We stayed in the Cliffs of Moher hotel, but have no Cliffs of Moher photos from this trip. I'll have to scan in some of the slides someday from our visit in 1995. But if you've ever looked at a travel guide for Ireland, you've seen the photos, and I certainly can't do better!
Sadly one of the big problems with touring in the summer is crowds. I've heard from more than one innkeeper that bookings are way up this year from folks afraid to travel to mainland Europe. So the touristy spots are not just packed with foreign tourists, there are lots of Irish checking out their own country too. Now this isn't a bad thing unless you are on a bike tour trying to make plans on the fly and find accommodation when you are tired of riding! Or if you just don't like crowds.
We've heard the best way too see the Cliffs now, is to do an all day walk from Doolin or Liscannor and get this bus back from the end. But we had two problems with that. First we really didn't have proper shoes for walking all day, but the bigger issue was that time was running out. John was aiming to head back to Dublin the next day where he had planned to ride a 200km Audax event on Sunday before flying back to Boston on Tuesday. (Someone in the family has to work). So we needed to aim for a train station Saturday morning. Therefore we plotted a course for Athenry (avoiding crowds in Galway) and headed inland.
I suppose if the weather had been better with promising views, I might have bid adieu to John in the morning and started the solo part of my tour early with a visit to the Cliffs. But with poor visibility, I chose to spend our last day together, flying through the Burren with a screaming tailwind. Yes I said it, we had a screaming tailwind for most of the day.
We started the day under cloud cover, but it had started to clear by lunch. Now this is Ireland, so we rode the last 10km in a heavy shower!
My, or should I say SadiB's reputation for finding roads like this is becoming legendary.
John deploys the sail to take advantage of the performance enhancing wind.
We managed to find some gravel even.
Celebrating our last evening together for a while with, what else, bicycle wine!
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