Category: Family

Our first day of riding turned out to be an epic one. Though we only had a little less than 20 miles to ride to get to the ferry to Inishmore island, the problem was that there was a fair amount of uphill, combined with a nasty wind that was either in our faces or blasting us from the side!

We thought we’d given ourselves plenty of time, but ended up getting to the ferry with only about ten minutes to spare… After a 40 minute ferry ride, we had to go only about two and a half kilometers to find tonight’s lodgings. We unloaded the bikes and brought everything into our room …and promptly took an hour nap!

With our legs recovered a bit, but still with sore butts, we set off to explore the island. While it looked pretty threatening as we headed out, the squall quickly blew through and we had sunny skies for most of the rest of the afternoon.

Finally able to ride at a leisurely pace, and not fighting the wind too badly, we enjoyed our little tour immensely. Roughly another 12 miles roundtrip, with a stop for dinner in the village, and the highlight of a short hike up to Dun Aonghasa (pronounced Doon Aengus), which is the slightly restored ruins of a stone fort that dates from the Iron Age, about three thousand years ago. The central area is built right up to a two hundred foot cliff that drops straight to the sea. The wind was howling so hard that we both crawled to the edge (going the last few feet on our bellies) just to be able to take in the view of the waves crashing against the cliffs below and to our left in the distance. We got some photos with Mal’s camera, but I didn’t have the courage to try and take one with the iPhone! Here’s one though, of Mal next to the innermost ‘door’:

From there, which was the halfway point in our ride, the way back had the wind at our backs, which was glorious to say the least. Now we’re back in our room, ready for a nice long rest before our 36 mile ride tomorrow!

Yesterday was a travel day here in Ireland. We went from Dublin to Oughterard via train and had a beautiful trip, evidenced by the photos below:

Upon arrival, we found our incredible B&B, Waterfall Lodge. The place is surrounded by spectacular gardens, a beautiful little creek and, of course, the waterfall. We met the woman from Iron Donkey, got our packets of maps and itinerary, had a little briefing about our trip and are now very excited to be on our way!

Internet access is going to be very sketchy over the next week so don’t be alarmed if you don’t hear from us for a few days. We’ll post as often as we can! We’re praying for good weather, but know we’ll see some rain. Wish us luck, we’re off!

We woke to another pleasant day, our last here in Dublin before heading off for our bike-riding adventures. We headed out mid-morning for what turned out to be a nice leisurely day, deciding what we wanted to do on the spur of the moment, and enjoying every minute!

A definite highlight of our stay here has been the variety of interesting architecture. The photos above and below are but two examples of the styles we’ve encountered. I know no details about the building above, we just loved the combo of the orange brick and the turquoise dome. The one below is Dublin Castle. The oldest part (which isn’t visible) dates from the early 13th century, and the tower in the photo was built in 1411!

The activities for the day were a little more shopping, a visit to the National Gallery, a walk through two different parks, not to mention a lot more walking in general! In the morning we explored the shopping on Francis St., but it turned out to be almost exclusively antiques. Undeterred, we headed back to the main south-side shopping area, looking for a fish & chips shop. Low and behold, we ended up coming up the street where the “oldest chipper in Dublin” was located, which I’d noticed the day we arrived! Since it’s a “takeaway”-only shop (like most fish & chips places), we took our brown bag and wandered down to the Trinity College green where we could enjoy our lunch on a nice bench and share some chips with the pigeons. It was dee-lish!

Below is a photo of Mallory next to one of two huge beautiful Oregon Maples on the Trinity College Campus…

After lunch we decided to visit the National Gallery of Ireland, where the highlights were a show of new acquisitions. The pieces were from a wide variety of periods and schools of art, but my favorite was a small Van Gogh from when he first moved to Paris, before his style became so intensely impressionistic.

In the late afternoon we opted for walks through two of Dublin’s beautifully and densely landscaped parks. The first, St. Steven’s, was bigger, so we didn’t explore it very much. Archbishop Ryan Park, in Merrion Square, was smaller, with lots of interesting little areas. It also had some spectacular evergreen plantings, an example of which is below:

After working up an appetite for dinner, we thought we’d stick with the seafood theme for the day and go for that other traditional Irish pescatarian delicacy… sushi! We found a friendly little sushi bar right on the river, and had one more very sweet dinner together in Dublin.

Here’s one last photo from today. Another rare picture of your intrepid blogger/photographer, this time perched on a cool bronze throne sculpture in Merrion Square (but still looking like a gnome)…