No Place Like Home

Later on last night we walked to an ice cream shop a couple blocks from the Grand Hotel and ordered ice cream cones.  It was a fitting end to a great trip.

Today was a long day.  Five hours longer than usual.  Most of the travel went without incident, probably the most frustrating points were in Chicago, where I waited in line for 45 minutes just to retrieve my keys at the car park, which put us into Chicago rush hour and the usual slowdowns.

We hired a taxi from the hotel to the Dublin Airport as the connection was a little tight and we didn’t want to miss breakfast at the Grand Hotel (and it was a Grand breakfast).  Taking mass transit would have required multiple busses/trains and a lot more time.  Worked out very well.

So we covered a total of 8447 miles, including air travel, auto, bus, train, tram, taxi, biking, and walking.  Of that, 183 miles was done on a bicycle.  We purchased mass transit cards (LEAP cards) when we arrived and ended up having a balance of €4.50 on each card that we didn’t use.  So, if anyone is going to Ireland and will be using mass transit, we can get you started.

Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.  Irish beds take a lot of getting used to.  Using only a bottom sheet and a duvet cover, it’s all or nothing when it comes to covering.  So we’re either slightly cold with the cover off or insanely hot as most of the duvet covers were at least an inch thick.  Sleep could be rather fitful as all of the hotel rooms had no air conditioning and the casement-style windows usually were limited in how far they would open.  Even with the window open, there was no circulation.  Unlike most of the trip, where the weather was on the cool side, yesterday was rather warm and the room never did cool down at night.  So we’ve worked up a bit of a deficit.

But overall this trip went extremely well and we enjoyed the biking, the scenery, Irish hospitality, and sometimes, even the food.

So until next time...

Completing the Circle

The circle is now complete and we are back in Dublin.  Tomorrow starts the long flight home.  We’ve covered just a little bit of Ireland, there’s a whole bunch more that could be explored, given additional time and funding.

Last night, the music ended earlier than we were told, but the throngs of people streaming by our window and the background music playing as the roadies tore down the stage lasted well beyond the predicted 11:30. We finally fell into a fitful sleep in spite of the constant noise.

The hotel finally lived up to its brag in the morning.  It bills itself as located in a quiet and serene location but I would beg to differ.  It was quiet this morning however.

Today was mostly a travel day.  After breakfast we hoofed it up a steep street to the bus stop in Clifden, dragging all our luggage behind us.   Then Citylink bus 923 to Galway, a 1.5-hour bus ride through some very picturesque rural Irish rangeland.  There is a lot of sheep in Ireland!  In Galway we picked up bus 761 to downtown Dublin, two and a half hours of mostly Irish freeways.  Dublin was considerably warmer than the west side of the country, so we all shed a layer or two upon stepping off the bus.  Then it was a 0.4 mile walk (with luggage) through the heart of downtown Dublin to the Tara Street Train station, where we hopped on the green train heading north towards Malahide.  Then another 0.4 mile walk to our final destination: the Grand Hotel.

Perhaps the most posh places we’ve stayed in yet, the Grand Hotel lives up to its name, with an expansive marble lobby and imposing building.

We spent some time strolling around the town, checking out various places to eat.  We found an Italian place that looked amazing but then noticed it was closed on Mondays.  We ended up eating in the hotel bar.  Which was OK as they didn’t serve just the normal pub fare.  The Creamy Chicken, Chorizo & Sundried Tomato Linguini was delicious.

Deb and I checked out the leisure center after dinner and spent some time in the hot tub.  Perfect for weary travelers just starting the journey home.

Tomorrow will be five hours longer than a typical day as we had back to Chicago and then drive home.  We’ll be glad when that segment is over.

Final Stop: Clifden

We are here at the Dun Ri Guesthouse in downtown Clifden. This is a rockin’ place.  Directly across the street from the guesthouse is an outdoor venue and the Clifden Summer Fest is in full swing.  Right now the Whistlin’ Donkeys is playing, making for a rather noisy experience here in our room.  We have the windows open in an attempt to keep the room cool, and the music bouncing between the buildings and finally reaching our windows is a muddled thump thump thump and some unintelligible vocals.  With no loss in volume.  We were told the music will last until 11:30.  I'm not sure how long the party will last after that.

