Killarney Day 2

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Our second day started off wonderfully, and perhaps in Ireland as it ought to: with a castle and a boat ride on a fisherman's dinghy. Our boat, which was to deliver us and our bicycles to the starting line of our next cycle route (shown in red on the above map), left from a pier next to Ross Castle (apparently the Rosses were an important family in this region at one time).

A side note: Unfortunately, Google Maps does not show the lakes/rivers in this area except in satellite mode, but the terrain mode allows for an easier view of our route. This map is interactive, though, so feel free to click on it and explore. Also, you should be able to enlarge any of the photos on the blog by clicking on them. I have only recently figured this out, and just in case any of you are equally blog-savvy, I thought I'd share.

A wonderful shot of Ross castle (which took several minutes of waiting for the many people milling about to move!), and the picturesque view behind the castle as well. Unfortunately, we didn't have quite enough time to tour the castle...perhaps on another visit.

The crew on our boat (which we agree we would call a small motorized row-boat) consisted of the two of us, two other couples, and a "boatman" who was several minutes late and spent the first several minutes of the ride on his hands-free cell phone (whilst steering the dinghy across the lake). In fact, another, older man is the one who arrived with the boat and, cup of coffee in one hand, steered the boat single-handedly into the dock with incredible penache. This older gentleman helped us load our six bicycles and then said "it'll be a few minutes while you wait for the boat man. I'm going fishing." (apparently, for salmon). It was the beginning of an awesome journey, chronicled below in photographs. Above, a shot looking back at Ross Castle.

Orange is really Derek's color, don't you think?!

Innisfallen Abbey, the boatman tells us, was the site of one of the earliest universities (in Europe or perhaps in the World, he didn't really specify). Of course it looks, from this picture, like a teeny little Fransiscan Monastery sitting on a teeny little island in the middle of a large loch in Ireland. And it is.

Here you get sort of an idea of the size of our boat. In the background, you'll see the bridge upon which we had taken a photo of the two of us the previous day. It was sort of neat, seeing the same place again but from the other vantage point.

This is The Old Weir Bridge, at a place aptly named "Meeting of the Waters," as it is, indeed, the place where one lake meets the other lake, and the river pours into them both. The waters were quite shallow, and I was surprised when the boatman steered us in this direction. Then, he said abruptly, "I'm going to have to ask you all to take a short walk." He maneuvered the boat toward shore, where he asked Derek to hop out and hold the boat steady so the ladies (and one of the men) could get off. He asked Derek and one of the other men to stay on. "Just meet us down the other side of the bridge," he noted, and quickly began spouting off directions to his crew (which I didn't quite hear).

The Pirates of the Unnamed River: Derek and Heinrich (I call him this because he was German but I don't know his real name) pulling our boat and boatman upstream, beneath the bridge. As I said, the water was shallow, as they were having a bit of a drought. Derek says the boat was scraping the bottom just a bit. Funny, they didn't advertise this as part of the adventure. I thought it was quite amusing, but tried not to chuckle about it too loudly.

Back on the boat, at a place titled on our map "The Long Range." The river opened up here and offered lovely views in all directions; we were surrounded by green, and rock and mountain.

I was a little "trigger happy" and was enjoying this view of our bicycles, being moved along with us by motorboat upstream along this scenic river. The whole ride took us an hour and a half. I wonder that we couldn't have ridden a similar route faster...but considering the experience and the views (and the fact that there isn't a path or road that follows this route) it doesn't really matter.

The view coming into the third lake, cleverly dubbed Upper Lake, and at the end Lord Brandon's Cottage, where we ate a lunch of vegetable soup, pie, and coffee, before continuing our journey via bicycle. (This spot marked on the map as a yellow monopoly-looking house, directly south of Purple Mountain).

This picture taken just after we had stopped to fix a flat tyre on my bicycle...Derek was rather pleased that: A) we had asked for a puncture kit at O'Sullivan's Cycles before they sent us off on our journeys, and B) I happened to get my flat tyre next to a gently flowing stream, which made finding and mending the hole much easier. (Not to mention the view, the sunshine, the warmth, and the journey which lay ahead.)

