I continue my eBike tour around Ireland: the north coast from Sligo in the Republic to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, still closely following the Wild Atlantic Way.
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Monday 19 August. Sligo to Killybegs |112 km|
[Cold (13 – 15°C) and plenty of rain showers. Not much wind, but very hilly, on lanes and quiet back-country roads. The route took in: Glencar Valley and Lough, a few kilometers in the UK, Ballyshannon, Ballintra, Donegal, Mountcharles and Killybegs]
On the Monday morning I waited for 40 minutes for Gary’s Cycles, just around the corner from my hotel, to open up at 9am but they had nothing to offer me in the way of the spare 27½” tubes or tyres I was looking for.
The front tyre, which is the original knobbly Schwalbe ‘Rock Razor’ that came with the bike, has done 12,700km now, and although it amazingly still has plenty of tread, it has numerous small cuts in it (from stones and gravel) all over the contacting surface.
I’ve been worried for a while now that this tyre is vulnerable to attack by blackberry prickles, as the hedge-trimming season is now well under way and some of the cut shoots often lay on the bike path or road verge and are a constant puncture hazard. The rear tyre suddenly got an ‘explosion’ of punctures for this reason at 7,800 km usage, and I had to change it at Dömitz on the Elbe River in Germany. The replacement tyre, the excellent Schwalbe “Marathon Plus MTB”, is still looking pretty good after 6,000 km of duty. They’re not an especially expensive item (€40-50) – just impossible to find in Ireland. More on this later, I’m sure.
This inland route from Sligo to Donegal on the hilly minor lanes was challenging but did offer some rewarding views, and moreover, it entirely avoided any main road alternatives such as the N15, N16 and N4.
It was raining steadily when I got to Donegal, so I decided to wait it out for a couple of hours at the very friendly and considerate ‘Bank Bar’ on ‘the diamond’ square in the town centre for a couple of hours while the batteries were charging . The Tourist Information Office in Donegal was, once again for such places, useless, but this time also aloof and quite haughty – they told me it’s against their rules to let the public charge-up anything on their general power outlets, but said I could have 20-minutes on their office power socket if I really needed to.
From Donegal, it was a straightforward and uneventful afternoon’s ride on the N56 and R263 to Killybegs via Mountcharles and Bruckless, though Ziggy did then decide to have some fun with me and routed me on to a very steep and rugged dead-end track with the finish-line almost in sight, needing a 3-km climb and similar back-track when I was already on the home stretch.
I stayed at the ‘Ritz’ B&B in Killybegs – reasonable value at €45, though their cereal breakfast wasn’t a patch on any of the other breakfasts I was given as part of the Bed and Breakfast deal.
Killybegs is Ireland’s major fishing port and there were some pretty serious-looking midwater pelargic trawlers in port. Apparently, that’s where they mostly stay these days – in port – because of the blanket enforcement of EU fishing regulations which has frozen them out of the market. Excuse the pun.
Tuesday 20 August. Killybegs to Downings |138 km|
[Yay! It was warmer, with patches of blue sky – sunshine, even. No wind and no rain. Well, that was to begin with, but later on it reverted to the usual wind and rain of course. A very scenic ride through picturesque countryside; a bit hilly though. The route took in: Gortahork, Earagail, Ardara, Glenties, Dungloe, Gweedore, Dunfanaghy, Carrickart and Downings]
From Killybegs, I could have taken the R263 loop to Teelin and hence onward to Slieve League, that 600m (2,000 ft) cliff I was telling you about in a previous post that is 3-times higher than the Cliffs of Moher. But, from my googling of it, it seems the track is definitely MTB-worthy only, and even then with rough, stony and steep unrideable sections – and what’s more, you’ve still got to walk the final 300 vertical metres, and then only to arrive at a crested hill at the ‘back’ of the ocean drop-off, and so see nothing of the impressive drop-off anyway. Ah well…
Easy decision: I headed north instead of east and took the N56 to Glenties, Dungloe, Gweedore and Dunfanaghy before turning left onto the R245 to Carrickart and Downings.
The bad weather was back again by 11 o’clock (which made me feel even better about missing the therefore-non-existent view of Slieve League), and I took the needed charge-up and respite from the cold and rain at the Hotel Loch Altan for a couple of hours. But then it was back onto the bike for another couple of hours before arriving, quite late, at Downings.
The name Downings is about the worst anglicization of Gaelic I’ve heard – or maybe I just don’t know how to pronounce the Gaelic, Na Dúnaibh. Anyway, Na Dúnaibh is in a Gaeltacht area so let’s just stick with that. It’s not much to write home about though – a nice golf course and a nice beach with a great many holiday cabins dumped off the back of a lorry around it (no, quite nicely placed and landscaped, actually), an incongruously-large resort-style hotel (the Beach Hotel), and not much else – unless you count the most rudimentary take-away diner you’re ever likely to see in your life, and a poorly-stocked general store.
I decided on a room in the Beach Hotel, after beating them down from €130 without breakfast to €100 including breakfast. The owner was a super-friendly guy and insisted on helping me remove my mirror (to glue it up again, for the 3rd time, after the bike fell over onto it back at the Loch Altan Hotel). But by the time I’d returned from my room with the necessary tools he’d already extracted the mirror-attaching bolt using a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, and I had to politely but forcefully stop him from trying to straighten the bolt in a vice to prevent him from completely ruining the thread. But thanks anyway mate.