The town is packed and there are people everywhere.  Welcome back to the big city. 🙄  I wanna go back to Leenane where it’s quiet.

We had a wonderful breakfast at the Renvyle House Hotel.  We felt a little underdressed as the waiters were all dressed in black.  Easily the highest class hotel we’ve stayed in on this trip, the Renvyle is a four-star hotel. 

I took a risk and left my rain clothing in my suitcase to allow room in my pannier for more essential things like lunch.  We picked up some lunch ingredients at a gas station in Tully Cross, probably the only C-store for miles.

The route led past the Connemara National Park and we stopped to take a hike on one of the trails.  The hike offered a great view of the surrounding area with the Atlantic Ocean in the distance.

The route took us along the coastline around a couple of bays and inlets, very picturesque. We made the turnoff towards Omey Island, a tidal island near our route.  During low tide, you can actually walk/ride to the island.  At high tide, the water is deep enough to cover a car. 

We got there somewhere around low tide, so we were able to ride our bikes across the sand to the island.    We rode the roads on the island for a while, looking for the ruins of an old church that one of had read about.

While we were on the island, a mist rolled in from the ocean and blanketed the area in a chilly fog.  The fine mist was also falling, which made all our clothing damp and moistened up our glasses.  We rode in this for several kilometers, soaking the clothing of those who didn’t take rain clothing along (me).  When the opportunity presented itself, we took a shortcut towards Clifden.  It’s hard to see anything in this sort of fog.

We arrived to find the town bustling and busy.  The guesthouse is a very short distance from the downtown shopping district and we walked downtown to get some food supplies and check it out.  One thing we wanted to get before leaving Ireland was a 99 ice cream cone.  This is a regular soft-serve ice cream cone with a Cadbury chocolate stick stuck in the middle of it. Yeah, it seems to be a thing here.  We finally found one, at the local Circle-K petrol station. Six Euros later, we had our 99’s.

Tastes like a soft-serve cone with a chocolate stick in it. Nothing real special. But it’s an Irish thing.  I didn’t do any Guinness, but I did do a 99.

By this time the sun was shining brightly so we took off on the bikes towards the  Clifden Castle, a ruin of a manor house built in the early 1800’s. No effort has been made to restore this building, and it is succumbing to the elements.

Farther up Sky Road is a viewpoint that overlooks the Atlantic and some of the surrounding islands.  We rode to this viewpoint and admired the scenery for a bit before coasting back into town.  This road was part of the segment we skipped in the rain, so we got to see it anyway.

The ride back into town was a five-mile coast with a magnificent view.  I had my GoPro clipped onto my hat and recorded part of the journey.  That video can be viewed here.

Bitten into with sandy bays, guarded by islets of porphyry set in an opal and azure sea

- Paul Henry, artist, 1920

An apt description of the view from Sky Road.

We rode back into town and stopped at a Supermac for dinner.  Our last taxi driver raved about Supermac, which is the Irish version of McDonalds, but, as he said it, much better.  We found one a few blocks from the guest house and decided a change from the same pub food would be good.  Deb and I ordered a pizza which was pretty decent for a fast food joint.  Jill’s burger and Terry’s wrap were barely edible.  I guess fast food is still fast food.  And McDonald's has nothing to worry about.

We came back to the guest house to repack.  The bikes are done and we hop on the bus tomorrow for the trip across the country to the Dublin area.  On Tuesday we fly out towards the United States. 

Total distance covered today: 56Km

Living It Up

Shorter biking day today, only 26Km covered.  There were two routes that we could go today, both of approximately the same length.  One followed the shores of the Killary Fjord closely, and the other wandered more inland but included the Kylemore Abbey, one of the top 10 destinations in Ireland, by some measures.  We chose the interior route.

