Thomil's Random Ramblings

I know, I know. You’re all waiting for the third part of my Dubai Trip Report, and believe me, I’m working on it. There will be a slight delay for that, however, due to some recent events and developments here in Cork that have caught my attention. One of them, the visit of a certain Dutch submarine , was the topic of an article last week. While that was a rather lighthearted thing, the topic of this article will be much more serious, though I cannot guarantee that the tone will be equally serious. We’re talking about a service that could mean the difference between life and death for residents in remote communities in Munster. Image: Michael McSweeney, Provision - Supplied by Irish Community Air Ambulance Ireland is a country that traditionally hasn’t been blessed with the best of road networks. The fact that this network is mainly pointed towards Dublin certainly doesn’t help. This, combined with a low population density outside of the main urban centres, has often meant that ...

A submarine in Cork. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. A years ago, a submarine of the Royal Netherlands Navy, HNLMS Dolfijn stopped by in Cork for refuelling and a few days of shore leave. I was down at the docks back then to get a few pictures of it, who knows whether another submarine would ever come to Cork. Then, a few days ago, while browsing through the shipping schedule on the Port of Cork Website, I stumbled across a rather interesting visitor that had surfaced (pun fully intended) there, HNLMS Bruinvis. The name already seemed familiar, and a quick search confirmed it. Like HNLMS Dolfijn, Bruinvis is a Walrus class submarine of the Royal Netherlands Navy. There was no way I was going to let this boat pass by without taking a few photos. I was going to get a bit more than that, but lets first talk about what these boats really are. The Walrus class boats were built for the Dutch Navy in the 1980s to replace a fleet of ageing Dolfijn and Zeehond class submarin...