This picture taken (and they're all of Derek because Laura is typing this post) just after we took a wrong turn, which was nearly a four-mile detour, I suppose, but it was splendid and (as you'll see in the next picture) brought us a lot of joy.

Yep. Totally worth the detour. Derek was able to get in some practice for the upcoming International sheep dog trials at Antrim, Northern Ireland. (Yes, I looked that up.) Our first sheep encounter was an adolescent lamb who had managed to end up on the wrong side of the fence line, and was happily nibbling away. Derek blew past it, hardly realizing it was there, but scared the wool right off the poor thing; it immediately tried to jump right through one of the squares in the wire fence. It almost made it, but its wool was just too thick to get past the shoulders. I slammed on my brakes, still a short distance away, to let the thing calm down in case it should actually injure itself. Then, very slowly, I pedaled past, and ready to jump at the slightest wrong movement, the lamb (and now, its mother, who had wandered over out of either sheer curiosity or concern for her little one) glared at me as I went past!! I laughed, and asked Derek (out of my concern for what--the busy road???) whether we should pick the thing up and toss it over the fence. Silly. Later, we came across several more sheep who had wandered to the wrong side of the fence. These two in the picture were particularly dim-witted, and kept running directly away from us down the road. Finally there was a break in the fence at some rather large boulders, which they scrambled up lest we should catch them!

After sheep-herding practice, we discovered we had very probably made a wrong turn as the road we were on turned into an incredibly rocky path obviously meant for walking and not for cycles. So we headed back the way we had come, and up a very big hill. And up and up. It was hot. The road was literally melting. But, we finally rejoiced as we made it to the summit, which looks down into the Gap of Dunloe--and, originally, the main purpose to our trip. Funny how that purpose changed into Adventure of All Sorts. Anyway, here's the view from the top. We were rather pleased with it, but decided it might be worth a hike farther up one of the hills to see what we could see.

Making it not quite to the top of the hill, as it became very rocky and because we realized we were running pretty low on water, but this lovely false-summit/saddle made an awesome view. This view looking back toward Upper Lake and our boat-journey.

This, the view looking in the other direction from our hike's summit: and, we realized, in the direction of our accidental detour down a rather beautiful valley. It was fun at this point to realize what a treat it was to have actually gone the wrong way. Again, fun to see things somewhat accidentally from two different vantage points.

Luckily, sheep are generally decent photographers. Tough to push that button with a hoof, but this one managed alright.

We headed back down the hill on foot, and then hopped on our bikes and enjoyed the ride down into the Gap, stopping a few times to enjoy the creek tumbling down alongside us and the pools it filled. This one in particular, toward the end or bottom of the Gap, was lush and green and gorgeous (and this picture looks back up toward the summit of the Gap) Another thing made this trip so much more amazing: there were very few cars, and thus few people.

We stopped for a pint and dinner at a place called Kate's Cottage (on the map, the yellow house on the west side of the lake), which was great fun--we ended up talking to some people, including a couple from Australia (the guy had gotten his PhD in Geography, so he and Derek had plenty to chat about). Anyway, then we headed up around the top of the lake and, after finding ourselves on a very busy road, soon found a path heading off into the woods in the general direction we needed to go. We soon found ourselves in a park (not sure if it was part of the National Park or what) with this lovely view, and a nice easy ride back into Killarney via cycling/walking paths. It was really nice to see this view from the North side of the Lake, as it was the only time we did see it from that angle.

St. Mary's Cathedral, which we came upon just as we returned to Killarney. Built in the mid-1800s, it is often referred to as one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in Ireland. It was a nice welcome back to civilization after a very long day--well, that and the beer.

Later that night, a friendly bartender taught us how to drink a "proper pint of Guinness." Don't ask us to share: it's a secret. He also tried to water down my Smithwick's with red lemonade to make it a "Smithwick's Shandy" which he noted was an excellent hangover cure. Of course, I was not hungover at the time, and I just hate it when people put fruity things in my beer, but seeing as he was rather friendly I forgave the waste of a perfectly good drink.