'Why the monster?' I said.

'The Travellers are impressed by big vehicles. We don't want to look like pikers, and we might have to go off-road here and there.'

That made sense and I enjoyed the feel of the powerful engine and the comfort of the car-air con, CD player, hands-free telephone set-up, GPS facility. Patrick had equipped himself with a map, plotted our route, and only resorted to the GPS for confirmation.

We took our time driving across to the west. The weather was typically Irish-damp and changeable. We experienced different kinds of weather within a period of a few hours. It was nothing like driving in country Australia, no long straight lines to the horizon. Off the major roads, the narrow bitumen and clay stretches bent and curved and rose and fell and crossed creeks that bubbled and would never run dry. We went south to County Clare and visited Tipperary like the tourists we were. We stopped here and there to take in the scenery, have a drink and some food. I experimented with the new phone camera Megan had given me as a birthday present but had trouble sorting out its functions. As befitted men for whom the cardiac alarm had sounded, we went for longish walks around the stopping places, climbing some pretty steep hills and not rewarding ourselves too handsomely in the pubs and eating and sleeping well. The Irish have the bed 'n' breakfast thing down to a fine art.

It was evening when we reached Galway. Good time to arrive, with mist shrouding the bay and giving the town itself a nineteenth-century feel. Like mine, Patrick's mental image of Ireland had been formed by reading about the slaughters under Cromwell and William of Orange, the famine and the troubles; by films and photographs and music-the Clancy Brothers, the Chieftains, Sinead O'Connor. The strange thing was that the picture in the imagination and the reality were pretty close. The green of the fields and hills was intense, almost too much for Australian eyes used to more muted colours. And the sea was grey-blue and I imagined I could hear Ewan MacColl's voice as I looked at it.