We started out seeing a lot of bicycles on the road.  Turns out there was an adventure race today, with the racers running, kayaking, biking, and climbing up and down Croagh Patrick mountain on foot, then back on the bike to finish in Westport.  We were riding the opposite direction of the cyclists.  We thought maybe we would blend in, but we were the tourists piloting heavily-laden electric bikes, and the racers were all in their colorful spandex and flying by on their lightweight street bikes.  Not even close.  The race at least slowed the traffic somewhat.  Instead of just four tourists on the main road, there were dozens of bikers.  While the road was still narrow and curvy, we didn’t have any close calls.

The main stop for today was Kylemore Abbey, a Benedictine monastery on the site of a castle. Built in the 1860’s by a wealthy doctor from London, it was eventually sold to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester in 1903, who lived there for several years until he was forced to sell it because of gambling debts.  In 1920 it was purchased by a group of Irish Benedictine Nuns and they have owned it ever since.  Some of the castle is open for tours and the grounds including an 8-acre garden are also accessible.

We spend quite a bit of time here.  Of the many rooms (including 33 bedrooms), only about a dozen are open with displays and signs describing the history of this place.

The displays mention many names of people who lived there or visited there, important people that I have never heard of, but I did recognize one name: Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian engineer who is credited with the invention of the radio.

The castle is in a beautiful setting, perched on a lake at the foot of a rather steep mountain.  Under the original owner, the estate spanned over 13,000 acres including bogs, farmland, gardens, and woodlands, but is about 1,000 acres today.

The walled garden covers 8 acres.  In its heyday it included 21 heated glass houses for various plant types.  As the estate changed hands, the gardens fell into disrepair and all the glass houses eventually collapsed.  A recent restoration effort restored much of the gardens and one of the glass houses, and the foundations of the remaining glass houses, including the pipes used to heat them, are still visible.

Our destination for today was Renvyle House Hotel, a resort hotel near the end of the road at the point where the Killary Fjord meets the Atlantic Ocean.  Beautiful place in a beautiful setting.  One of the things we were looking forward to was their outdoor hot tub, situated near the water’s edge, with a commanding view of the Atlantic and the islands at the end of the Fjord.  What a treat!

The hotel even provides a robe and a set of monogrammed slippers to get you to the hot tub or the pool.  Really getting pampered here.

We found out that the dining room has some sort of cover charge of €65, so we had dinner in the bar.  This hotel, being at the end of a long road, is the only game in town for food, so they can do what they want.  Dinner was the typical pub food, which can be hit or miss.  The curry was good, the burger was good, the fries were good, the Irish beef sandwich was rather tough.  Probably grass-fed beef.

The rain predicted for today never materialized, for which we are grateful. Tomorrow is looking pretty hopeful also.

Leenane

Forecast called for some rain today, but mostly in the evening, so today was looking pretty decent.  Our new bikes for the second leg of this trip came with some very small panniers, so I risked not including any rain gear to allow fitting everything else in.

We had a very nice breakfast at the Clew Bay Hotel.   Then we left our baggage at the front desk and went in to the back room to retrieve the bicycles.  It took a little bit to get the seat heights adjusted and helmets fitted and everything packed into distressingly small panniers but we did get on the road, climbing the steep hill out of town in granny gear.

The road out of Westport runs along Clew Bay for several kilometers, and offered scenic glimpses of the bay and of the mountains above the bay.  Unfortunately, it was hard to take in the scenery because this was one of the major roads leading into Westport.  It was narrow as many Ireland roads are, and it was rather busy.  So piloting a bicycle took quite a bit of concentration.  Especially when an impatient oncoming driver decided to pass another car around a blind corner in a no-passing zone.  He didn’t see the bicycles in the lane until he was almost on top of us.  And we had nowhere to go because of the narrowness of the road and the thick vegetation right on the lane edge.

So it was a rather heart-stopping moment, seeing a car occupying the entire lane, coming around the corner towards us.  He managed to nose partway back into his lane, missing us by mere inches.  Maybe the Irish are used to a lot less margin than I am, but that was too close for comfort.  We are thankful for God’s protection during this incident, and on the trip as a whole. 

We took a side road to Old Head Beach, a welcome change from the busy main road and a chance to get off the bikes and walk the beach for a bit.  Croagh Patrick, a mountain peak that was visible all the way from Westport could be seen from here, a nice backdrop to the beach.

A few kilometers later, we turned onto a more minor road, leaving most of the traffic behind.  A welcome change to the busyness of the last 10Km or so.  This road was curvy, it was narrow, but there was very little traffic, and no busses or lorries.  And it was amazingly beautiful.  It wound through some of the most rural and remote areas of Ireland that we have seen so far.

We stopped to eat lunch at a wide spot in the road, there out in the middle of nowhere.  Other than the occasional passing of the car, the only sound that could be heard other than the blustery wind was the bleating of sheep.  Seems to be a lot of those in Ireland.

It would have been a perfect ride but for the wind.  Growing stronger as the day wore on, the wind always seemed to be against us, making it difficult to ride even downhill.  We fought this wind all the way into Leenane.

Other than the increased use of battery power, the wind really did not diminish our enjoyment of the scenery and the ride.  It was drop-dead gorgeous the entire time.  From the descent along Doo Lough Lake to the ride along the edge of Killary Fjord, there were no bad views, only amazing ones.

The ride ended at the Leenane Hotel, our stay for the night.  Situated right on the edge of the fjord, it reminded us of Fairmont Chateau hotel on Lake Louise in Banff National Park, only at a much smaller scale.  (I didn’t take the first picture, but I took the second.)

The stress of 10Km of busy road plus the extra effort needed to fight the wind wore us out, so when we secured the bikes and retrieved our luggage, we flopped on the bed and took a nap.

Later we had dinner at the hotel as it is pretty much the only game in town.  Leenane is composed of a couple bars and a place that sells sheep and wool products, so not much to choose from.  But the dinner was very good.   Today is Terry and Jill’s anniversary.  What a cool way to celebrate it, here in Ireland.  They bought us dessert to help celebrate.  Happy Anniversary!

We covered 54Km today.

Transfer to Westport

No biking for today so we had a bit of a leisurely start.  This segment of the trip is done and we transferred by taxi to Westport. So we left the bikes behind and met the taxi at 10:30am.

This first segment was in the Donegal region, we are now in the Connemara region, a rural area which is known for its rugged beauty and traditional Irish culture.

For a country the size of South Carolina, I was surprised that the taxi ride was over three hours to traverse less than one-third of the country.  Maybe it’s the bendy roads and the lower speed limit.  We stopped half way for a break in the village of Drumcliffe, at the burial place of W. B. Yeats, a famous poet and writer.  

It rained for a good part of the day, which didn’t matter that much since it was a travel day.  Our taxi driver was a pleasant guy who has been doing this for 40 years and we had a good conversation with him for nearly the entire trip.

We arrived at the Clew Bay Hotel in downtown Westport early afternoon, dropped our stuff off, then walked the town for a bit.  This is a very touristy town, with lots of places willing to part you from your money: pubs, restaurants, gift shops, and the like.  It is also home to PortWest, an Irish outdoor clothing store where I picked up a new rain jacket for the remainder of the trip.

Among the many restaurants, we settled on The West, just around the corner from the hotel, for dinner.  It was a good choice.  They had some of the typical pub foods but also some different selections.

We start the second segment of our bike tour tomorrow, biking 52Km to the town of Leenane along the shores of Clew Bay and through the Doo Lough Valley.  I have no idea what these places are, I just copied the names from the description for tomorrow.  We’ll find out tomorrow what they are all about.  The forecast calls for additional rain.

We ventured out after dinner to take a walk along the greenway that goes through town.  I think half the time you would be walking your bike as it is very steep in spots.  On the way back we strolled through downtown hoping to hear some of the traditional Irish music this town is famous for.  Our literature suggested that Matt Molloy’s pub was a good place for this, but, although the place was packed to the rafters with people, there was no music there.  

Next door, however, at the Porterhouse pub, there was music drifting out the door. This place was even more packed, standing room only, with people spilling out the door.  I guess you gotta be early to get in on something like this.   

