I closely follow ‘The Wild Atlantic Way’ tourist route from Limerick to Sligo.
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Tuesday 13 August, 2019. Caherconlish to Kilkee |108 km|
[Raining and miserable; cool to downright cold; not much wind. The route took in: Croom, Ballingary, Rathkeale, Ballyhahill, Glin, Tarbert (ferry), Kilrush and Kilkee]
After a good day’s rest and recuperation at Molly’s aunt and uncle’s house, I got away from their home near Caherconlish, which is a village 18 km south-east of Limerick, at 8.45 on a cold and drizzly day. It was good to be back in the saddle, and the kilometers flew by.
I retraced my wheel-turnings of two days ago for the first 23 km, as far as the pretty village of Croom. It’s not at all like me to go back over old ground like this, but I did so in order to go around the southern side of the Shannon Estuary and cross over to the northern side via the ferry at Tarbert. Not because I like ferries so much (though I do), but to avoid Limerick city and the busy and monotonous roads in and out of it.
This route was a good decision I think – pleasant riding in the rolling, wooded countryside on the south side of the Shannon as far as the coastal village of Glin, and then a lovely water-side ride on to Tarbert. I stopped for an hour in Glin for a meal and some battery charging at the helpful and friendly (and nice-tasting) ‘Taste’ café. The rain caught up with me again though, and it remained drizzly all the way to Kilkee.
Travelling inland on the northern side of the Shannon Estuary, the ride was uneventful up through Kilrush and Moyasta, and I was happy to call it a day at the first seaside town I came to, Kilkee.
It was a bit drab and pretentious, the Stella Maris Hotel in Kilkee, but everything else in this small bustling tourist town seemed to be booked out – this is becoming my constant refrain (that, and bitching about the wind and the rain). Their Monk fish dinner (I just love Monkfish) was appropriately small for the fish’s rarity and price, but, goddammit, I was hungry. €35 kerchink! Needed a few beers and G&Ts to fill the gap.
In case you’re wondering what makes a town a popular tourist haven for the Irish, here’s a picture of Kilkee beach – it’s an incredibly-enhanced image too, to take out most of the gloom. It was shot from just in front of that Winkle lady. It’s a nice-enough beach, I’ll grant you that (though it was closed due to a bit of a sewerage-effluent problem after all the rains).
Wednesday 14 August, 2019. Kilkee to Doolin |70 km|
[It was a cold and wet day again, but I had a magic ride along the coast. The route took in: Doonbeg, Quilty, Spanish Point, Lahinch, Cliffs of Moher and Doolin]
“Grey and misty” took on a surreal dimension today. The Irish call it mist, but it was as though the air was just oozing water out of a perfectly still and uniformly grey sky.
Enough ‘mist’, anyway, to bring up one of my favourite gripes about the average Irish road-user. They’re lovely really, and very courteous as a rule, but most of them absolutely bloody-fucking refuse to put their headlights on in the daytime. Never mind visibility is down to 100m and you’re on a single-lane undulating and twisting country road belting along at 100km/h.
Just out of Kilkee I encountered a lorry looming out of the ether towards me – at first I thought it was just a shimmering tree by the roadside, then maybe a tractor in an adjacent field, but in the twinkling of an eye it was on me, having suddenly resolved itself as a small truck ambling along at a good rate and less than 200m away, with the driver blissfully unaware of me or my distress, since he was engrossed with explaining over his hand-held mobile-fucking-telephone whatever the fuck it was he was explaining that was more important than my existence. Phew! Rant over – for now. But, really, I don’t want to end up just a blot on the landscape because of some ignorant selfish truck driver.
But it was a good day, all considered. First though: strike 2 on the negatives – only 10km out of Kilkee, I got a slow puncture in the front tube. My first in Ireland, and my first since Dessau, Germany, some, 5,000 km ago. I even know exactly when it happened – when my front wheel ran over a blackberry tendril on the footpath just past the entrance to Mr. (President) Trump’s International Golf Links near Doonbeg. Not blaming him!
