J&J's European Adventure

29 July

Dingle, Ireland

Our landlady is Vivian O'Shea. I'm tempted to believe that she changed her name just to lure in the American tourists. After she fed us a wonderful breakfast, we mounted our bikes and headed off on the loop road of the Dingle Peninsula, which follows the coastline for the most part. Along the way, we stopped to see ancient ring forts, beehive huts, and several churches, both abandoned and still functional. This area is ridiculously rich in archaeologic sites dating back thousands of years.

The ring forts are stone enclosures with stone buildings within them. Their inhabitants would bring themselves and their animals in at night to defend against predators and thieves. The buildings and walls were all built without mortar, and are still standing thousands of years later. The beehive huts were also mortarless. We would just be riding along a road, and there would be an old stone church or one of these forts in somebody's sheep pasture. Just amazing. We also stopped at the nearest point to North America. It was a beautiful day, early on, and the sea was almost dead calm, but since there is nothing west of here until you hit America, it's probably pretty rough at times.

After we'd been pedaling for about 7 hours, we made it to the Gallarus Oratory, a 1,200-year-old church built with the beehive technique. By then, we were getting pretty tired and our behinds were complaining loudly about the bike seats. Our day was a 25-mile ride up and down hills on narrow roads, often one-lane, lined with hedges made of blackberry bushes with protruding branches that constantly tried to snare whatever part of you they could touch, and shared with many vehicles ranging from cars to huge tourist coaches and large, roaring farm equipment. Throw in the fact that we hadn't ridden a bike since February, and we could see that this might not have been the wisest decision of the trip. Then it started to rain. We dug out our raincoats and pressed on, stopping at more churches and forts, and viewing the area where Sir Walter Raleigh and his troops met their fates, until the rain stopped just about the time that we topped the last hill and were able to coast most of the way back to our B&B. We made it back to Foxy's before closing time and turned in our trusty steeds, then celebrated our survival with fish and chips at a local eatery. I tried one of the local brews. There is little danger that I will over-imbibe on the bitter stuff.

Daily miles: 12.35

Expenses:
180€ (Coastline Guesthouse - 2 nights)
123.18€ (bikes, bus from Tralee, food)

Cill Breac Dingle Cemetery