The Road Less Exciting

Galway – Glasson, Ireland

That’s more like it.

Best day of biking in Ireland so far. Of course, it definitely helped that it was mostly dry. 

But that wasn’t the only good part. Maybe something that we kind of forget sometimes – the best part of bicycle touring is not all the tourist stuff you see. It’s not castles or moats, or mountains, or historic buildings or cliffs. 

It’s just riding along and enjoying the scenery. Mooing at the cows. Bleating at the sheep. Chatting a little along the way. Stopping for lunch. And maybe meeting a few locals as we go. 

That was today’s ride. No big agenda items. Just ride, stop at a gas station or two, have coffee and tea, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – and not feel like we need to rush to get in before it gets too late – or, worse yet, before we miss Noah’s Ark, which we need to be on lest we drown in yet another Irish squall. 

It’s pretty easy to maintain a pattern of riding along without too many goals when you’re in places like Central and South America. There are sites along the way, of course, but it’s not like every building dates from 837 or something – with three major battles fought in the immediate environs. Pretty much you just ride and stop wherever there might be any kind of amenity at all. 

Even in Europe a lot of places are like this. The Baltic States, for example. Not too complicated. Fields of grain, and maybe a river or two – otherwise you just try to connect the dots between cities. 

But I think England and Ireland kind of snuck up on us this way. I mean, you can’t just bike through Oxford or Stratford-upon-Avon and not stop to read some interpretative signage and take a picture or two. Which is super fun. But, really, what you don’t realize – or, at least, we didn’t realize, is that you need to treat these historic landmarks like mountains that you need to account for. 

I mean, you can’t bike 70 miles with 5,000 feet of elevation. You need to adjust.

“Hmm, if there’s 5,000 feet of elevation maybe we can only expect to cover 40 miles . . .”

Same thing with historic landmarks and site-seeing generally. You have to count things like old castles, the Cliffs of Moher, and historic churches against your mileage for the day. You can’t do the Cliffs of Moher and bike 60 miles – unless you want to finish your ride at 6 p.m. – and end up hungry and grumpy at the end of the day – with about an 80% chance of a completely inane hangry argument about whether we should go to the pizza place or the pub.

Pretty much the same concept with rain. You can ride in the rain. It’s not necessarily quite as fun – but it can be done. But the pace slows. And it’s not just your biking speed. It’s also the constant starting and stopping to change and adjust clothing. 

• It starts to drizzzle. Stop to put on raincoats.
• The drizzle stops. Now you’re hot. Stop to take the raincoats off.
• Now it’s raining again, but harder. Stop to put on both raincoats and rain pants. Ah, but not so easy. To put the rain pants on you need to take off your shoes. But you’re standing in mud – meaning there’s a precarious balancing act to perform. Inevitably, there’s a fair amount of cursing that happens when you lose your balance and have to put your sock-covered foot down into a puddle. But eventually you are ready and you start out again. 
• Of course, now the rain let’s up and the sun peaks out. But you are encased in impermeable rubber – so you are wetter now than you would have been had you just left the rain gear off from the beginning – only it’s worse because it’s not rain – you are drenched in your own sweat. So now you stop again. Remove the rain jacket – which is easy; but also remove the rain pants – which requires taking the shoes off once again. And if you are a fussy person – which, thankfully, neither Diana nor I are – you probably need to go through your clothing pannier to fish out a new pair of socks. Sadly, they’re at the bottom of the pannier – so you have to empty all your clothes out onto the pavement. 

By now, it’s 3 p.m. and you’ve biked a total of 13 miles. You’re discouraged, wet, and tired. Of course, it’s another 11 miles to the Cliffs of Moher – where you’ll inevitably spend 2 hours walking around – and then 20 more miles to your destination. 

Not a recipe for a good relaxing day.

All that is a long-winded way of saying that there weren’t a lot of A-list highlights today. 

We did see a castle.

And we had our peanut butter sandwiches.

But we reached our campground by 4 p.m.

And we had an amazing pub dinner.

By the way, I forgot how much I love hard cider. Kind of goes along with obsessing about apples I guess. I’ve been so busy trying to drink manly Guinness that I forgot to try the cider. But tonight I had a bottle of Orchard Thieves. Best cider ever!!! Crisp and sweet, but not syrupy sweet. Will be drink of choice for as long as I can find it…

And then tonight I met the father and son duo of Sean and Cole – who told me all about the GAA – Gaelic football, which Cole plays, and hurling, which Sean played when young. The best players play for their counties, and up to 80,000 people come out to watch the games. But it’s all amateur – no one is really making money. 

They told me that Australia plays basically the same game – and the Irish and the Australians used to play – but the players fought so much they had to discontinue the whole idea. 

Oh, and another good thing . . . Northern Island also plays – so the GAA is an opportunity for the whole of Ireland to enjoy sport together – without the artificial division between the north and the south. 

Alright, so that was our day. 

I should add that we really enjoyed Galway. It was fun to see where our daughter, Lauren, spent her time last fall. We met a number of students, toured the university,

swam in the ocean,

and, last night, played in a pub quiz. We were terrible. There was one group of questions – name that song – where we literally got nothing right. Of course, that was a blatant case of ageism. There was a grand total of one song from before the turn of the century. And how were we supposed to know Paranoid by Black Sabbath? I mean, do we look like metal heads?

Sad.

I do need to clarify that even with a two person team, handicapped by being old and American, we were not last. And, even though we had no idea of a Citroen car with a model named after a European artist, we met some great young Galwayans and had a wonderful evening.

Tomorrow? We keep biking through the middle of Ireland – toward the Mountains of Mourne – and then Belfast. Looking forward to no particular highlights along the way. Just more cows and sheep and stone walls and maybe a gas station or two. 

Should be a great day!