I stopped under the shelter of the bus-stop in the village of Quilty a little further on, to quickly replace the tube. No problemo. (That’s Schwarzenegger-speak for ‘no problema’, btw).
I cycled further on up the Clare coast to Spanish Point. Here, in 1588, some Spanish galleons that were remnants of the mighty armada that tried to invade England but failed and then had to scurry back home all the way around Scotland and Ireland, were wrecked (at least one of them deliberately so, by feral Irish ‘wreckers’). The wreck survivors, numbering variously 300 to 1,000 men depending on who’s telling the story, were then cruelly executed on the orders of the English High Sheriff of Clare with the collusion of the Irish population. It’s not an incident the Irish exactly play up big in their history, though the several plaques, as well as the memorial dedicated by the king of Spain in 1986, do clearly own up to the circumstances.
The next busy town along the coast, LaHinch, is somewhat of a surfing mecca in Irish folklore, and even on this cold and blustery day the surf schools were doing a roaring business.
There was a heavy rain shower as I was coming up the hill out of LaHinch and I decided to wait it out in The Rock Shop at Liscannor. And I can tell you that as well as a café/ restaurant, it really does have a very good display of gems, rocks, minerals and fossils – one of the best I’ve ever seen in fact.
I didn’t buy anything in the Rock Store, but a short distance further on, I pulled up at Moher Cottage, lured in by their sign that said “voted best coffee in Ireland in 2017”. Well, I’m certainly no expert, but I thought their coffee was great.
There was a traffic jam about a mile past Moher Cottage, of cars waiting to turn in to the Cliffs of Moher car park from both directions. I counted 17 busses and roughly 1,000 cars already in the car park. It’s free to get in to the cliffs, and a breeze too on a bike, zooming past all those cars and then past all the foot-traffic tramping in to the attraction itself.
But it was impossible to get much further than the base viewing platform due to the density of pedestrians on the wide but steep paths up to the cliffs, and rather than getting lynched for running down some little kiddie, (or, heaven forbid, actually getting off the bike and walking!) I thought I’d better not attempt to get all the way up to the top. I obviously had something on my camera lens, but the picture below is all I’ve got to show for my excursion.
So, after only 5 minutes at the famous cliffs, I was back on my bike and out of there. Anyway – they’re not the highest cliffs in Europe, as many would have you believe. No sir, Slieve League, about 300 km further up the coast in Donegal, is, at 600m, three times higher.
I tired unsuccessfully to find accommodation in the next busy little tourist town, Doolin. The receptionist at the main hotel suggested I try a B&B a couple of kilometers out of town at Toormullin, which is how I ended up staying at Churchfield B&B, run by Maeve and costing €55. It was still quite early (2pm) and I’d only covered 70km for the day but, looking at the map ahead, I couldn’t really see any possibilities of accommodation before Galway, and that was still another 70 km away.
And I had the best time ever! I wandered over to the local tavern – McDermott’s Pub, just across and down the road a bit from Maeve’s B&B – for a Guinness and a bite to eat around 3pm. It was quiet then, but the food was ok and there was a poster advertising live music from 9pm, so I decided I’d return later.
When I did go back at 9 the place was absolutely packed to the rafters. In order to have somewhere to balance my hamburger and chips, I ended up sharing a table with a 50-year-old Australian couple, Brad and Kim, pastoralists from Northern Queensland. Also at the table were another pastoralist couple from Ohio (same breed of cattle too – Aberdeen Angus) and that couple’s adult daughter. It turned out we were all staying at Maeve’s B&B, and then two French families with kids, also from Maeve’s, came along and squeezed onto/around our table too.