I got to sample that take-away diner, run by a charming Indian gentleman: the quarter-pounder was probably enough without the curry chips and vice-versa, but I scoffed the lot.
Wednesday 21 August. Downings to Letterkenny |79 km|
It was ok for the first 20-odd kilometers with the wind behind me as far as Fanad Head.
But then I had to endure 60 km of pure hell in hilly terrain and directly into a 30 km/h southerly all the way to Letterkenny.
The big hill (Croaghaun Mountain) coming up out of Ballymastocker Strand south of Portsalon was particularly impressive. When I got to the top a guy and his son were waiting in their car at the lookout to give me rave congratulations for making it – they said they’d been watching me labour all the way up. I guess he didn’t know about the battery-assistance, huh? (Full disclosure: I did tell him after).
I didn’t think much of Letterkenny on a rainy day. I checked into the rather swish Doolin’s Hotel (€90) on the main street – a droll street that has no character about it at all, unlike the main streets of most of the other Irish towns I’d been through already.
Young people were openly dealing drugs at 7pm on the tiny little main square near the famine statue, below (but not wishing for any potential repercussions, I made sure they weren’t in frame):
Thursday 22 August. Letterkenny to Bushmills |124 km|
I logged this at the time as a pretty ordinary day’s ride that got slightly more interesting around Coleraine. There was plenty of rain but not much wind, and flat for 90 km.
From Letterkenny to Derry, I took the N13, which is a relatively boring and busy main road but has a good wide verge, so no problems with the traffic. I had to charge up along here, at a hotel near Bridge End that I can’t remember the name of – oh wait a minute, I just googled it: The Frontier Hotel – but I do clearly remember being very wet and cold when they kindly allowed me to drip into their restaurant and sit for a couple of hours. There must have been some problem charging the previous night to deplete the batteries so quickly (after only 50 km), but they were alright after the recharge because they were then reading 220 km putative range for quite a while (that subsequently dwindled rapidly to 100 km, once I got to the hilly section around Coleraine).
I successfully navigated the outskirts of Derry/ Londonderry on the GPS to bypass the town centre on the north side, and crossed over the impressive Foyle bridge to join up with the A2 road heading east. It was then a tedious 20km as far as the so-called Causeway Coast, where it becomes interesting again, with some fine beach and mountain views. The working train line jammed in between the narrow road and the ocean, with cliffs on the other side of the road, is kind of cute too.
I ambled in to the busy tourist town of Bushmills at 5pm in rather bleak conditions, therefore expecting few tourists and hence expecting no trouble finding accommodation, but once again I was confounded and it proved impossible to find any. The very kind receptionist in the la-de-da Bushmills Inn Hotel, though, rang around for me and found me a room at a B&B near the main attraction around these parts, the Giant’s Causeway, so I cycled the 4km out to Carnside B&B.
Carnside is run very much along commercial lines, with 12 rooms and plenty of international guests (mostly Italians). Breakfast, or at least real breakfast, was not included in the £45 tariff, and the room was quite pokey. First order of the day after arrival, though, was to fix a rear tyre puncture – a blackberry shoot once again being the culprit. It was only a very small puncture but I’d already ruined the tube by applying a good dose of spray sealant through the valve (which slowed down the leak but did not stop it) so I had to throw that tube away and install the new one I’d just bought a few days ago in Terry’s bike shop in Clifden. This was the first time the new tyre had been off the rim and it was a really tough job getting it off too – it took me over half an hour to get the bloody thing off and I quite despaired of ever being able to do so, right up until I did, finally, get it done.
After the bicycle repair job it was still only 6pm and I had plenty of time to ride the 3km down to the Giant’s Causeway. It is managed by the National Trust, and oh my goodness what were they thinking when the built the monstrosity that is the visitor centre. [It’s a rhetorical question, I know exactly what they were thinking – they were thinking the design is reminiscent of the basalt columns that form the Giant’s Causeway itself – but, boy, is it uggerly! In my opinion anyway – so don’t sue me anyone involved in that decision].
An iPhone is a wonderful thing, and I managed to get away a few snaps to remind myself in my dotage that I was there, having forgotten to bring my proper camera along..
It was windy and I’d just washed my hair, ok?
The National Trust also operate the Causeway Hotel at the site. Not very efficiently either, in my humble opinion. There seemed to be two people for every job, and you can’t just pop into the bar for a pint and a bar burger – oh no, it has to be a proper restaurant sit-down a la carte silver-service bar burger and pint. They had the gall to have a public relations lady running around asking everybody what their views were about the food, service etc. I was reluctant to give my own (negative) opinion, but she egged me on. So I said well, for a start, I just wanted my burger at the bar, but if you’re going to serve it a table and insist on bringing me a pitcher of water with it that I didn’t ask for, at least bring along some drinkable water and not hyper-chlorinated tap water, which was bad enough by itself, but if its what you make your ice out of to have with the signature Bushmills whiskey that is heavily promoted all about the place; well, shame on you. She got quite defensive and pooey after that, so I left before I got kicked out.
-ends-
#68 Around Ireland part 3: the North |453 km|
Ireland so far: 2,179 km; 16,152m climbed
Europe 2019: 8,189 km; 45,050m climbed
Total this bike in Europe: 13,144 km