Ireland: John Wayne, Drystone Walls and More Beach Riding

 We headed around to Westport, where I'd been before and had Guinness and oysters at the bar on my last Ireland trip. I thought I might be on familiar round, but I didn't really recognise any of it. 

Gareth knew the area well though, so he acted as a tour guide and took me to Cong, which is where the statue of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara stands celebrating the film, the Quiet Man. The town also has loads of beautiful old buildings. 

En route, I kept stopping as there were some unique and interesting drystone walls, something Gareth took the piss out of me for!

We headed towards Omey Island, via the Sky Road, only to find a tidal beach road running across to it. After a quick tour around, Gareth got out the wooden mallet and we had a filming session of him razzing across with Thor's Hammer leading the charge!

We camped next to a massive beach called the Silver Strand. People were camped all over the place in a farmers field and a car park next to the beach. A run back into Killadoon, some 20 miles away, saw shopping for provisions and wine, which saw us sorted for the night.

Ireland: Causeways, more tyres and a B+B

 We left our castle early this morning, heading towards Galway. Another place had some tyres, which for me was becoming a necessity.  As usual, we took the scenic route via the Tarbert Ferry to cut a bit of a long ride out up and around the Shannon Estuary. As we headed closer into the coast, we stared to see more golf courses adjacent to the beaches. Most of these places have big hotel complexes and lots of expensive cars and the access is often closed off.

We stopped off at Doolin for some food and then moved off to Spanish Point. A place that had a history of seaweed farming and shipwrecks. We bypassed the Cliffs of Mohare and soon found ourselves winding through some amazing rock formations and around the Black Head Clare point. 

As time was cracking on, we made a dash of the last 30 miles to Galway, where a bike shop called Ivors, has a rear tyre for me. Both the tyres for these bikes were expensive, mine was old stock, so a little cheaper because Ivor sold me it at the earlier price.

It was late by the time we were done, but after getting some top tips from the father and son who own Ivor's, we belted out of Galway along the coast to Roundstone. The plan was to eat at a famous fish pub there. Once the traffic all died down, the road got really good and we swept across the southern tip of this peninsula on a fast roll of sweeping bends and superb scenery.

O'Dowd's had a visit from us, before we headed out deciding to find a B+B for the night so we could go back to the pub. Gareth was after live music, but there was none, so beer it was then!!

We actually stayed two nights here, doing a ride up into the Roundstone Bog and then around the mountains up there. Some excellent riding on tarmac roads and we found a couple of dead end Peat Roads to play on a little as well.

Ireland, tyres and beaches

So we eventually found one tyre in Limerick. ADV bikes aren't big things here and tube tyres even less so. The Honda shop does more on quads and lawn mowers, but it did have a dusty tyre that fitted, so as Gareth's bike was more in need than me, we had a bit of fun fitting it as the garage didn't have the time.

Before getting to Limerick though, we found a beach that we could ride on. Now this is a first for me. I've never ridden on sand, so I was super keen to do it as I want to ride across the Sahara in the next 12 months. We did a small distance, then realised we could ride a lot more, so just did. Gareth had his drone with him, so out that came and we had a play... I do love beach riding!!

Our campsite for the night was hidden away in a ruined castle. We thought that if we tucked the bikes around the back wall, we'd be out of sight. How wrong we were, we had about 10 visitors that night, all staying for a chat and giggle. One local family told us their family history, two guys came on bikes from further north and we had a gossip, then we met up with a lad heading south and staying in the nearby B+B. We also got a visit from a French couple and a Swiss couple. It turned into the most social of evenings anyone could wish for!!

Ireland, cliffs, quarries and castles...

We're having troubles trying to find tyres now. Ironically, both bikes tyres are wearing really fast, so some hunting around for somewhere with some, saw us in head north to Tralee.. 

En route, we had a bit of a mooch around Kerry Cliffs, having to pay 5 euro each to go for a walk on a cliff top, which seemed a bit odd to us... the cliffs were excellent and I'm sure there must be some great rock climbing there if they are not heavily protected. 

Once away from the cliffs, we headed into a working quarry, some lovely stone and even better views. After a little rock hopping in the car park, we headed next to Ballycarbery Castle

The castle itself now has a closed sign, which we duly ignored and went for a mooch around. There are some narrow passages, several different time periods of building styles and interesting architectural features.

From here, it was on to the hill fort at Cahergall. This has been renovated recently and was a beautiful piece of drystone wall work. The inner walls were all stepped and allowed people to climb up and look down into the central circle, which maybe would have been for meetings etc. Grand place to just sit and watch the world for awhile. We met an Irish couple living in Galway here and had a good chat about all things Ireland.

Our final stop for the day was down into a cove with a fine sandy little beach. After we'd watched the sea and people for awhile, we were on our way back to the bikes when we got chatting to a family swimming there. The two older ladies were just pulling out the wine bottles and a 15 minute chat saw us having a right good banter over a small glass of wine. After one of the guys, who admitted to being a BMW GS rider, made joking comments about our KTM's a good round of pee taking ensued!

