just north of Kilarney
about 35 miles
damp start to the day, but a gloriously sunny finish!
A friend suggested I take a photo of a map upon which I'd drawn the route we were traveling. I didn't know how it would work, but tonight I drafted it up. In order to see any detail I took a picture of just the western side of Ireland and the last few days of travel. Let me know what you think.
Our route west out of Dublin, then north to Trim Castle (off the map).
Continuing to bike westward across the country.
The last couple days getting to the ferry and Inis Oirr of the Aran Islands...then south to Cliffs of Moher.
Above is the last couple of days of cycling southward towards Kilarney.
Feedback, please...about the maps.
At lunch we were in a health food cafe and I asked the waitress if she knew what the weather was going to be for the next couple of days. She shook her head and said "Most likely raining, tis Ireland after all. The sun doesn't shine here much!" Then looking out the window, she added, "It's gonna rain this afternoon." Cracked me up!
I'm getting much better at using this darn map app. As long as I can figure out where we are, I can map a back country route to where we want to go, but I couldn't do it without a large map too! Tonight I figured out how to use it to actually map out a route and it will read it back to me turn by turn. But it behaves funny, flipping around if I try to do the Walking Mode. I can use it now for estimating distances though and that should be helpful.
We're winding our way down to the Kilarney National Park. There's quite a lot to see down around there, but that means Tour Buses too...or as they're called here, Coaches. But so many folks have said we must see West Cork (the county, not the city, we found out) so were working our way down there.
Because we're going so slowly we've decided to look at taking a train or a bus from Cork to Waterford so we can get the ferry over to England sooner.
For a bit today we biked on a main road. It was no fun. We got to the next town faster, but didn't enjoy the process as much. Later as we were winding our way southward, I told Fuat we needed to go straight at a particular intersection. When we got there, he didn't want to because "Did you see that hill?" So we looked at the map on my phone and I routed us around so that we'd end up on the same road further south...it was the most direct route towards Kilarney. Don't ya know, the alternate route had not one hill...nope, it had THREE! I said that's the last time we go around a hill. We did more hills AND more miles! Met a farmer on the alternate route that was cracking up at fact of us trying to avoid hills. He said it would have been better had we just gone straight...hehehe! He the richest, twangiest Irish accent I've heard yet. Everyone's seems to be different. Some people are easy to understand and some I can't make out a word. Fuat was chatting with this farmer while waiting for me and he said he understood not a word. Might have been speaking Irish.
I wanted to try and learn some Irish. When we were at Pat and Mary's we talked with them about it. I told them I couldn't even sound it out because there seemed to be no correlation between the letters and the sounds. Pat agreed. He had a dictionary at the house and it didn't have any pronunciation clues. On Inis Oirr, all the signs are in Irish only. Mary (who's American) types the notices into Google Translator to find out what they're saying. So I"m gonna leave Ireland without having learned any of the language, sadly so.
Tonight we're camped in an abandoned field. So delightful with the late lingering sun. And dinner was chickpea curry over rice. It surely is delightful traveling with a man who can and likes to cook! I'm a good chopper and dish washer. I do help with ideas too, especially lunches...and treats:)
And that's all she wrote!
BagLady
P.S. update on the blisters...problem continues...they never go away and when the sun returns they flourish and itch...and the skin gets tender...got them on my face now too. It's gonna be a long summer at this rate. Does anyone know if turmeric could be causing this? I've stopped the ibuprofen but am continuing a daily dose of turmeric for the thumb arthritis.
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