Border hopping

Today I drove for 3 hours, for a 35 minute baby shoot. I felt like asking if they had any pets or neighbours they wanted me to photograph to make it worth my while! Although the shoot was in Northern Ireland, driving there and back I crossed the border with the Republic of Ireland 8 times. For some reason I always still find that quite cool.

Of course I grew up in a time when it wasn't so simple to leave the country, with military checkpoints on the main cross-border roads, and blockades and surveillance on the smaller roads. I grew up right beside the border, and we often crossed it to get cheaper petrol and have an occasional flutter on the lottery (in the days before the UK had a National Lottery!), so queueing at checkpoints is among some of my earliest memories. Thankfully we don't need to worry about that any more.

It's still pretty obvious when you cross into the Republic, the road markings change from white to yellow, signs start popping up in Irish, distances and speed limits are in kilometres and km/h instead of miles and mph, the tarmac changes as you can see here, and if you stop in a petrol station for some Irish Cadbury's chocolate (so much nicer than British Cadbury's) then you'll have to go digging in your purse for some Euros :)