The end of the day saw us with no food and nowhere to buy any beer or wine, so we delved into Gareth's stash of dried foods and drank tea whilst watching a seal playing in the bay below us. 

Another fun day on the road but we never sorted the tyres out!

Ireland, Sheep's Head

What a day this turned out to be, not only did we find a great green lane, we also found a remote light house on the end of Sheep's Head Peninsula and the Priests Leap high pass that snaked up through the hills.

Whilst on top of Mount Gabriel yesterday, we chatted to a group of bikers who were Irish, they pointed us at the Sheep's Head Peninsula and mentioned going over Priest's Leap. So that was us searching for these on the map. It was pure luck to be honest, a turn of a corner to get off the main A road and the next thing we knew, there were signs saying steep gradients, take care etc etc. Happy Days.

 

From here, we headed up to Barley Lake. At first, we thought it would be on a dirt track, but it was actually tarmac, albeit knackered in a lot of places. At the top, we parked the bikes and walked over to stand on some rocks overlooking the lake. It would have been a great place to camp had it not been too early in the day...

Stone circles and an ancient hill fort in the middle of a field was up next, then after  mooch and a lot of unanswered questions about their history, we headed off to Inchinaleega where there is a cable car across the sound to Dursey island. It was closed when we arrived, but both the wind and headland were well on form as we stood thinking, apart from the wind, it would be another good place to camp!

We ended the day a little late, but on one of the best camp spots we found for the whole trip. A fire followed, after scavenging along the rocky inlets for driftwood, then wine, then fishing, (where I lost the lure!) 

Oh well, back to the wine...

The Wild Atlantic Way Continues...

After a better nights sleep next to the sea, we awoke to the sound of people getting ready to swim a 7am. After watching for awhile, we packed up and headed on our way.

The day was made up of visiting stone circles, looking at castles/hill forts, wandering on deserted beaches and generally just being a tourist. 

There is a tarmac road up to the radio masts at Mount Gabriel, which then offers some great views over the coastal plain down to Schull. We met a group of road bikers up there and an English couple who were renovating a house on the nearby peninsula. 

We eventually found one of our best wild campsites for the night on a headland overlooking a village and the sea here. 

One of things that is becoming apparent here is the bikes are unusual. Every time we stop somewhere, someone comes over for a chat, to find out who we are, where we are from etc. Then the conversations all turn to the bikes and our setup. The locals love the fact that we are here to visit their country and often point us to nice places and things to see.
It's so refreshing after too much time in England with it's constant negativity and pointless criticism's of everything these days.

Right, wine and food time!

Ireland: The Wild Atlantic Way.

This trip started out as a conversation over a beer or two in a curry house in Hampshire. We couldn't decide between visiting Shetland and Orkney or Ireland. A toss of the coin decided it!!

So two of us on two KTM 690 Enduros, a bit of research and here I am, sat on a ferry just coming into Belfast harbour as I write this. The sun is shining, the roads are dry and I'm about to disembark.

Armagh is the planned meet up with Gareth, a long time riding buddy, who is also Irish. Plenty of Guinness and a bunch of seafood along the Wild Atlantic Way is the very basic plan. 
I'd set up a route traversing down through the centre of Ireland. As it turned out, most of these roads had a good grassy line down the middle of them, so it felt a bit more like green lane riding. Ireland doesn't have a network of green lanes as such, but there are some roads that are still unsealed or are ancient drove roads etc, so hunting them out was a vague part of the plan for this trip.

It takes around 2 days to go from Belfast to Cork via the middle bit and on these small roads. So our first night's camp was in a forest half way down, no wind, tucked away from the world and with a million midges for company!

 A nice smoky fire soon sorted that, the bottle of wine helped and a good time was had to catch up on gossip after our take away dinner of kebabs from an 'authentic' Italian pizza place run by a lovely Pakistani family!

Day 2 saw us getting separated because of missing turns and also found us chatting to a local farmer, who hadn't seen a motorbike in months apparently and was curious about us. We also found our first green lane!

The centre of Ireland is mainly an undulating landscape, with a lot of lakes and small hamlets/farms. There is a lot of moorland to traverse, which provides some great scenery too and hardly any traffic.

We eventually got to the south coast at a small pace called Kinsale. This is the official start of the WWW. This is where our trip started properly. The route has changed over the years and now uses a lot of the bigger roads, mainly to accommodate the campers and dodgy drivers who come for a visit. We naturally decided to follow all of the smaller coast hugging roads, as on a bike, they are easy to get past any obstacles and you get a better sense of the locals on these less travelled roads. 

Our first coastal camp was in a picnic area overlooking a small bay with a boat slipway onto a sandy sea floor. Gareth went for a swim after all the local ladies had done their sea swimming exercise for the evening and we then got out the stove and some wine to round off the day.

The wild swimming became a theme of the trip, everywhere we stopped along the coast, people would be out in the sea, getting some exercise and enjoying the good weather. Alongside that theme, there were also towers, lots of towers!

Grand day for sure!!