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Ireland

In Ireland, place names sound like poetry. Ballyvaughan. Carraroe. Oughterard. We’ll be in all those places, biking in the lesser-known western coast area, the Irishman’s Ireland. Now and again someone bids you good day in Gaelic. This tour, always a success, returns to the schedule after a few seasons away.

You’ll come by coach from Shannon Airport to Ennis, where the streets still follow their medieval plan, and have time to look around this market town before our welcome dinner. The next day we’re off through villages and countryside to Liscannor Bay and the village of that name. Ireland’s entire west coast is nicked with bays large and small. Liscannor is one of the small ones.

The scenery only gets better as we move through County Clare and into Connemara. (Connemara! Put that in a poem.) A coach will transport us through the dicey traffic surrounding Galway, but while still on the bikes we might get a glimpse of the Aran Islands, if it’s a clear day. We’ll explore a cave (landscape from the inside) and make a stop at Coole Park that ties us in with some of the great Irish writers: Yeats, Shaw, Lady Gregory.

And what, indeed, is Connemara? Not a county, not a town, but “starting at Oughterard and continuing toward the Atlantic. You will know it when you see it. . .heart breaking barrenness and unique beauty. . .” is a famous guide book’s best go at describing it. Biking, of course, is the only way to really see this country. We’ll visit the 15th century Aughnanure Castle, built when a castle was a fortress and the family that lived in it, the O’Flahertys, kept the watchtower manned.

We’ll make a stop in Spiddle, where Gaelic is spoken but business can be conducted in English, business being fine Irish sweaters and handcrafts, locally produced. If you’ve ever wondered how Irish drums are made, or even if you haven’t, you’ll be interested in the stop at Roundstone where a craft center manufactures bodhrans, as the drums are called. Harder to play than you might think. Later, at an Irish sing-along pub, you’ll see a bodhran in action.

Two nights in Clifden with a free afternoon give a chance to explore this attractive seaside town where shops (crafts, tweeds, more of those Irish sweaters) are plentiful and so are friendly pubs. Before returning to Shannon we’ll see an ancient Benedictine abbey, the quarry for Connemara marble, megalithic tombs and standing stones and the Twelve Pins, which pass for a mountain range in the confines of an island country.

We haven’t mentioned kippers. Or Irish breakfasts. Or lunch in pubs. Or Guinness. You’ll find out about all that on your own. What we have mentioned, we hope, suggests the enduring appeal of this country and why the Irish, wherever they are, never really leave home.