On Ireland: Part 2

The next day didn’t look too happy from the start. We awoke to overcast skies and some rain, but our hostel proprietor told us that the day should improve as time goes on. We arrived at the Killarney boats plenty early. I searched around for the boat that would take us all the way to the end and after some inquiries (and difficulties with thick brogues) found the right boat. The rain let up, and by the time the boat cast off, there was a good amount of blue in the sky.


This is one of the best teasets I have seen in my life.


Helen is psyched to go








The ride through the lakes was wonderful fun. There were two couples embarking on their own adventures. Two were going to bike the Gap of Dunloe, two were going on foot. We chatted a little bit, but mostly just absorbed the scenery.

At one point, the rapids got very rough. The boat driver pulled to the side and had the women hop out, then pulled to the narrowest part. “I hope you’ve all eaten your Weetabix,” he said. Incidentally, I had. The guys hoped out, grabbed ropes and pulled the boat through some pretty fast current after a couple minutes of struggling. The women came back to the boat to find some very satisfied looking gentlemen. Helen later claimed that she would have been strong enough to pull the boat through instead of me, but sadly we’ll never know.


Looking satisfied by our sheer manly strength.

We got to Lord Brandon’s cottage, ate some bananas for cramp prevention and hopped on our bikes for the climb up to the Gap of Dunloe. The road winds uphill for a few miles through a few nice houses with a great view to the south. It was pretty bright, and the sun started to wear me down a little bit. I was cranking away in the easiest gear and still was tiring out. Eventually, I saw a bend in the road and decided this climb had bested me. I called to Helen that we should take a break by the road bend up ahead.

The road bend

Luckily, that road bend was the very top, and we were treated to a great view down the Gap of Dunloe. We took a break and chatted with some of the folks at the top. There were two cyclists who said “We’re from Germany, just like your bags!” Glad to see the Ortleib cult spans all over the world. We took a few pictures on the descent downward, and then booked it to Killoglin. The descent got pretty steep in some parts in the gap and I was riding the break for a good amount of time on the descent.





Helen goes down the Gap


At the top of the Gap


I'm throwing up the horns here because I am riding through the "Cork and Kerry Mountains" listening to Metallica's version of Whiskey in the Jar and if you don't know that song, click here now.

In Killoglin, I saw a sign indicating that Killoglin was 25 miles away, not 18 as I had thought. I was a little annoyed; we were already behind schedule and I didn’t want to skip dinner, so I set a pretty brutal pace in to the wind, planning to wear myself out and then let Helen lead for the last hill climb. There was one particularly wonderful moment on this ride when we saw the ocean for the first time. We were going uphill in to a strong wind but we didn’t care because we were so incredibly high on life. The ocean road winded up a sea cliff, about 300 feet and we could see across Dingle Bay as well as due east.








We bended away from the cliffs and approached what I thought was the penultimate climb in to town. The road was dotted with some very scenic small towns, B&Bs and the interior mountains of the Iveragh peninsula. As we winded to the top, Helen enthusiastically took point and led us downhill. I was pretty surprised to then see a “Welcome to Caherciveen” sign, meaning that there was no final hill climb. More importantly, it was time for food.



Dinner was a pretty good meal at a seafood bar right by the B&B. Caherciveen is a pretty dead town after 9:00, and I think we were about a half hour away from everything closing. We ate, took a little walk and then went to bed hoping that tomorrow’s weather would hold up for our Skellig Michael outing.


That red salsa with the bread was amazing. The Smithwick's not so much. Serves Helen right for the temerity to drink something other than Guinness.


Stats for that day

Skellig Michael, the island monastery, it should be noted, was not in the first couple of drafts for this trip. Looking at the map, it seemed to me like any ferry to the Ireland would require a 2-day diversion from the main road to travel down the Ring of Kerry. Furthermore, there was no guarantee that we’d actually be able to go. Boats for the Skelligs land only if the sea isn’t too choppy around the islands, and from what I heard, there’s about a 40% chance that the boats will abort. I was worried that if we planned on going to Skellig Michael, we’d spend two days riding to a place that we may never get to see. I was more inclined to get to Dingle quicker, but Helen’s opinion prevailed during the planning stages, and I found enough fun things to do in case the Skelligs didn’t work out.

