CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Ireland's west coast, Kinsale to Derry. A one-way ride of 1167 km, Kinsale to Carndonagh - roughly 18 h 32 in the saddle. On the way it passes Wild Atlantic Way, Dingle and Gaillimh. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 83 km this is Ring of Kerry, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Kinsale is a small harbour town on the south coast of County Cork, and it has been around long enough to have seen plenty of drama. The Battle of Kinsale in 1601 ended in defeat for the Irish lords and their Spanish allies and is often treated as the real end of the old Gaelic order. The star-shaped Charles Fort, built later in the seventeenth century, still guards the harbour mouth, and you can walk its ramparts for a view across the water.
Read the complete Kinsale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wild Atlantic Way point 1 sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Wild Atlantic Way point 2.
Mizen Head is the most south-westerly point of Ireland, a jagged headland of dark cliffs where the Atlantic comes in with force. A footbridge crosses a deep chasm to the old signal station on a rock, and the views of the cliffs and the sea, with the Fastnet Rock lighthouse far out to sea, are among the finest in the country. Bantry and Skibbereen are each thirty-five or forty kilometres away, and the village of Goleen is closer, a little to the north-east.
Read the complete Wild Atlantic Way point 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wild Atlantic Way point 2 comes up 94 km in. Next is Wild Atlantic Way point 3.
Dingle is a small harbour town at the western end of County Kerry's Dingle Peninsula, with fewer than two thousand people but about as many pubs as you could want. The streets slope toward the water, shops and houses are painted in strong colours, and the harbour is full of fishing boats. This is a Gaeltacht area, where Irish is still the everyday language for many families, so you may see signs in Irish first, and the town's Irish name, An Daingean, appears on the road markers.
Read the complete Dingle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
188 km in you reach Wild Atlantic Way point 3. Next is Wild Atlantic Way point 4.
The Cliffs of Moher rise from the Atlantic for about eight kilometres along the edge of County Clare, reaching their greatest height of around 214 metres a little north of O'Brien's Tower, a small round tower built in the 1830s by a local landowner, Cornelius O'Brien, as a viewing point for the tourists who were already coming then. Ennis is the nearest big town, about thirty kilometres inland, with Lahinch and Doolin much closer on the coast.
Read the complete Wild Atlantic Way point 4 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wild Atlantic Way point 4, about halfway. Next is Wild Atlantic Way point 5.
Galway is the hinge of the Wild Atlantic Way, the city where the coast road leaves the busy east behind and heads out into Connemara. Gaillimh is its Irish name, and you will hear plenty of Irish spoken in the country to the west, which is one of the largest Gaeltacht regions in the country. The city itself has around eighty thousand people, a large university, and a reputation for music, festivals and long evenings in pubs that it fully deserves.
Read the complete Gaillimh write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wild Atlantic Way point 5 sits at 376 km, about halfway. Next is Wild Atlantic Way point 6.
Achill is an island, though a road bridge has joined it to the mainland since the 1880s, and it feels like the end of something. The largest island off the coast of Ireland, it is a place of bare mountains, sea cliffs and long beaches, with peat bog covering much of the interior. Slievemore, the mountain on the north side, rises from the shore to over six hundred metres, and at its foot lie the stone ruins of the deserted village, an old settlement of cottages abandoned during the nineteenth century. Belmullet and Westport are the nearest towns of any size, each about thirty-odd kilometres across the water and bog.
Read the complete Wild Atlantic Way point 6 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wild Atlantic Way point 6 comes up 470 km in. Next is Wild Atlantic Way point 7.
Slieve League is a mountain that ends in the sea. The cliffs on its south face drop about six hundred metres from the summit ridge, among the highest sea cliffs in Europe, and nearly three times the height of the Cliffs of Moher. They are not as famous as their cousins in Clare, but they are wilder and much quieter, and the colours of the rock, streaked with red, gold and grey, change with the light. Killybegs, the nearest town, is some fifteen kilometres to the east, and Bundoran is further.
Read the complete Wild Atlantic Way point 7 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
564 km in you reach Wild Atlantic Way point 7. Next is Wild Atlantic Way point 8.
Malin Head is the northernmost point of the island of Ireland, and it feels like it: a bare, wind-scoured headland of rock, heather and grass, with the Atlantic stretching away to the horizon in three directions. A signal tower from the Napoleonic era stands on the top, and nearby, laid out in white stones on the ground, is the word EIRE and the number 80, a wartime marker placed there to tell pilots that they were over neutral Ireland. Carndonagh and Buncrana are the nearest towns, though neither is close.
Read the complete Wild Atlantic Way point 8 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wild Atlantic Way point 8, late in the day.