I’m not going to give a detailed, turn-by-turn breakdown of the route we followed for this trip; it will suffice, I think, to say that we more-or-less followed the official Wild Atlantic Way from Sligo to Belmullet, following the directions so ably narrated in the Cicerone guide to Ireland. No, I shall devote my words instead to describing the scene and my general impressions; the reader who is interested in following my route is welcome to ask for more details. I’ve added the photos from my trip to my online album, they can be found under Sligo and North Mayo .[Read More…]

Last week, I had a fantastic trip out to the West Coast of Ireland. This is a place about which much has been written; I can only say that it lived up to expectations. On the first day, we had a late start from Belfast, and drove to Sligo.[Read More…]

Ok, I have quite a few updates to add here. Yesterday, I took a ride down to Strangford Lough - specifically to Nendrum; more on this shortly. However, the big ride to write up is from last week, when I went off to the West Coast. I meant to write that trip up as soon as I returned, but work sort of took over for the week. I’m pleased with work though, I managed to submit two papers (one conference paper, and one revised journal article), so it was certainly a productive week from that point of view. I’ll write up last week’s trip soon, but without further ado, here’s a quick description of yesterday’s ride…[Read More…]

Just a walk this time, not a cycle; but I’m adding walks on here now too; I think it’s nice to keep a record of them all together. Slieve Croob is a large hill, not really a mountain - it’s only a little over 500 m high, after all - about 40 minutes’ drive south of Belfast. It’s a steep, energetic walk, and the views from the top promise to be magnificent. The day I went up the weather was warm and bright, but unfortunately too hazy to see very far; we could see the foothills of the Mournes, and we could just make out a small finger of sea before it was lost in the haze. On a clear day, I’m told, you can see Scotland, Lough Neagh, and many more Mountains of Mourne to the south - as well as the Isle of Man. No matter - we had a nice walk, and the sunny weather meant we had a very pleasant picnic near the top :)

… is very badly named. For starters, it isn’t an island. It isn’t even close to an island. It is, however, a nice place to go cycling - there are some lovely beaches, and the roads are a nice combination of low traffic and suitable gradients to make cycling round interesting without being too demanding. We had a great walk along the recently-opened Gobbins, which is basically a path along the base of cliffs, so that people who don’t like getting their feet wet can still get close to the sea. Like last weekend, we had great weather, with only a very short shower; apart from that, it was sunny and warm. One of the nicest beaches we saw was the - also inappropriately named - Port Muck. Mucky it was not, unless you count the seaweed, and there wasn’t much of that. I took some photos with my digital camera, which I’ll put up tomorrow, and I also finished off a roll of film on my Pentax KX. I’m looking forward to seeing the results, although it will be a little longer before they make it onto this blog.

Photos as promised: