Ireland Day 4: add another country to the "biked there" list

(May 5 2017)

Day 3 had been about old stuff. Day 4 would be about the bike.
Shelly is pretty easy to travel with and goes with the Jordan flow.
Her two requests for the trip were to bike in Ireland and do
some shopping.  We were all happy to fulfill #1 wish on Day 4

We rented decent hybrid bikes from a shop whose owner
had been an archaeologist, but the recession had hit archaeology
hard so he decided to reinvent his career in Westport renting
bikes to tourists. Bonus tour guide to the archaeology of the
area when he picked us up after the ride!  

But first, the ride.

We are all cyclists, so we thought maybe we would do the
full round trip from Westport to Achil  Island, about 26 miles;
however, the wind was ferocious and the disclaimers at the
shop basically said if you chose to do the full round trip,
they are not responsible for your safety. Ok then, let's ride
with the wind TO Achil Island and get the shuttle back!  

Off we went pedaling through town, then residential areas, then small farms,
and finally the countryside. The path was a mixture of asphalt and packed gravel,
which was perfect for the hybrid bikes we were on.

We saw Some cool old stone buildings
that made me wonder if the inhabitants had lost their land to the
Protestants and fled to America,

, a lovely river,

a really cool rock wall
that the locals were in the process of rebuilding

and by far the
coolest thing was harvesting turf from the bog.

The Bog

An unexpectedly cool thing to to see up close was the bog.  When Utahns talk about bogs, they generally mean a little squishy bit of ground with some short grasses and mosses growing near a water souce.  The bog os Ireland was a lot bigger, like a quarter of the country bigger. Well, actually , I don’t know how much area the bog covers, but the bog we rode by was big.

According to Wikipedia the bog is a wetland that accumulates peat. Peat is a deposit of dead plant material, often sphagnum moss. Bogs occur where the water at the ground suface is acidic and low in nutrients.  The bog in Ireland is a blanket bog that covers vast areas of rolling hills. It forms a blanket on the ground because formed because the ground is saturated much of the time.

Coming from Utah, where there is not enough water to grow anything but rocks over much of the low elevations, I found the bog to be more foriegn than Mars. Walking on the bog felt like walking on a thick fleece blanket. It wasn’t wet when we were there, but somewhat spongy. n

What I found so interesting is the harvesting process. The bog has been harvested for fuel for centuries.  The harvesting process consists of cutting the “turf” as they call it, into stripsa nd squares using a big tractor, and stacking it next to the excavation so it can drain and dry out. Out in town we saw bags of peat being sold as fuel for home heating

The practice is not without controversy in Ireland. The bog has been harvested faster than it can accumulate, so now, harvesting is restricted to only those families with traditional rights.  There are loopholes though, so some say there needs to be tighter restrictions. The other controversy is using it for fuel. I imagine burning turf would be hugely smokey, but apparently it is quite clean. Not clean enough for cities though so only “smokeless” turf is allowed.  

Piles of turf laid out to dry.

The weather really was very windy, which tires a biker out. I was happy
to wait for our shuttle at a pub at the end of the mainland before the bridge to
Achil Island. Great little glasses of beer, one of the more delicious lunches,
and some more friendly locals made this a perfect reward for our hard pedalling.

Goodies at every gas station.

Our mid-afternoon departure to our next B and B at Galway left us time
to take the longer route to see a bit of the beautiful Connemara region.

If I have to be buried, I would like it to be here. What a view!

but unfortunately,  we arrived just a few minutes after a castle that we thought looked cool was closed for the day. Oh well, on to Galway for Saturday night pub crawl.

Lodging at Galway was a purpose-built B&B called Lynburgh run by a sweet old lady. The parlors at most of our places were heavy on the old-lady style and this place was no exception.  We were eager to get to downtown Galway for a little shopping, dinner and Irish music. Galway was a lively town. Lots of tourists, shops, street music and entertainment.

Our dinner took forever on a busy Saturday night,  but Jim and Drew
were not getting out of pubbing this time. Traditional Irish music could
be heard from lots of doors, so we popped into one particularly crowded
pub called Taaffes that was pumping with all ages of people dancing and
singing along to the music. It was wonderful and infectious and made me
wish my ancestors had stayed in Ireland so I would know the words to the
traditional songs like all the Irish in the pub.  

A picture of John F Kennedy hung on the wall and I made some
a joke to the handsome group of men that were flirting with Shelly
that our recently elected president Donald Trump might have to be
added to the wall, and I swear if I had been a man, I would have
started a brawl. The guys did NOT think JFK and Trump should
be on the same wall!

Near bar fights aside, the pub experience was one of my favorite
things we did in Ireland. I'm sad we could stay another night in
Galway for another round, but we were looking forward to
seeing our Irish friends the next day so we moved on.