We stood outside and listened for a while as the music seemed oddly familiar.  We eventually recognized the tune as a Johnny Cash song Ghost Riders in the Sky.  So this was old American music, performed in a very Irish manner. Those in the pub were familiar with it also, because part of the time, nearly the entire pub was singing along, hooting and hollering.  Quite a lively place.

The Coast Into Granny Valley

We had a lovely breakfast at O’Neills B&B this morning. Bríd O’Neill served up a traditional Irish breakfast and even made some hard-boiled eggs for Deb, complete with their own little egg stand.

Again, I skipped the pudding.

It was heavily overcast this morning but no rain was predicted.  We were hopeful for a second day without rain.  As the day went on, it brightened up and we even saw the sun for a while.  We had to peel a few layers of clothing off due to the warmth.

We loaded up and hit the road, aiming for detour on the route towards Port, a town on the coast that gradually died out as people left.  It added another 20Km onto the total for the day, but it was worth it.  Not much left of the town other than a few recognizable piles of rocks, but the view is amazing.

Port is one of the most remote and wildest areas of Ireland.  Right on the water, it boasts some scenic views of the rocks and cliffs and rugged coastline.  The road to get here is 10Km of narrow, twisty, sometimes steep, two-track.  At least it was hard-packed and smooth, adequate for a bicycle.

The way in to Port was mostly a coast downhill, the way out was more of a hard slog uphill and against the wind.  It was even more uphill as we approached Granny Pass and had to do some steep climbing.  We were rewarded by a long coast downhill, however, into a very picturesque valley.  I took a video of the coast downward which can be viewed here.

At the bottom of the valley, at the end of our coast, is Maghera Beach and Caves.  You wouldn’t know it even existed from the road.  The beach is an enormous expanse of white sand (think Lake Michigan beaches) and the caves at the edge of the beach can only be accessed during low tide.  We asked the guy who was managing the car park when low tide was and he told us it was at 1pm. Looking at the time, it was 12:45. Perfect.  We walked across the beach to one of the caves in the rock and walked inside until it got too dark to see.  There are several caves here which fill with water at higher tides.  Kinda fun walking into these caves, but you wouldn’t want to get trapped in there by an incoming tide.

We stopped briefly at Assanarca Waterfall, one of the most impressive waterfalls in Donegal and located right next to the road.  An easy stop and easy photo op.

We rolled into the town of Ardara and stopped at our location for the night: the Atlantic Lodge.  We talked  to the owner for a while.  He ran a grocery store for a while but just couldn’t make a go of it, so he remodeled the building and made it into a 9-room hotel and is doing much better.  The only other hotel in town, a 50-room building down the street, is all full of Ukrainian immigrants that fled the war.  They came here because Ireland offered free housing and free food and €250 per week spending money.  This filled many hotels in many towns like this, choking off tourism because there’s now no place for the tourists to stay.  Ireland is starting to walk back on those policies, however.

Atlantic Lodge is a very nice place to stay.  Located right on the main street, the rooms are on the second floor and overlook the street, so we can watch everyone walk and drive by while sitting on the bed.

We talked to two women in the tea shop next to the Atlantic Lodge.  They told us that they were the only game in town for dinner past 6pm as several of the larger establishments were closed on Wednesdays.  We did find a take-out pizza place right across the street and mentioned this to the owner of the Atlantic Lodge.  He panned the pizza place and recommended the tea shop.  “They have leg of lamb and good food,” he told us, adding that this was much better than the pizza place.  

We were really not in the mood for leg of lamb or that class of food, and pub fare was wearing a little thin, so we ventured into the pizza place and had pizza for dinner.  Simple, but it was a nice change and it was good, too. And considerably less expensive.

Tomorrow the forecast calls for 90% chance of rain.  No biking for tomorrow, as we will be transferring by taxi to the town of Westport, so perhaps we will avoid getting wet.

Total distance covered today: 54.5Km.