Traditional Irish music by the trio, ‘Dubhlinn’, (fiddle, bouzouki and uilleann pipes ) kicked in at 10, and by 11 most of the audience were up dancing, including me – which was an amazing-enough spectacle by itself – but also including Brad, which was no mean feat considering he’s only got one real leg and his artificial one of futuristic steel and wires one hadn’t been fitted all that long ago and he was still having trouble getting used to it. The dozen or so Guinness’s he and I each drank probably helped a lot in the dancing department (or at least the itch to get up and do so). By the way, Brad hadn’t had a messy accident that caused him to lose his leg – no, it was a ‘clean-cut’ case of knee surgery that went horribly wrong, got infected and wouldn’t heal, so he elected to have it off after 18-months of ongoing pain and trauma. (I might have been heading down that same path myself, but for the 35,000 km of e-cycling (is that a new word I just coined?) over the past 2 years that have so far proved a wonder cure for my own arthritic knees). Brad and Kim were ‘celebrating’ Brad’s decision to go one-legged with a round-the-world ship cruise and had rented a car to tour around Ireland before the next leg of their journey. Pun intended.
After the band finally wrapped up around 12-ish, we were entertained for another hour or so by ordinary customers with extraordinary voices who one-by-one spontaneously started singing a capella rather beautifully, a wide range of Irish tunes; some poignant, some rollicking, some love songs and some risque ditties. And no, Brad, your accompaniment to “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” did not really enhance the other guy’s singing of it 😁
Thursday 15 August, 2019. Doolin to Oughterard |111 km|
[Mild , with intermittent rainy periods; calm for the first 50km, then a strong headwind from the SW]. The route took in: Black Head, Ballyvaughan, Kinvarra, Clarinbridge, Oranmore, Galway and Oughterard]
I felt great in the morning – no hangover – and was seen off by Maeve with a huge Full Irish breakfast at 8am. (Virtually all the places I stayed in Ireland, whether Hotel, Guest House or B&B, had full cooked breakfast included as part of the accommodation price).
Then I was straightaway on to the Burren , the famous region of glaciated karst landscape in Western Ireland that you’ve probably heard of. And it was, you know… okaaay… different. Well, maybe it’s like the Nazca Lines and you have to see it from a helicopter to truly appreciate it all. But never mind the tourism brochure over-hype, it is a pretty cool place to cycle anyway, and I enjoyed a great ride on the very quiet R477 right the way across the Burren and around Black Head before rejoining the busier N67 again at Ballyvaughan.
The wind was blowing strongly (as you can see from the billowing Irish flag in the photo above), a fact that I didn’t really notice all that much for the 40km it was pushing me along, but by the time I’d fully ‘turned the corner’ at Oranmore and was heading west into it, I sure did notice the wind.
All wet and bedraggled, I stopped for a couple of hours in Galway at the main square to recharge the batteries in a franchised coffee shop belonging to the Caffé Nero chain, while the rain kept pattering down. The Nero staff didn’t seem to mind me (nor anyone else, for that matter) just hanging about the place, so I probably didn’t need to waste the €14 I spent on an truly awful ham and cheese toastie and an even worse iced café latte.
After Galway, the 27 km on to Oughterard was a bit more difficult into the strong wind so I was quite content to call it quits after 111 km in total, even though it was still only quite early, and to stay overnight there in the Boat Inn (€59), and eat out at the very busy Thatch Pub next door. Recreational fishing for trout seems to be the big drawcard around here – that, and tourism generally, as a stop-over point on the ‘Joyce’s Country’ circuit.
Friday 16 August, 2019. Oughterard to Westport |128 km|
[15° and rainy; no wind. The route took in: Clifden, Letterfrack, Killary, The Connemara and Westport]
I was intending to make another short day of it and stay at Clifden (only 60 km away), but there was no accommodation available there and so I kept going on to Westport (and it was difficult enough finding accommodation there as well!).
But the day was good! Firstly, just out of Oughterard, I came across a pretty babbling brook (the Owenriff River) at Waterfall, where I had fond memories of stopping with Molly to have lunch in our rented campervan one October 9 years ago . It was raining then too.
After Oughterard, heading west on a bike you gradually come into the Connemara, which, rather than being landscape-defined like The Burren, is a cultural region (the largest Gaeltacht area of Ireland). Not really being involved in any Gaelic conversations myself, however, I found it more noteworthy because of the scenery – trout-laden lakes framed by verdant hills just about sums it up, and it is very beautiful to ride through.
