Quit our jobs, sold our home and everything in it, gone riding...

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Kylemore Abbey in County Galway

The road takes us further south and we reach the next County, Galway. On the shores of a lake, we saw a magnificent grey building called Kylemore Abbey. So we pulled in for a closer look. The Abbey was built around the time of the Great Famine. A rich politician from England came over and spent his sizeable fortune helping the locals, giving them work, shelter and building a school on the estate.

There's supposed to be a beautiful garden on the grounds of Kylemore Abbey, but you had to pay an admission fee - €13.00 per person. That's a big Nope. So we hopped back on our bikes. Nice abbey, though!

Doing a route adjustment

It's getting late and I originally had us stopping near Galway. The GPS said it was about three hours away, but I know we like to go slow, stop and poke around, so there was no way we were going to make it before nightfall at our current pace. So I broke out the laptop, hopped on the Internet and tried to find a closer camping spot.

Another nice little detour off the main Wild Atlantic Way

You can stay on the main road that loosely follows the coastline, but the real treats are when you take these little roads that go out and back in to all the tiny fingers of land. This one is called Sky Road, and it's only a 12km loop away from the main road, but from here you can ride along the coast and the road rises up in places where you can get a view of all the tiny islets that dot the inside of the bay.

 

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Rounding Aughrusbeg Lough, a small lake on the inside of the Sky Road peninsula

Sky Road lookout, with the all the tiny islets in the background swimming in the Wild Atlantic Ocean

See the squiggly line on the post above the sign for Sky Road? That's the tourist logo for the Wild Atlantic Way. You don't even need a GPS to ride the route. Just follow all the signs with the squiggly line on it, pointing you onwards.

Back on the road, we pass through the town of Clifden. There's some kind of Mexican festival going on! Spanish music playing on the speakers as we ride by!

 

[Lightcycle]

The only campsite in the area is off the main road of the Wild Atlantic Way. We ditch the squiggly line signs and venture off on another loop that follows the coastline towards Gurteen Bay, on the southern shoreline of the peninsula.

Yay, we get the tent up before the sun sets. And before the scheduled rains which are due to arrive soon!

What a great day! Full of sights, riding roads, and nice little detours into beaches, bays and lakes. And best of all: no rain!

We are really enjoying taking our time on the west coast of Ireland!

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/365.html

I've woken up in the middle of the night by two sensations. The pitter-patter sound of rain pelting against the walls of the tent and the fact that my feet are freezing. I reach down to feel them. Not just freezing. But wet!

ARGH! The tent is leaking!

I wake up Neda and we turn on the flashlight hanging overhead to inspect the pool growing inside our home. It's a good thing we normally orient our tent so our heads are slightly on higher ground, otherwise there'd be water everywhere all over the floor!

This is very frustrating to us. It's served us so well for so long. But failing while riding the rainy west coast of Ireland - the timing could not have been any worse! Well, okay, it would have been worse if it had failed in Norway...

From what we can tell, there's water leaking from the seams of both the fly and the inner layer. Nothing we can fix in the middle of the night. I grab a towel and do the sop-inside/wring-outside to get most of the rainwater out, leaving the towel at the foot of our tent and then scooching my entire sleeping bag uphill so I'm pressed up against the head of the tent. It's going to be a long night.

It's still raining when we wake up. The towel is soaked, but my retreat to the front of the tent has kept my feet from soaking up any more liquid. We have to pack the tent up in the rain, which is my least favorite thing to do. Like putting wet socks on and then putting your shoes on over it. Gross.

Riding in the wet again, heading back north along the coast to re-join the main route of the Wild Atlantic Way

During the ride, all that's on my mind is thinking about what are we going to do tonight. If the wet weather continues when we stop, we might have to book an AirBnB. We've had luck finding cheap AirBnBs in the larger cities because of the abundance and the competition, but out in the sticks it's going to be expensive.

Speaking of cities, we pass the outskirts of Galway and then around the coast of Galway Bay. Ed Sheeran takes my mind off the rain:

"She played the fiddle in an Irish band
But she fell in love with an English man
Kissed her on the neck and then I took her by the hand
Said, "baby, I just want to dance"
My pretty little Galway girl"

My pretty little Pula girl, picking up more snacks at the side of the road

 

[Lightcycle]

#SkySoMoody

While hugging the coastline, we stop at the Murrooghtoohy Discovery Point

This is the site of a karst formation called The Burren

These smooth rocks create a vast field of alien landscape all the way from the road to the lapping waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Thankfully, the rain has stopped so we park the bikes and go exploring the area, clambering over the smooth, pale rocks and the deep cracks in between them.

