. Then when the bus got up to around the Carlow/Kildare border, he asks me “is zis bus stopping?” I said, “no, I told you that at Waterford”. “Oh no”, he replies, I really need to go to ze toilet". “I told you to go at Waterford, mate”, I replied. A few minutes later he’s about to piss himself and goes up to ask the driver to stop. The driver lets him out at the side of the motorway to get out to go, but about 45 seconds later pulls off again. I thought, “he couldn’t have been that bad if it only took him that long to go”, expecting him to appear up the steps at the front of the corridor as we pulled off. He never appeared. The driver had left him at the side of the motorway.