Peat bogs are one of the main geographical features of the Connemara, and the partly-stripped ground and mounds of shovelled-out peat are everywhere.
.
When I got to Clifden, Terry, who runs Clifden Bike Shop, very kindly let me charge-up Ziggy’s batteries for as long as I liked (I liked 2 hours) while I scouted around for food and a place to stay.
But finding accommodation was impossible because it was the weekend of their biggest event of the year, the Connemara Pony Show. Correction – I couldn’t find any reasonably-priced accommodation: the Arch Guesthouse was happy to let me have a single room for €160, but, especially since they didn’t have anywhere to secure my bike, I declined).
So, on ¾-full batteries, I took off from Clifden with the wind in my sails, and ended up going the full 70 km on to Westport without finding any likely accommodation options. I took the more-direct inland route on N59 past Kylemore Abbey and its Lough, rather than the ocean-following Connemara Loop, because I was a bit stressed about maybe not finding further battery recharging opportunities on the loop that I might need, given all the variables of distance, terrain and wind direction.
Looking back now, this was probably an unnecessary concern and I’ll resolve to be a bit more adventurous in the future, but the route I did choose along the N59 was pleasant-enough anyway as it turned out.
As already mentioned, it was hard enough finding accommodation in Westport, but eventually I was squeezed in to the Mill Times Hotel for €110 after good-naturedly squeezing them down from an opening gambit of €178. It pays to quibble! A NZ tourist couple I talked to next morning were outraged at being ripped-off by paying the full price. Serves them right though – they gloated as NZ thrashed Australia 36 to nil in the rugby while we were having breakfast (mine was complementary, btw – they had to fork out an extra €15 each for theirs).
Saturday 17 August, 2019. Westport to Barnatra |103 km|
[A difficult day, with worsening conditions: moderate to strong head winds, light showers to heavy rain squalls. The route took in: Newport, Mallaranny, Bangor Erris, Belmullet and Barnatra]
First, for 42 km from Westport to Mallaranny, I was on a dedicated cycling and hiking path – The Great Western Greenway. This path is not quite finished yet, and apart from the occasional construction detours, it has a variable-quality surface and some steep sections. After Newport I was cycling into a constant buffeting side- or head-wind that almost stood the bike up in some places.
Despite the bad weather, there were many cyclists and some walkers, including family groups with young children, out for a Saturday cycle or walk, going in both directions. They sure are a hardy lot, these Irish!
The sun briefly poked its head out as I was riding into the supermarket/ service station/ pub on the foreshore at Mallaranny, but no sooner had I made it under cover with my batteries to charge up in the pub when a vicious storm came through. Sorry Ziggy, that you had to remain out in the weather, together with the cycles of half a dozen intrepid day-trippers, while the storm raged.
I gave it a good 2-hour charge before moving on, even though I only intended to go another 52 km on to Belmullet (which is very poor anglicization of the original ‘Béal an Mhuirthead’, if you ask me). But in my battery-management scheme I hadn’t reckoned on two factors: Firstly, the wind came back with renewed intensity and was now from directly in front of me, and secondly, there was a huge wedding reception taking place in Belmullet.
Belmullet is not a big place, but it has two absolutely huge 4/5-star resort hotels and numerous B&Bs – all were booked solid and didn’t want to know about a soaked-through-to-the-bone cyclist muddying their doorstep. I’d had an inkling of the impending problem from the constant stream of be-ribboned cars that zipped by me soon after I’d passed through Bangor Erris as I was battling the 50km/h wind gusts (and, btw, its still blowing at 35 km/h from the same direction, SW, as I write this 2 weeks later).
Maybe I should have thought more seriously about just turning around and looking to stay somewhere in Bangor Erris. Anyway, I didn’t, and now I had nowhere to stay in town and the batteries were already down to 2 bars, indicating 19 km further range (on TURBO mode into the wind).
