Happy 4th of July to all you Americans… I have to admit, it was kind of nice to be here, and not having to deal with a bunch of crazies setting off fireworks and such, that’s for sure!
Today dawned partly cloudy but very windy. Hard to believe, but even with all my talk about the wind, this was the windiest yet! At least it was also the sunniest too…
After a tasty breakfast (poached eggs with Connemara smoked salmon; yum!), we were delighted to head out on our loop ride for the day. It was great being able to leave our big panniers behind, and bring only the essentials for a change. Definitely made for a much lighter load on the bikes!
I think it’s hard to see in the photo above, but there were a lot of whitecaps on the bay next to the first leg of our ride. Which, of course, was into a headwind of about 35 mph!! Nice bit of sun anyway…
The first two-thirds of the ride was a big 25-mile circle down around the coast south of Clifden. A definite highlight the back-to-back Dog’s Bay and Gurteen Bay, where the sun shone onto beautiful white sand beaches. Despite the wind, Mallory decided to dip her feet in the sea…
Then it was on to the little village of Roundstone, where we had tea and cakes, and then shopped at a small open market. From there it was day two on the stretch back to Clifden called the Bog Road. Strong headwinds, once again. It looked for awhile like it was going to rain, but by the time we were back in Clifden, the sun had returned. That gave us renewed energy for the last part of the ‘figure eight’ loop, which led up onto a peninsula east of Clifden onto what’s evocatively called the Sky Road. The view from the overlook was spectacular, even if it did cloud up again a bit by the tine we got there…
Another thing I loved about this road was that it was lined in places by a gorgeous combo of gorse and heather, giving one a sort of ‘essence of Ireland’ effect:
As an aside, I have to reiterate how great the iPhone is working for this whole adventure. It takes great photos (I think you’ll agree); I’ve even done some photo editing with the Photoshop Mobile app, to improve an underexposed image or two. Seeing how I’ve been able to get wireless almost everywhere, it’s been incredibly easy to track my email and publish the blog. There’ve been less than a handful of times that I’ve needed to actually use the cell phone…
All of that is just my way of saying that I think this little tool has passed the mini-travel-computer test with flying colors!
As a postscript, here’s one last shot for today, of what has been our favorite lodgings so far, the lovely and cozy Sea Mist House:
