The plan on Wednesday was to drive down the coast from Belfast through Bangor, the various Bally…. towns to Portaferry, take the ferry across, poke around, and then come back. On the way down we stopped at the Walled Castle Garden in Bangor, a beautiful Victorian garden.

A little further down the road was a lighthouse, requiring a stop.

Nearby was the Donaghadee Lifeboat Station. Posted on the door was the info on their last callout:

As we got back on the road we saw a sign for a windmill, so off we went.

We learned that on this little peninsula there weren’t any rivers or streams sufficient to turn a water wheel, so around 50 windmills at one time dotted the landscape earning the area the nickname “Little Holland”. This is the only one of the windmills left. There was a little visitors center, but it was closed. Today the landscape is dotted with individual wind turbines. These aren’t like the windfarms in the US. The wind turbines here all look to be individually owned and operated, one here and one there.

I needed fuel for the car so we pulled into a small gas station. The car takes diesel. I was sure that I was using the diesel nozzle, but apparently failed and put 40 liters (about 11 gallons) of gasoline into the nearly empty tank. About 10 minutes later the car started acting very strangely. The engine would race, then stall, then chug along, then race, stall, etc. We were very close to Portaferry so I nursed it into town. The dashboard flashed “Engine Failure. STOP” and I coasted into a parking place right in the center of the town.

We called the roadside assistance number, which meant talking to an Europcar call center. They then said they would pass along the info to AA for roadside assistance. We made the call at 12:55pm. At that time the Europcar representative said it would take 90 minutes for the AA to arrive and they would call me on their way.

While waiting we looked around the town and saw an old castle.

There was a small visitors center. We walked in and were warmly greeted by a lady working at the center. “Do you remember me?” she asked Nina. Turns out she was working on Tuesday at the reception desk at Belfast City Hall. She and Nina had had quite a conversation and she was the one that recommended we drive down the coast to Portaferry. She had written the whole itinerary down on a small piece of paper which somehow during the day we lost. For me it was an astonishing coincidence.

At 3pm (two hours later) I called again as no one had arrived and no one had called. By this time we in a small cafe Captain Jacks having lunch. While the Europcar person was quite apologetic, I was on hold for about 20 minutes while they were checking and the call failed. I called back and was eventually told the AA person was 15 minutes away.

At 3:45pm I called Europcar again. This time they were 20 minutes away. At 5pm the answer was that they were “trying to sort it out.” At 6:10pm when I called, I didn’t get the Europcar call center, but the AA office in Dublin. Apparently Europcar quite at 6pm. This time AA escalated the call to a supervisor who said that AA Ireland had to transfer the ticket to AA UK and that the way it worked was Eurocar called AA Ireland. Because we were in Northern Ireland, AA Ireland then called Lyon, France to place the trouble call with AA UK who then placed the trouble call with AA Northern Ireland, and they had my location wrong. After that was straightened out, the AA vehicle arrived at 7:30pm and promptly determined the problem was the wrong fuel in the car. It would have to be towed.

They arranged a flatbed tow truck to come. It would take the car to a secure lot and then deliver it to Europcar on Thursday morning. We would ride with the tow truck. After dropping the car, he then drove us to our B&B. It was 11:45pm when we got to our bedroom.

It’s now the next day. I called Europcar at 8am to see what my options were. Putting the wrong fuel in the car is customer negligence. If there is any damage to the car, I will be responsible for it. Further, when a car is disabled due to customer negligence, there is a 24-hour “cooling off period” before they’ll issue another car. We were on our own for getting to Dublin to catch our 7:25pm flight to Paris this Thursday evening.

Fortunately, there’s an airport express bus from Belfast to the Dublin Airport that leaves once an hour and takes about 2 hours. We’ll take a taxi from our B&B to the bus terminal at 11am and take the next bus to Dublin and chill at the airport.

An interesting (and possibly expensive) end to our delightful two weeks in Ireland. It’s raining today. We’ve only had four rainy days and even then they didn’t rain very hard. Two of then were days we spent most of the day driving. People here tell us that the weather we’ve had is remarkable. I’m OK with that!

So, we’re off the Paris where the Yellow Vest Protests have been somewhat violent the past couple of weeks. We’re leaving one interesting political situation to experience another one.