Bunmahon is a few houses, a church and a very good beach on the County Waterford coast, and the first thing to understand is that the ground under it was once the busiest industrial site in the county. In the nineteenth century this cliff-top was a copper mining district, and Cornish engineers and miners came over to run it, which is why you will find ruined engine houses standing in fields with the sea behind them. The Mahon river reaches the Atlantic here, and the whole shoreline between Tramore and Dungarvan is now a geopark, which is the polite way of saying that the cliffs are a geology lecture you can ride past at fifty kilometres an hour.
The riding is the coast road at its most relaxed. It is a regional road with the usual Irish habits: tight in places, patched, bordered by hedges and stone walls that hide the next bend, and shared with tractors and the occasional flock of sheep that has not read the timetable. Nothing here is fast and nothing here is hard, and that is the charm. You dip down into the little valley at Bunmahon, climb out again past fields the colour of a billiard table, and the sea keeps appearing in gaps on your left or right depending on which way you are going.
Stop at the strand if the tide is out. It is wide, sandy and popular with surfers, and on a mild day the car park has the feeling of a village fair with wetsuits. The red and green tinge in the rocks nearby is the copper still showing through, and the headlands either side are folded and tilted like a dropped deck of cards. Nature does most of the work. Choughs and gulls work the cliff edges, and in summer the verges fill up with wildflowers that make the narrow road smell better than it looks.
Do not count on fuel here. Bunmahon has a pub-and-beach rhythm rather than a forecourt, so fill in Tramore, which sits about fifteen kilometres back along the coast, or in Dungarvan, a little further the other way. Both have supermarkets and cafes for a proper break, and Dungarvan in particular is a decent place to sit down with a bowl of chowder.
Weather is the only real variable. A bright morning can turn to Atlantic drizzle in the time it takes to eat a scone, and wet lanes with leaf mould and farm mud need a gentle right hand. In dry, quiet early light, though, this is one of the most easygoing hours you can spend on two wheels in the south-east of Ireland.