We woke up around 8, ate breakfast and started the ride to Portmagee. I tried to set a fast pace, but I couldn’t get going beyond 20km/h. Helen didn’t have much trouble keeping up with me. The ride is was enjoyable, with partly cloudy skies and a good view to the north of Valencia Island. I took note of the main road visible on that island since I thought we might hang out there if Skellig Michael didn’t work out.



We got in with a good amount of time to spare before the boats took off, but there isn’t exactly a lot to do on the ride around Portmagee besides wait for the boats. The good news though, was that the boats were going to head out, so we hopped on right when the clouds started to gather and it started to rain a little. No matter, the current was smooth enough to land on the Skelligs.



Our boat operators were two young Irish lads, our age or younger. There was also a nice elderly married couple from Cork and their daughter and son-in-law (or son and daughter-in-law, I forget). They were very nice to me, and pretty much wanted to adopt Helen after ten minutes of chatting with her. A few minutes after boarding, we were underway with a couple other boats in the fleet.



The first half hour of the ride was a lot of fun. I managed to get the camera out and get some one-handed shots of the chop we were cruising through. Helen compared it to surfing, since she spent a lot of the ride standing in the door to the cockpit. After the first part though, I started to feel a little seasick. At first, I could distract myself with some conversation with the others, but after a while, I crawled in to the cockpit and stared at the deck. Turns out, I should have kept my eyes on the horizon, as that is a common remedy. We approached Bird Rock, and one of the drivers commented that there were about 40,000 birds nesting on the island. Helen said that the scent of all the droppings combined with the diesel from the engine made her feel a little queesy. For the record, everyone else seemed to endure the ride much better.





We both managed to avoid throwing up, and we managed to hop on to the island pier and crawl towards a place to sit down. We rested there for about 10 minutes, and then got up and started to walk up the ramp that would lead us to the main stairs that the monks took. I was pretty cranky, but walking did me some good and the clouds started to break. We saw a lot of birds here as well, and could hear a lot of puffins as we approached the steps.




At the steps was a man who surely took great pleasure in his job, which consisted of warning tourists that they will surely die a horribly and splattery death should they make one false move when walking up the 623 steps that lead from where we were to the monastery. He pointed out a couple locations where there have been fatalities within the last year. With that pep talk, we were on our way. I left behind my telephoto lens and we started the walk up.

I think we saw our first puffin up close around step 10. Around step 50, we noticed there were puffins everywhere. We had hit the jackpot apparently; puffins do not inhabit Skellig Michael year round, only for a few weeks out of the year and we were fortunate to see them in force. I had so much fun watching them and taking pictures that I completely forgot how seasick I was.






About 1500 years ago, some Irish monks decided to find a nice quiet place where they could settle and contemplate God in peace, so they chose Skellig Michael. Not content with living on this rocky pyramid, they decided to put about 623 steps in the cliff side and walk all the way to the top where they had built their beehive huts, house of worship and yes, a small graveyard since they’d stand a good chance of dying on this crag. Skellig Michael is a truly astonishing place, symbolizing what great lengths people will go to in order to achieve spiritual fulfillment. The cynical mind may call it a monument to insanity, but I suppose I’ll stick with devotion.


Yes, I faked the lens flare. Next time it'll be real.


That's step 300 or so


Looooong way down






This picture bears further explanation. There’s two main peaks on the island. The monastery is on the lower one, but the sharper, steeper and more dangerous one has a hermitage big enough to house one monk there. This means that at some point, one of the monks in the monastery said “I’ve had it with this life of luxury and all this chatter! I’m going to get me some peace and quiet!” In other words, no matter how crazy you are, there’s always going to be someone to out-crazy you.