 

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Other visitors have built little Inukshuks all over, so Neda adds hers to the collection

We have such a fun time walking around this limestone wonderland. We have it all to ourselves...

... until this tour bus came and spewed tourists out into The Burren. They're like insects crawling over food at a picnic. That's our cue to leave.

 

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Just south of the Burren, we spy a castle on the hill. Hey, isn't that another Ed Sheeran song...?

Doonagore Castle is just a tower with walls around it. The tower looks like it's wearing a crown

Just down the street of the castle we find this funky restaurant called The Stonecutter's Kitchen. Since it was lunchtime, we decided to get some Irish food.

Drying our rainsuits in the sun

A hearty Irish stew, chock full of meat and potatoes, is a great remedy to erase the remnants of our cold, wet ride this morning

 

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And then just another couple of kms away are the grand Cliffs of Moher. There are people on the left side of the picture, for scale

Ireland's most visited natural wonder. These cliffs sport a sheer vertical drop of over 700 feet all the way to the waves crashing far, far below on the rocky feet of the wall-face. There are barriers near the visitor centre that prevent people from falling over the cliffs, but if you hike far enough, the barriers just stop existing and all of a sudden there's nothing between you and 700 feet of Wile E. Coyote air. But this is after you pass a huge warning sign stating that Ireland is no longer responsible if you venture too close to the edge and the strong winds of Moher blow you off the edge of the cliff.

*beep* *beep*

Hiking past by the big warning sign to one of the cliff edges

*Everyone* hikes past the sign. It's the whole point of coming here! There I am, in the middle of the picture

 

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Not many people sit or stand right at the edge of the cliffs. They lie down to stop from being blown off the edge

The heights are dizzying. If the winds don't blow you off, vertigo just might!

There have been a few recorded deaths of people who've fallen off the edge...

Bah! I ain't afraid of no 700 foot high cliffs!

Actually I was crapping my pants... This is how I crawled out to the ledge... I also crawled back out the same way!

Whenever I'm up so high, my toes start to tingle. And my heart starts pounding big-time!

Well, enough adrenaline rush for the day, we get back on the bikes and start our final push. Our wet tent plays on my mind, but the weather looks dry enough to camp for another night.

 

[Lightcycle]

Further south, we catch the Killimer Ferry. A 30 minute ferry ride to bypass the 2 hour ride around the bay between peninsulas

Some sun and fun on the ferry ride!

So I have this problem...

I've been battling zippers my whole life. It's always the first thing that fails on any piece of clothing I have. And motorcycle clothing (and gear) has a lot of zippers!

Neda keeps telling me, "You pull too hard!", "Keep the two sides close together when you zip up and down!", "Zip up, not out!" She's never had a zipper failure. Ever. Anyway, my jacket zipper just failed. I got this one two years ago when we first got to Europe because my other jacket zipper failed. And then now this...

I don't know why everything is falling apart on us now. The tent, my jacket... *sigh*

I need velcro on everything.

 

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We pass by this RV Park in Tralee. As good a place as any to stop for the night. Airing out our wet tent

The RV park is deserted

There's a phone number on the window of the laundry/washroom building, to call someone if we're going to camp. We dialed the number but no answer and no answering machine...

I check the forecast and it calls for rain later on in the middle of night. I stare at our old, leaky tent drying out in the front yard...

So with nobody around, we sneakily set up the tent in the laundry room!

We feel like such criminals... That night I sleep a nervous, shallow sleep, one ear open, listening to see if a security guard is going to drive up, come inside with his flashlight and kick us out (or worse) for trespassing!

It's well past midnight when the rain hits the windows of the laundry room. My feet are dry tonight but I don't get much rest...

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/366.html

So the night passed uneventfully - no security guard kicking at our sleeping bags, which are spread out all over the floor of this dusty laundry room. We awoke unmolested in this deserted campsite in a small town tucked away in County Kerry, Ireland. Glancing nervously outside at the sunshine warming up our getaway bikes, we scarf down a lightning-quick breakfast and hastily pack up everything and try to leave the room as we found it. So glad everything (especially my feet) is dry!

Our route today skirts the southern shores of Tralee Bay. The morning air is so cold these days, and we once again insulate ourselves in our rainsuits, even though the clouds have exhausted their seemingly limitless supply of water. Due to all the other surprises we've found at tips of each peninsula, we're off to seek the treasure at the end of this finger of land: the Dingle Peninsula.

About half-way through the Dingle Peninsula, the road deviates from the coast and heads inland. And up...

The Conor Pass goes over the Dingle Mountain Range and at 1500 feet is one of the higest passes in Ireland

The road is so close to the edge of the mountain, you can peer down into lush green fields of the valley below!

 

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Not content to just watch the scenery flash by from our bikes, we dismount at the lookout point at the summit of the pass

Beautiful! This whole landscape was carved by glaciers during the Ice Age.

Closeup of the water in one of the lakes. So still it's indistinguishable from the sky above

At the bottom of Conor Pass, we ride through the town of Dingle, another one of those quaint sea-side villages. This one lies on the southern coast of the peninsula.

Dingle. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not going to make it because it's just too obvious.

As we ride through Dingle I wonder if Neda will stop to look for more berries.

Sorry. I couldn't help myself...

 

[Lightcycle]

From Dingle, we hug the shoreline of the southern coast. More scenic cliffs greet us along the way

We do a loop around the end of the peninsula, stopping again to admire the scenery off the bikes

And then it's off to explore the next peninsula! Peninsula hopping on the western coast of Ireland. What fun!

Stopping in Killarney to do some laundry

Killarney is the largest city in County Kerry. We've been on the move and camping all over Ireland for over a week now so our Clean-Clothes pannier is looking pretty empty, while the Dirty-Laundry pannier is almost bursting. Whenever our bikes start to mishandle due to the weight imbalance, we know it's time to do the wash.

Yes, yes, I know we slept in a laundry room last night, but we were in stealth mode and didn't want to alert anyone to our presence... Anyway, we pop our soiled skivvies in a coin-op machine and walk around town to find a place to eat while we wait out the spin and dry cycles.

Life on the road.

 

[Lightcycle]

After Lunch'n Laundry (like Bed'n Breakfast -- hey, we should start an online business: AirLnL), we make the executive decision to stop for the day. There's a long route around this new peninsula, so we're going to leave it for tomorrow. We find a nice campsite just outside of town and set up camp. This time legally!

Also, we're stopping because we're getting so fatigued over shorter and shorter intervals on the road. I think it's time for another couple of days under a roof.

But rest will have to wait. Killarney is located on the east shore of a lake, Lough Leane. The next morning, we begin our tour of the Iveragh Peninsula and ride out to the west side of the lake. We heard that there's an amazing, narrow, twisty road that snakes between two mountains. This is the Gap of Dunloe:

[video=youtube;nQ_U6N-snec]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ_U6N-snec[/video]

This spot is very popular with tourists. It was so scenic that we had to go back and do it again. The other vehicles, hikers and the "jaunting car" (Irish horse-drawn carriage) were so used to us going back and forth that Neda waved to them as if to say, "Yep, we're back again..."

We then rounded the southern shore of the lake back up towards Killarney. This is the viewpoint at Ladies View

Upper Lake, just south of Killarney

 

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We are now on the famous Ring of Kerry, which is a grand loop around the Iveragh Peninsula

Another scenic lookout, you can see the mountains of the next peninsula across the bay

Irish countryside

 

[Lightcycle]

Rounding the bend on the Ring of Kerry

More impressive views of Atlantic cliffsides from the road

At the end of the Iveragh Peninsula, we detour off the Ring of Kerry. There's another loop of road called Skellig Ring that takes us out to the very edge of the peninsula. There, we stop at the very quaint town of Portmagee to poke around and also grab some lunch.

Although tourist season is winding down on the west coast of Ireland, there's still a lot of people walking around.

We met a nice couple from the US who were also doing some sightseeing. We had a great chat with them and they took a picture of us and e-mailed it to us the next day. Thanks Martha and Ed!

 

[Lightcycle]

Portmagee in Irish means "The Ferry". From here, you could catch a ferry to Valentia Island

But now there's a bridge between Portmagee and Valentia Island, so the name is kind of outdated

View of the colourful buildings of Portmagee from the bridge

We rode across the bridge to Valentia island, but it wasn't that interesting. Also, the ferry from the east side of Valentia Island back to the Iveragh Peninsula was closed for the season, so we had to double back and take the bridge again. Everything from the cold weather to all the closures tell us that it's getting very late in the season...

 

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Watch dem road apples up ahead, Neda!

It was getting late and we wanted to get to the next peninsula south for the evening. So we headed straight down to our final pass of the day: The Healy Pass on the Beara Peninsula.

This isn't the Healy Pass. We got lost and this backroad took us over a marvelous viewpoint! Still not quite sure where this road was...

Here it is: The Healy Pass

If you like twisty roads, you'll love the Healy Pass. Set high atop the mountains of the Beara Peninsula, the serpentine road winds through the barren landscape. Not a lot of pictures were taken while I was riding here, because I like twisty roads...

So does Neda. Damn! You go girl!!!

 

[LBV]

Wow, you 2 have my utmost respect! This has got to be the most epic thread I've ever encountered on any forum. Memories for life being made right here by you 2. :salute: