Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Cycling across Ireland and back. Our Summer.

Last Summer

Our Cycle trip across Ireland and back...Be Inspired.

With winter not passing by, I have been constantly wanting summer again, to be able to wear normal clothes again, to be able to relax without shivering and to go on holidays again! Last Summer was the best yet, every year we tend to go on a big cycling trip. In 2012 we travelled to Germany and did the Danube cycle way, it was absolutely beautiful and so much fun, every day for three weeks we would cycle then camp and see where we ended up, we were just short of Vienna when we had to leave. 

Last year (2013) we went to Ireland to begin on another big trip. We cycled from Rosslare all the way across Cork, and up to the Ring Of Kerry, circled it, came back down to Cork and back to Rosslare all in 2 and a half weeks. But before you think i'm some kind of cycling pro, we have two tandems which mean I don't have to do most of the work! 

Ireland was one of the best places I have been too, there were such lovely towns and people (one man even let us into his pub, when it was closed, even gave us a free cup of tea!) Cycling non-stop every day does have it's downs though, especially on those rainy days, when we've just got our heads down,cycling on busy roads and in the pouring rain, whilst wondering what on earth we were doing on holiday here.

Being a family we weren't capable of doing loads of miles a day and averaged on around 40 miles, which is plenty for me! However there was those days when the campsite was so far away you had no choice but to peddle and peddle and peddle. 

On our 13th day we woke up at 7:30, and had no idea what the day was to bring. We quickly packed up our smelly tent attached all our panyas to the bikes and tip-toed past all the snoring campers, and left. Our plan for the day was to get from Cork to Tipperary, should be a short day of cycling. We went to the bakery to get our daily bread, which had become quite a luxury for us, today's bread was potatoe bread! As we were planning our route as we were going, we had no proper idea as of where the next campsites were and how long it would take to get there, so we went to the tourist info centre and asked if there were any cycle routes into Cork. She replied, "Oh no, you'll have to take the R600 main road, it's very busy though, I've cycled it before, and would most definitely not want to do it again." Such a reassuring sentence really. 
Well, being the live-life-on-the-edge people we are, we said "yeah, they all say the roads are busy, puft." And plodded off to a cafe. And for your information the cafe was called "The MILK market," which if you ever do happen to visit it be aware they do not sell MILKshakes. Ironic really. 

I couldn't really eat my massive piece of Chocolate cake realaxed, knowing that we had a busy road ahead and were going to have to catch the train in the MIDDLE OF CORK. Catching a train was my absolute nightmare, when you have two huge tandems that you need to take all the luggage off and put onto the train, all before it leaves. (Tandems, if your wondering are two seated bikes, so you can image how long they are!) 

We had to cycle along a very busy road, which is never a nice family bike ride, but there was no choice. I was desperate for a wee, food and sleep. After zooming though a ghost town we found the campsite, it didn't look like a campsite though... we asked a man who was taking his daughter in if we could camp there and he replied, "sorry, no chance it's a private campsite, but there's one back there i'm sure there let you in." Just typical our longest day yet of cycling and the campsite doesn't exist. It was already 5:30pm! 

We eventually, after a eventful day of 52 miles arrived, and had our usual dinner of pasta, which we had had since we began, 13 days in a row of pasta! 

Looking back now through the diary I wrote of every single day do I realise how much fun it was. I think anyone can go on a cycling holiday, we had not trained at all for a 2 week non-stop cycle holiday but after the first few days you get used to it. It's so nice being able to travel by bike because you never miss a thing, it means you can take in all the beautiful sceneries and meet such lovely people!

I hope this post could inspire you, perhaps if you like this post I can do more diary entries from our trip! Also please be sure to join my blog via google, on the side there ----> It means the world to me, and I will be happy to give you/your blog a shoutout! 

Thank you, Hannah.

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