IRELAND: DINGLE PENINSULA

Saturday, August 16th - Day 4

At breakfast that morning, I couldn't help but stare out the window. The clouds looked dark and ominous. Siobhan, the owner's wife, cooked us a hearty Irish breakfast. When we told her we were going to bike the 30-mile Slea Head loop her eyes widened. That gave me a load of confidence! 

We were out the door by 9 for our ride around the Ring of Dingle. (heehee) We ran across the street to rent bikes from The Mountain Man, and we were off! For the first mile, I was shivering as we biked through the mist. 

We took our first break about an hour and a half in when I spotted these cows. They were very talkative and curious about us. It was a fun and much needed break!

The rare moment I ride a bike it's usually on a road bike. The only bikes that were available were mountain bikes. It felt like riding uphill through mud. At least I wasn't cold any more!

We've rented bikes one other time when we were living in Arizona. I was given a Woman's bike and Nick was given a Man's bike even though we are about the same height. Both times, Nick and I ended up switching because the Men's bikes are so much easier to ride. I vow to never rent a Woman's bike again.

I'm not very good at taking pics while I ride, so I handed the camera to Nick. 

There were yellow, orange and red flowers all along the road. 

We took our second break at a cafe after we noticed a couple busses stuck behind us on the narrow roads. 

The big cafe called the Stone House was still not open at 10:30 in the morning! We poked our heads in the Dunbeg Fort museum next door to see a short film. The ticket included an old fort. The fort was closed because part of it had just fallen in the ocean. Yikes!

We got some great photos just outside the gate anyway.

Unfortunately, they charged us the same amount to walk up to the gate near the fort as they did when the fort was open. Sad.

 I had to get a picture of the classic Irishman sitting inside the ticket booth.

Next we ventured up to see some of the old Famine Houses, which we found out was not included in the ticket price. Nick couldn't help but comment on how often we were charged for ruins or any other "attraction." Most of them only charged between 2 and 5 Euro, but it does start to add up.

We found some of the creepiest mannequins around the houses. This one actually scared me. 

This one reminded me of Chucky. I'm sure I learned something at the Famine Houses, but all that I can really remember are the creepy mannequins. 

The next attraction was the Beehive huts. We were both pretty underwhelmed. 

At this point we'd ridden about 15 miles, and most of it was uphill.  

We saw a few hikes along the route, but we knew we had to keep pushing if we wanted to make it back to Dingle by 3pm for the regatta. We were also getting pretty hungry at this point.

We found a cute town of Emlugh East (and practically the last one) on our route. I felt a little underdressed when we walked in with our bike helmets on. It looked there may have been a wedding party in the other room. We sat down and ordered hot tea. I spotted warm goat cheese on the menu. It.was.to.live.for!! I would go back to Ireland to eat that same dish! I might have been a little hungry from biking, but I would probably devour it even if I wasn't hungry.

We were off again, and headed to two more sites before the end of our tour. 

The first one was the Gallarus Oratory. This church was built over 1300 years ago. The stones were stacked so tight that it is still waterproof today!

This was Nick's favorite ruin we'd seen that day.

My favorite was about 5 kilometers down the road at the ruined church of Kilmalkedar. The hole driven through the stone was used to marry people. The couple would put their thumbs through either end of the stone and say their vows. It was located on a graveyard in front of their ancestors, and in front of the house of God. What better place?! ;) Nick was a little creeped out by it, but at least it was free!

He humored me and played along. 

We had heard from a local that we needed to go through the "eye of the needle" at one of the churches. We found it!

Nick went first...

And then me! Nick still didn't find it at all entertaining AND it started to RAIN! DOH! We still had 5 miles to go to get back to Dingle. 2 of those miles were the steepest part of our climb; the last 3 were almost straight downhill. I peddled as hard and as fast as I could! My body hurt so bad by that point, and we had to push harder than we had before! When we reached the top of the mountain the thought that came to me was that I probably wasn't the first person to ride a bike in the rain. I would be fine. It was a downhill ride from there.

It had been over 6 hours and just over 30 miles. Ouch. After returning the bikes, we walked straight to Murphy's ice cream. I ordered Raspberry and Brown Bread. Nick ordered Cookies and Cream. It was soooo good after a 30 mile bike ride!

Nick's happy place. 

Even though we had ice cream in our hands and it was cold and drizzling, we still ventured out to see the regatta. 

On your marks....get set...GO!

They were off!

We walked to the end of the spit to see the boats better. 

We weren't sure who won, but they sure were quick!

We went back to our B & B to warm up. Nick had a brilliant idea of going to the South Pole Inn down the road for dinner. It was a pub started by a local favorite: Tom Crean. He was the unsung antarctic explorer from the Dingle Peninsula. 

There were pictures of him all over the walls. 

Happy camper after some fish n' chips from a famous pub!

That night we went one door down from our B & B to Murphy's Bar to watch a band perform. We got there early to get front row seats. We stayed for about an hour before calling it a night at 11pm. So lame, but we were exhausted! Haha! The owner of our B & B was just leaving to hit the town as we were coming in. Haha! We had a great time in Dingle. Even Nick said he liked it!

We were ready for round 5 of Ireland...