10.07.2025

The second day of the tour was another scorcher. Blue skies all around. We had booked into our accommodation in Portlaoise, and chatting to the receptionist the following morning, we heard that temperatures were going to climb towards 29°C in the coming days in Laois. This marked the beginning of an official nationwide heatwave that saw temperatures surpass 27°C on multiple consecutive days across Ireland.

Both Liliane and myself were inclined to take the morning at a slow pace - we’d been working through a few calamities in the lead up do the departure event including,

- A stressful last-minute venue change for our event in Timahoe
- Liliane moving out of her studio and having to pack and store everything
- A narrow window to get the sound system and other technical equipment installed for the special broadcast and live Twitch element of the tour. (The lads at Radio King 👑 basically knuckled down for 7 hours until the job was done, fair play to them. We drank coffee and enjoyed the playlist…Ugg'a/AMG Showtime dance remixes of Kylie Minogue's iconic 2001 hit, ‘Can't Get You Out of My Head’ in an industrial estate in Finglas).
- Bringing a load of stuff to the dump after Liliane cleared out her studio, I’d taken a few items that Liliane was otherwise going to sell on Adverts. Then I went over a speed bump and the weight of a fairly large vice in the boot caused the wishbone to snap as my Colt’s suspension was pushed to the max.
- This meant we had to hire a van to finish what we were doing, driving down the country conducting last-minute site visits due to the last-minute venue change.
- Liliane had to pack the Renault 4 alone with all that we’d need for 6 weeks because I had just one day to get to Sligo, pack and get back in time for the start of the tour.
- Then I had to collect 30 promised croissants for a coffee morning whilst carrying a fiddle, amp, suitcase and large box of cassettes from Connelly Station to Temple bar after a night drive to bring my repaired Colt back up to Sligo only to get the 5am train back to Dublin the following morning.

Anyway, all that to say we were relieved to get to Laois and relax for a bit so we decided to visit the Rock of Dunamase. We took the N80 (Stradbally Road) for about 4 km. Then took that turn left at the signpost for the Rock of Dunamase onto an unnamed local rural road marked L6751. Pity the way they do that instead of having original names of the roads as gaeilge. We parked up with a nice view of the rock and looked up its history. I had been given the gift of one of my all-time favourite albums on cassette, so we put that on. Paddy Glackin on fiddle and Jolyon Jackson on about twenty different instruments to create the wildly experimental and brilliant album, Hidden Ground.

The name Dunamase comes from the Irish Dún Másc, meaning the Fort of Masc. Over centuries, it evolved from an ancient Celtic fort and Viking target into an Anglo-Norman castle before being destroyed during the Cromwellian invasion in the mid-1600s. In the mid 90s a series of archaeological excavations were carried out and over 5,500 objects were recovered.

At around 2pm we headed for Dunamaise Arts Centre to prepare for our talk, Roads Less Travelled…

In conversation with writer Ingrid Lyons, visual artist Liliane Puthod introduces her sculpture practice with a focus on her recent exhibition ‘Beep Beep’.

‘Beep Beep’ was curated and produced by Temple Bar Gallery and Studios as part of Longest Way Round, Shortest Way Home, two off-site solo exhibitions at The Pumphouse, Dublin Port, in partnership with Dublin Port Company and supported by The Arts Council of Ireland Project Award.

With the car parked outside Dunamaise Art Centre, we’d invited people to come and hear about the background of tour de force as a touring iteration of Beep Beep and how the Renault 4 would become a mobile museum and broadcasting unit for the summer. At that stage we weren’t sure who was going to show up as we hadn’t seen the attendees list yet. Visual artist and Laois native Paddy Critchley arrived for the talk as well as a few others from the town. Then, low and behold a large group arrived, a youth group who were carrying out their own project on themes of travel and transience, home and sense of belonging. They’d booked in and made a day trip out of our talk.

….at a certain time you might think something doesn't have value, or in that moment you don't maybe see its use. But then as time goes on the object re-emerges from obsolescence or finds a new use. Some people hold on to things, knowing that there’ll be a use for them eventually, they gather the objects and resurrecting them to their former glory. So in the spirit of that, Liliane became a mechanic and worked with three friends of her late father, the legendary mechanics David, Alain and Christophe to re-animate the Renault 4.

Later on, Liliane and myself went for a few beers in the sun and then hit the dance floor of the local pub/club Coppers on the Market Square.