5 day tour of the South West Ireland 500

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Not wanting to let them Scots fellas behind the NC500 have it all their own way I spent a lot of time putting together a 500 mile touring route around the 5 peninsulas of South West Ireland; the SWI500. This part of the world is just as beautiful, just as rugged, just as remote (in places) but definitely less congested than the NC500 can be and of course its the beautiful west of Ireland with it's temperate, gulf stream warmed climate, and, it's part of the Wild Atlantic Way.

Now there is some light at the end of the pandemic tunnel I've resurrected the tour I had to cancel last year. It’s a 6 night, 5 day tour, all of which you can do without having to cart all your luggage around as we return to the same base each evening.

The itinerary is as follows:

Sun 5th September - arrive in Kenmare, Co. Kerry, staying at the Kenmare Bay Hotel for the week. This hotel has been chosen for a variety of reasons;
- safe off street parking for the bikes at the front of the hotel,
- within walking distance (10 mins) of Kenmare town centre,
- it has an indoor swimming pool, steam room, sauna, beauty and therapy treatment rooms all available FOC to guests.
- the food is good and the breakfasts are copious.
Sunday evening we eat together in the hotel - a kind of get to know everyone meal.
Mon 6th Sept - we head south, over the Cork & Kerry mountains (made famous by ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, Thin Lizzie and the Dubliners) via the Caha Pass to tour the Mizen & Sheepshead peninsulas
Tues 7th Sept - tour the Beara peninsula, traversing the Healy Pass
Wed 8th Sept - tour the Iveagh (Ring of Kerry) peninsula, with a variety of routes at our disposal
Thurs 9th Sept - free day - relax and explore Kenmare or suggested routes can be provided if you want to ride out.
Fri 10th Sept - tour the Dingle peninsula, taking in the Slea Head Drive and the Connor Pass
Sat 11th Sept - depart.

The tour is designed to provide relaxed touring days, no early starts, we’ll be leaving around 10am each day, no late returns and with several stops for photos, coffee/tea breaks and food; you even have me, a blow-in local, on hand each day to assist and guide.

Rooms have been booked on a B&B basis with the inclusion of a group 'get to know everyone' supper on the Sunday night. Mon/Tues/Wed/Thurs/Fri nights people are free to do what they want and there are plenty of good bars and restaurants, of all standards, in Kenmare.

Costs : £790 per person on a single occupancy basis, if you’re bringing a partner then let me know as the cost/person will be less.

Included:
6 nights accommodation
6 breakfasts
1 evening meal
Dedicated parking outside the hotel (don't worry this is very low crime area, your bike will be safe)
Assistance of me as tour guide
Maps and route guidance instructions.

Not included:
Getting to and from Kenmare, although help, guidance and assistance with routes & ferries can be provided.
Bikes
Fuel
Tea/Coffee/Drinks/Lunch during the day
Evening meals on each of Mon-Fri
Travel insurance
Breakdown insurance

Payment:

£250/person deposit required when making the booking
Full balance due no later than 31st July 2021
In the event you have to pull out before 31st July you will receive a full refund of the £250 deposit
In the event you have to pull out after the 31st July deposits and any balance paid will only be refunded if your space can be re-sold.

There are 6 places available so don’t delay.
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How's it going chaps ?
I thought I posted after Friday’s ride out🤔 in fact am sure I did 😡.

Anyway Rob didn’t want to ride my bike as it was too dirty snd covered in too much sheep shit 🙁
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but we went here like this
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then :

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Druid’s View

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Schull Harbour

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Schull Harbour

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Crookhaven

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Druid’s view (again)

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Barleycove

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Barleycove

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Mizen Head

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Sheep’s Head got a cuppa

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Sheep’s Head

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View from Priest’s Leap when it’s not cloudy 👍

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The top of Priest’s Lesp

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Beauty and the Beasts.

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1305km trip over the 5 days in beautiful weather and with stunning scenery 👍

Y’all don’t know what you missed.
 

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Think it finished on Friday :unsure: no news from Rob as Helga sank the ferry on the way back 🤷‍♂️

Stayed over in Portadown last night. :) What is it about Norhtern Irish wimmin types and that accent. 🥰

P&O decided to delay the ferry today by an hour (apparently they sent me an e-mail a month ago, but I never read it) 🤷‍♂️ Then I forgot about the Great North Run today, and the roads I was taking were closed, which meant I never got back till around 6.30pm. :(

Helga was so light 🎈 that they actually made me strap her down on the boat 🚢 in case she floated away. :rolleyes:
 
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I wonder if a fender extender that would normally fit on the bottom of the front mudguard, could be found so it attached to your rear hugger to extend the protection from the road shit?
 
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I wonder if a fender extender that would normally fit on the bottom of the front mudguard, could be found so it attached to your rear hugger to extend the protection from the road shit?
Presently looking into solutions for front & rear. Front’s easy, rear not so readily available🙁, yet.
 
It's a beautiful part of the country that, from Clifden, via the Sky Road and into the Connemara National Park. Lady A and I were up there just a couple of weeks back, busy scouting it out - well I was anyway, Lady A thinks we went to visit Daughter No.2 😁

Looks like you'll have to get inoculated JAT :confused:

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The like is for beautiful Ireland not the jab WCP.
 
The like is for beautiful Ireland not the jab WCP.
or just catch it.

Is it OK to suggest to someone they should catch it? I don't know. Obvioulsy not a bad dose, just a little dose so you can claim the immunity, feck it, just forge something hardly anyone checks.

Seriously JAT, I know your views and respect them but I suspect you'll find life getting more and more restricted for you (and others of the same mindset) in the coming months/years. Wrong as that may be I can just see the requirment to show a Covid Cert becming much more widespread as Govts try to force the unvaccinated to get vaccinated - this is probably for the Covid thread not here.
 
or just catch it.