By the time we were halfway up, I felt perfectly fine and was in my element shooting. I elected to not use the polarizer on the way up, figuring that the light would get harsher as the clouds dissipated and I could make better use of it on the descent. The monastery itself is quiet modest and crowded with tourists. I couldn’t get a quality photograph of the whole thing, but made do. The historian there answered many questions, and I was surprised to hear that Vikings had sacked the island on multiple occasions, meaning that monks weren’t the only person crazy enough to clamber up those stairs.






I thought I was making good time on the descent, but apparently spent way too much time taking pictures because when we got to the bottom, we saw that we only had five minutes until the boat left. Of course, we hadn’t paid yet so we knew they weren’t going to leave, but we still hurried back. The ride back was not nearly so choppy, but Helen started feeling pretty sick halfway and slept on the deck. I’m not sure how Helen is able to sleep that easily. It is a skill I wish I had.



After landfall, we had a snack and went over to the Skellig museum. Helen took a nap on a rock while I explored the museum, then we decided to explore Valencia Island. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, so we rode to Knightstown along the channel that separates the island from the mainland. I set a pretty brutal pace for a good stretch of it, and we had the wind at our back, so it was fun to zip down those roads. We had the roads to ourselves. I think there were more abandoned houses than occupied ones on the western half of it.

We made it to Knightstown on the eastern edge of the island, and were thinking about taking the ferry back but there was still about five hours of daylight left. We decided to make the trip to Geokaun Mountain, the highest point on the island. It would be about a 400 foot climb, and we’d do about 2/3rds on bikes. After a brief stop to explore an abandoned church-turned-graveyard, we biked up to the parking lot, locked up our bikes, declined to pay the entrance fee since we couldn’t figure out where to pay it and set off on a walk to the top.

I didn’t keep track of distance or elevation for the walk, and it was kind of nice to break from constant metrics evaluation for a change. I ride with a cycling computer, so I can know how well we are doing at any given point and how much more we have left. It’s good to know these things but sometimes you have to take a break from continuous self-evaluation. So don’t ask me how long it took to hike up. Lets just say it was a nice brisk walk, with wonderful views to the north of the Dingle Peninsula, tomorrow’s destination.








I think we took it a little too easy on the walk up and down though, because I saw the sun start to set and wanted to have a good sunset shoot at Ballycarbery castle. We got back on our bikes, took the ferry from Knightstown to Caherciveen and then road quickly to Ballycarbery, about 4 kilometers away from our B&B. I actually set a personal best on the descent to Knightstown, hitting 40 miles per hour at one point. I will probably never try to go that fast again. It was too dark to see how fast we were going, so lets say that we blazed by at a world-record pace of 100km/h past very confused cows, trying to catch the last few rays of sunlight.



We got there with what I thought was about 15 minutes to work, so we set at it. I violated a cardinal rule and didn’t use the tripod, since the best shots were at eye level. Overall, I was surprised with the results. I’m a big fan of the silhouette shot that makes it look like there is smoke rising from the castle.


Yeah, I'm a fan



I love me some pink clouds



After that, we went back to town only to find that every place that served dinner worth eating had closed. I had a late lunch, and Helen wasn’t too hungry so we grabbed some stuff from the grocery store, and ate it before tomorrow’s ride.


Summary of the days riding

By the way, tomorrow’s ride wasn’t suppose to happen. I thought I had scored a major trip-planning coup when I found a ferry that runs between Knightstown, but that ferry only runs on weekends. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to a super long ride tomorrow and went to bed a little antsy.

We woke up the next morning, ate breakfast and set off. It didn’t look like a good day for riding at all. We were getting rained on and buffeted pretty well for the first part of the journey. Helen was having a little trouble with her bike handlebars too when we were riding cliffside. However, the strong winds were at our backs and we made pretty impressive time getting in to Killoglin, where we took a break for lunch. Helen had some some shrimp-salad-type-thing, and I had one of the best cups of soup I have had in my life.

I should point out here that Irish food probably isn’t as good as I am making it out to be, but you have to keep some things in mind. We had been pedaling hard for the last few hours in rain and wind, and anything that was hot and spicy in any way was the most delicious thing imaginable.

We took our time with lunch, which may have broken our rhythm, but wasn’t too much of a problem. We also saw the clouds starting to lift a little bit as we turned back in to the wind for the ride in to Dingle.

The road in to Dingle along the Dingle Peninsula was one of Helen’s favorite rides on the trip. The road was straight, but mostly level, with the occasional small hill climb and coast. To the right, we could see the mountains on the Dingle Peninsula just underneath the cloud cover. To the right, we were right by Dingle Bay and could see in to the Ring of Kerry, where we had just come from.


We were used to seeing road signs in both English and Irish, and I could actually understand the Irish road signs. But this one, riding in to the Dingle Peninsula threw me for a loop. There’s 3 languages on it, and we’d later see one that had Polish on it as well. English is for general consumption. Irish is mandated by law, and it is not uncommon to see signs where the English has been vandalized beyond recognition and only the Irish remains. French is for tourists. German and Polish are for truck drivers, who often come from those countries. There have been numerous incidents of trucks getting stuck in mountain pass roads and needing to be disassembled in order to be removed, so I guess the authorities want to make sure the message gets through.



We took a break when we got to Inch Strand, which is a long sandbar that extends a few miles in to the bay. We took a break to refuel and explore the beach, which was filled with surfers and washed-up jellyfish that I almost stepped in. I took the opportunity to reflect on how awesome my hair looks after there’s a helmet on it.



After that came the tough part. Visibility had dropped to about 50 feet and the light breeze had become a stiff headwind. I was struggling up the first hill after our break at Inch. Helen decided to motivate me by impersonating Sarah Palin. Every time she gleefully shouted “You betcha!” I felt energy surge through my legs and kept cranking away. She took point with a few miles left and we rode in to town. We had trouble finding the B&B and looped through town a couple of times before seeing a stretch of cottages. It was about 6:00, we were soaked and cold, and the odometer read 98.4 km. I told Helen, and we looked at each other and kept riding west out of the town for .8 km, then turned back to make the metric century. This was Helen's first century so she was pretty excited. I have a couple metrics and a nonmetric under my belt, but this ride was way tougher than those.



We knocked on the door and met Margret, who owns The Last Cottage. She’s a pretty neat lady, who just finished her Computer Science degree after she retired. She also had a dog named “Hasno” as in “Has no leg.” Poor little thing is missing one of its rear legs. One would think this would slow down the dog, but this is not the case. Hasno can run sideways faster than most dogs can run forward. The thing is like a crab.



We told Margret where we had come from, and that we had ridden 100 kilometers today. She remarked that we were “Mad, absolutely mad” which is the most awesome thing to hear, especially when said with a British accent. After devouring all of her biscuits and showering, we walked down to Murphy’s pub. We both had a celebratory beer and ate dinner, and I had the first of what would be many orders of lasagna on this trip. I’m not sure when this happened, but a while back, all the pubs in Ireland had a convention and there was a panel that went something like this:
Proprietor 1: I say, what’s the meaning of all of these vegetarians I see?
Proprietor 2: Quite, surely we must find something to feed them with.
Proprietor 1: Indeed, indeed, I say, and I have become a great big fan of this Garfield cat in the Sunday funny pages.
Proprietor 2: Well, then logically we should start serving lasagna to them immediately.

The pub was very nice. There was a banjo player singing a lot of traditional music and I was pretty psyched when he started playing “Whiskey in the Jar.” It was nice to hear that song, especially after listening to the Metallica version. We also met two nice ladies at the bar from New York. One worked for the district attorney’s office, and we talked about our jobs and philosophy and Ireland. The other did something else, but what I remember best is that she was on this Paleo-diet that Helen found super interesting. We hung out there for a couple of hours and planned to meet up the next day for the archaeology tour. Helen and I went back, where I found some more biscuits that had not been eaten and proceeded to eat them.

At this point, you may remark “Mehal, shouldn’t you be controlling your biscuit intake?” And I would remark that I had should biked a hundred klicks in the rain and wind and I will eat a damn biscuit. So there. Plus, these biscuits are super fine.

We stayed up pretty late and talked, then had the most restful sleep we've had all trip.