I felt I had no option other than to leave Belmullet and strike out NE on the R314 road in order to have the wind directly behind me, and maybe get lucky with a B&B or country pub out that way, or just prevail upon a farmer to let me charge up some more. So I eked out the batteries and fairly zipped along at up to 40 km/h using up little or no battery power for 15 km, until in a dipping hollow I came across this tavern by the side of the road:
I figured they’d at least let me charge up my batteries in the bar, but I was totally unprepared for the reception I got. It was quiet from the outside and I even thought the bar might be permanently closed, until I opened the door to a rollicking party in full swing, complete with 3-piece band! Paddy, the owner of McGuires Pub, was pulling pints of Guinness and beckoned me to wait for a bit – quite a bit, as it turned out, for he still had a few more pints to pull. When he finally was able to turn his attention to me, he beckoned me outside so we could talk without the din and I briefly explained my predicament – no battery, are there any places to stay up the road a-ways etc.
“Wait here, and I’ll check with my wife” is all he said and wandered off back inside. In a couple of minutes he was out again and said “Follow me. Bring the bike”, and we went to the house next-door-but-one. “You’re staying with Vincent”, and we went straight in, said hello to Vincent and went upstairs, looked in one bedroom that he pronounced not suitable then a second, larger, one and said “That’s your room. Get settled and come back over to the pub. We’ll feed you.” (or words to that effect, don’t quote me on the direct speech).
How good is that!
I took the bike around the back, got changed out of my sopping wet clothes (I was drenched through to the skin) and then had a bit of a chat to Vincent. He’s in his… what, 70s, I guess… and didn’t look too well and wheezed a lot (bad back definitely, emphysema maybe?). He spoke with a slight American accent but didn’t say much. All I could really get out of him is that Paddy is a nice bloke and was looking after him, but I never did find out any more about the actual situation.
Back at the bar, it was a christening party that was in full swing with about 100 people, counting the dozen or so kids all done up in their Sunday best and having fun playing in amongst the grown-ups. I had a few Guinnesses myself and got chatting, initially to a few local men down one end of the bar, who seemed to be ring-ins to the actual festivities like myself, and then to the well-dressed party folk. Somewhere along the line I got to saying I was cycling around Ireland which somehow became “cycling around the world” and I developed almost-celebrity status as I was thereafter introduced to everyone as “the Australian guy who’s cycling around the world”.
It was a great big sit-down roast dinner with all the trimmings followed by dessert, that I (as well as the other ring-ins) were urged to join in on. So a huge thank you to all at McGuires Pub, Barnatra, Co Mayo, for your stunning generosity.
Sunday 18 August, 2019. Barnatra to Sligo |143 km|
[Cold and showery, not much wind though. The route took in Céide Fields Neolithic site, Ballycastle, Lillala, Ballina, Inishcrone, Easky, Ballysdare and Sligo]
Vincent had told me, in what seemed a pointed manner, that he’s early to bed and early to rise, and so as not to disturb him in the evening I discreetly left the party around 9pm and went straight to sleep in my allotted room. I was tired anyway. I didn’t have the chance to properly thank Paddy though, as he was all about the place, constantly busy.
True to his word, Vincent was already up and about at 7 am, bent over his latest painting, or rather, gluing tiny coloured plastic beads onto a canvas to make a mosaic according to a prescribed backing picture – needs a lot of patience, I’d say. He offered breakfast but as I wanted an early start I declined his kind offer and was out the door on my way to Sligo by 7.30.
Fairly soon I was back on the Atlantic coast and the daunting cliffs at the Neolithic site of Céide Fields. I was far too early to visit the archeological site because it doesn’t open until 10 am, and I soldiered on.
I made good time to Sligo and found a nice place to stay in The Sligo City Hotel. I liked Sligo – it had a nice vibe and appearance to it, but, on a rainy Sunday night nothing much was going to happen, and so after a quick reconnoitre of some of the bars I came back to the hotel and had a quick bar meal before early retirement.
-ends-
#67 Around Ireland part 2, the West. 662 km
Europe 2019. Around Ireland so far: South and West |1,413 km|
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Distance in Europe in 2019: 7,728 km
Total bike distance (all in Europe): 12,691 km