Sliabh Liag

I woke up this morning and the room was flooded with light.  Our room had a full-size French door onto a rooftop patio and we left it wide open all night to cool the room.  Thinking it was time to get up, I took a shower, then looked at my phone.  5:45am.  Drat! I was fooled out of an hour of sleep by the early sunrise again.

The good news was: the sun was out.  The forecast called for little to no chance of rain, and even some sunshine.  And it turned out to be a beautiful day.  Our perfect record of rainy days had finally been broken.

I had the full Irish breakfast, minus the pudding.  I had to look up what Irish pudding was.  Irish puddings are traditionally savory sausages, commonly black or white pudding. Black pudding is made with blood, while white pudding is made without blood, but includes ingredients like pork, oatmeal, and spices.

Ewww.  

No wonder I didn’t like it.  Our B&B host for this evening was not surprised when I told her to skip the pudding for tomorrow’s breakfast.  She told me it’s an acquired taste.  Some people never acquire it.

We put on another 46Km today, not as much as yesterday, but we did some hiking to fill in the difference. The route took us mostly along the coastline, on some very up and down twisty roads, past scattered homes and sheep pens.  A beautiful ride, but something I would probably not do without electric assist.

We stopped a few times along the way to view the scenery, but the first scheduled stop of the day was Muckross Head, a viewpoint over some smaller cliffs and a couple of beaches.  We spent some time hiking around the tops of the cliffs and down to the water’s edge.

Sometimes, the beauty is in the small stuff as well as the large, and little tide pools offered their own variation of beauty.

We took some time to walk one of the beaches in this area also.  Kind of a sandy oasis in the middle of all this rugged rock.

We rolled into the town of Carrick at just after noon and spotted a stone picnic table in the middle of town.  Perfect place to have lunch.  Then back on the bikes to make the trek to Sliabh Liag (pronounced ​Slieve League​), some of the highest cliffs in Europe and a very popular destination.  At the visitor center they told us that the road was closing to be repaved so they recommended that no one go up there.  The shuttle service had been shut down and many people were leaving.  When pressed, they told us that they didn’t require us to stay away, just strongly recommended.

We went anyway.  We rode the bikes up to the car park about 2Km farther up the road and about halfway to the viewpoint and then hiked the remainder of the way.  Séamus had told us that he thought the bikes could be ridden to the top, but the hill after the car park would be one that we would remember.  It was memorable even when hiking it.  Very steep, I’m not sure these bikes would have made it, even on the highest power setting.

The cliffs are beautiful and we’ve read that they are even more amazing when viewed by boat from the bottom.  It is a very popular place but the number of people here at the top was probably greatly reduced because of the impending road repairs.

There’s history even on the top of these cliffs.  A signal tower from 1805 can be seen from here, a communication system used to counter the threat of a French invasion.  And during World War II, the Irish government placed whitewashed signs along the coastline to indicate neutrality to aircraft pilots, both Allied and German.  One of these can be plainly seen from the path up here.

We rode out to the Teelin Pier and saw the remnants of an old church up on the hill.  On the way there, we saw what was perhaps the only viable eatery in this small town: the Rusty Mackerel.  It’s where we ended up eating a little later.

We dropped our things off at O’Neills B&B, a picturesque little bed and breakfast overlooking the River Glen.  Then we biked to the Rusty Mackerel and had dinner.

One thing we’ve discovered rather quickly is that all the local bars and restaurants have essentially the same menu.  And that menu is rather limited. So after a few days of eating pub fare, we’re probably down to repeating menu selections because we’ve tried everything they have to offer.  The bar at the Tara Hotel yesterday actually had pizza on the menu in addition to this standard fare so I had that, and it was very good. Today’s selection was Guinness Beef stew.  Very good also, but we’ve seen this on every menu for the last few days.  Deb was expressing a longing for pizza this evening but it is not to be had in small-town Ireland.

Now we’re back at O’Neills B&B, resting from our activities and enjoying the cool evening breezes coming in the windows.

Tomorrow’s ride will be nearly 60Km.  My legs can feel the effects of the last few days, even with electric assist.