Is it OK to suggest to someone they should catch it? I don't know. Obvioulsy not a bad dose, just a little dose so you can claim the immunity, feck it, just forge something hardly anyone checks.

Seriously JAT, I know your views and respect them but I suspect you'll find life getting more and more restricted for you (and others of the same mindset) in the coming months/years. Wrong as that may be I can just see the requirment to show a Covid Cert becming much more widespread as Govts try to force the unvaccinated to get vaccinated - this is probably for the Covid thread not here.
Sharpening my crayons as you speak 😁
 
or just catch it.

Is it OK to suggest to someone they should catch it? I don't know. Obvioulsy not a bad dose, just a little dose so you can claim the immunity, feck it, just forge something hardly anyone checks.

Seriously JAT, I know your views and respect them but I suspect you'll find life getting more and more restricted for you (and others of the same mindset) in the coming months/years. Wrong as that may be I can just see the requirment to show a Covid Cert becming much more widespread as Govts try to force the unvaccinated to get vaccinated - this is probably for the Covid thread not here.
I will not bow down to these bastards, if I have to make sacrifices so be it.
I owe it to my children to stand by my principles.
The hatred I have for these people burns me inside!
I’ll just spend more time in Larryland, that’ll please him…..
 
Episode 6.
Just finished watching it all 👍, he covers it well.

Two interesting facts for y'all.

1. The term 'boycott' as in 'to boycott xyz' comes from a Captain Charles Boycott who lived on Achill Island and was a land agent for Lord Erne (an Anglo-Irish Peer who owned vast tracts of land across Co. Mayo) in the late 19thC. The locals withdrew their labour in protestation at their working conditions and the fact the lands, which they viewed as theirs, were owned by an absent Brit and managed by another Brit. This was covered in the English papers as 'uppity locals refusing to work for a peer of the realm' and the term boycott was coined.

2. Keem Bay, the beach and cove you see around 23 mins into the video, sits at the far end of Achill Island and in the mid 20thC was the center of a massive trade in shark liver oil used for lamps and as a lubricant in the growing aeronautical industry. There were hundreds of basking sharks that used to migrate there every year to breed and the locals used to wait for them to appear then, in rowing boats, string a long net across the mouth to the bay and gradually pull the net closer to shore by rowing in with the ends of the net. This would concentrate the sharks in the bay, nearer the beach and others, also in rowing boats would harpoon the sharks, drag them ashore and up the beach and then cut out their livers which would be melted down on site and the resulting oil put into barrels and shipped out on horse & cart. Hundreds of sharks were killed each year to the degree the local industry only ceased after a a number of years due to there being virtually no sharks left. After the days/weeks of the cull the beach would be died red and littered with the discarded carcasses of the sharks being picked over by the seagulls and crows and eventually washed back out to sea by the spring tides. A horrific history and a good (or poor) example of how mankind destroys the planet and nature.

There used to be a pictorial information board that explained all of this by the beach, complete with black & white photos taken at the time of the annual culls, but so many visitors complained that it was too gruesome the Council, appeasing the wokeness of the few, removed it and now there's no longer any description of the horrors that occurred there. It's as though people want to whitewash history, well the bits they don't like.

Anyway, Achill is another beautiful part of West Ireland and well worth a visit, great road surfaces and virtually traffic free.
 
Just finished watching it all 👍, he covers it well.

Two interesting facts for y'all.

1. The term 'boycott' as in 'to boycott xyz' comes from a Captain Charles Boycott who lived on Achill Island and was a land agent for Lord Erne (an Anglo-Irish Peer who owned vast tracts of land across Co. Mayo) in the late 19thC. The locals withdrew their labour in protestation at their working conditions and the fact the lands, which they viewed as theirs, were owned by an absent Brit and managed by another Brit. This was covered in the English papers as 'uppity locals refusing to work for a peer of the realm' and the term boycott was coined.

2. Keem Bay, the beach and cove you see around 23 mins into the video, sits at the far end of Achill Island and in the mid 20thC was the center of a massive trade in shark liver oil used for lamps and as a lubricant in the growing aeronautical industry. There were hundreds of basking sharks that used to migrate there every year to breed and the locals used to wait for them to appear then, in rowing boats, string a long net across the mouth to the bay and gradually pull the net closer to shore by rowing in with the ends of the net. This would concentrate the sharks in the bay, nearer the beach and others, also in rowing boats would harpoon the sharks, drag them ashore and up the beach and then cut out their livers which would be melted down on site and the resulting oil put into barrels and shipped out on horse & cart. Hundreds of sharks were killed each year to the degree the local industry only ceased after a a number of years due to there being virtually no sharks left. After the days/weeks of the cull the beach would be died red and littered with the discarded carcasses of the sharks being picked over by the seagulls and crows and eventually washed back out to sea by the spring tides. A horrific history and a good (or poor) example of how mankind destroys the planet and nature.

There used to be a pictorial information board that explained all of this by the beach, complete with black & white photos taken at the time of the annual culls, but so many visitors complained that it was too gruesome the Council, appeasing the wokeness of the few, removed it and now there's no longer any description of the horrors that occurred there. It's as though people want to whitewash history, well the bits they don't like.

Anyway, Achill is another beautiful part of West Ireland and well worth a visit, great road surfaces and virtually traffic free.
There's a traditional fishing village right next to Aberdeen harbour which is now mainly home to artists and the like but in the days of Aberdeen's first oil bonanza (Whale oil) one of the fishing huts had a full whale jaw on display (you can imagine the dimensions) - Stag's head, pah, look at my whale mouth :ROFLMAO:

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