KERRY FAVOUR
One of Ireland’s best-known tourist routes, the Ring of Kerry, offers some scintillating cycling, as John Whitney discovers
When roads start getting lumped in with the ‘World’s Best Drives’ crowd, it spells bad news for cyclists. On highways like America’s Route 66, or indeed Scotland’s answer to it, the North Coast 500, motorists drive to witness the magnificent scenery, often while testing the limits of their engine’s horsepower. It’s just not always clear in which order.
To this list you can add southwest Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, a 105-mile route that (mostly) hugs the coast of the Iveragh peninsula, and which at times feels as though it’s home to the planet’s largest concentration of 4x4s outside a Land Rover dealership. It’s a fabulous stretch of road that shows off this region’s unique landscape, if one where cyclists have to contend with drivers testing the elastic of the 100kph speed limit. Riding on it isn’t always the best example of the art form. Luckily, there are ways to avoid the hellbent highway hordes…
It was towards the end of a bikeless two-month sabbatical travelling around India last winter when, troubled by the idea of returning home to do an honest day’s work, my better half, Hannah, and I started planning our next trip. We kept coming back to bike touring
– it would be new to both of us, me because I’d never strayed far from carbon racers, Hannah because she was new to cycling full stop.
WILD RIDES
Touring appealed because being in the wilderness appealed – you tend to feel like that after two months travelling the length of India on its famously crowded rail network. We were also persuaded by friends of ours, Brent and Sarah, who live in Dublin and were also looking to do their first bike tour together.
On their suggestion, we chose County Kerry, in the mountainous south west of the country. Ireland’s highest peak, Carrauntoohil, at 1038m, is in Kerry.
From our home in Bristol, the journey involved a six-hour drive, bookmarked by a stopover to watch England’s World Cup defeat to Croatia, made worse by the fact we did so in a pub in deepest Wales, followed by a passage across the water with Irish Ferries the following day.
IRISH CHARM
If we thought the stick in Wales was bad, worse was to come in Ireland, as evidenced by the DJ the moment we tuned the radio: “And now a song dedicated to the English national football team,” went the DJ, before playing The Streets DryYourEyes. Still, a narrow defeat in the semis beats imploding in qualifying, eh lads?
The agreed meeting point for our ‘Alternative Ring of Kerry’ ride was Killarney, the bustling town where most people start their tour. We’d both gone for a bikepacking setup, with bags (a mix of Specialized’s Burra Burra, Alpkit and Altura’s Vortex range) attached to various parts of our frames. Hannah opted for a traditional pannier as well, for more volume. With the weather set to be fine and a mix of camping and B&Bs planned, this approach allowed us to travel light. And light weight was sorely needed on day one, on the way to our first stop in Kenmare, when we added a touch of adventure to proceedings by ending up on the Kerry Way, the 133-mile walking trail around the peninsula.
With the right gear ratio, you can just about get away with riding on it, even if you’ll be forced to join the walkers on foot on some of the climbs, no matter how much kit you’re carrying. My bikepacking setup, with bags across the frame spreading weight, helped hugely in these moments.
Other highlights on this side of the peninsula included the long but gradual climb up the R568 that dropped us back down into the pretty village of Sneem and camping by the sea at Glenbeg Caravan and Camping at the southernmost tip of the Ring. Here, there is little alternative but to brave the main road, but by this point the traffic had thinned out and the road is a real beauty, twisting high along the coastline before an exhilarating
THE ROAD IS A BEAUTY, TWISTING ALONG THE COASTLINE BEFORE AN EXHILARATING DESCENT INTO WATERVILLE
descent into Waterville, apparently a favourite holiday spot of Charlie Chaplin.
We were riding clockwise round the Ring and tourist traffic is encouraged to head counter-clockwise, in order to avoid causing jams with buses, but it didn’t seem as though this advice was being given much heed by the motorists.
AWAKEN INTEREST
From Waterville, our destination is Valentia Island in the north west. To get there you can either carry along the flatter, more direct, N70 or divert west and take the mountainous Ring of Skellig, which gives great views of Skellig Michael, a World Heritage site. Always popular, it’s gone off the chart since the new Star Wars movies were filmed here. It was the island chosen to depict Ahch-To, the lost world Luke Skywalker fled to for his self-imposed exile in The Force Awakens.
Descending off the Ring of Skellig, we cross the bridge at Portmagee over to Valentia Island and head for our B&B – we’d timed our stay to coincide with watching England win the World Cup Final. Such hubris is inevitably rewarded by having to sit through France dispatching Croatia. The Horizon View Lodge was a delight, though, boasting a view of the sea that lived up to its name. It’s owned and run by Alan, an endearingly pithy man who will meet your every need and whim in the most efficient way possible.
Back on the mainland the following morning, from Cahersiveen we head cross-country, carving a path through the centre of the peninsula. While this avoids the traffic on the Ring of Kerry, it exposes us to one of the highest mountain passes in Kerry, Ballaghisheen at 315m – music to my ears, if not Hannah’s, who is yet to be convinced of the allure of cycling up
mountains. Roads like Ballaghisheen remain something of an undiscovered delight (although Hannah might deign to disagree). The southern side, which climbs around 230m in 3km, is arguably the best side to climb, if only for the view from the summit that reveals a jaw-dropping plain. Then there’s the thrill of an exhilarating, brakes-off descent down the other side. If you pick up enough speed – easy, with a 12kg bike laden with a similar weight of kit – you barely have to turn the pedals again before you reach the village of Glencar.
Just before Glencar, you have the option of taking a right turn and heading up the Ballaghbeama Gap on a tight, twisty singletrack lane, or carrying straight on in the direction of Killarney. With a few more days to play with, we carried straight on, leaving Ballaghbeama for another day. That night we are back in our tent, the excellent, if snug, two-person Alpkit Ordos 2. We’re camping at Cronin’s Yard campsite, at the foot of Carrauntoohil and the starting point for the popular trek up it. The Ordos
2 is perfect for bikepacking, weighing just 1.3kg and packing down to a tiny 42x13cm, but fitting two adults into it is a tight squeeze, and leaves little room for luggage. The Ordos 3, which Brent and Sarah had brought, would have been a better fit for us, especially as it’s only slightly heavier (1.6kg) and larger (46x14.5cm).
HIGH RIDING HIGHLIGHT
Our final day in Kerry was also our most ambitious, squeezing in both the Gap of Dunloe and the Ballaghbeama Gap, in the central region of the peninsula, with a bunch of tough roads in between separating the two passes. It turned out to be our (riding) highlight of Kerry – and it may well
be yours too – because the Gap of Dunloe is a thing of rarely-bettered beauty, separating the magnificently named MacGillycuddy’s Reeks from the Purple Mountains. Approximately 11km from north to south (the best way to climb it), the road weaves its way past several lakes, up switchbacks and over false summits before finally snaking through the narrow opening at its summit, at 241m. It’s a joy, even with the loads we had to haul up it. In fact, that just gives you more time to savour it. Be sure to hit it early in the day, though. We were climbing by 8am, avoiding the tourist traffic on one of the busier non-Ring of Kerry roads in the peninsula, which includes the horse and carts that are a popular way to see the Gap. I can’t promise you’ll avoid the manure – thick on the roads after the driest summer in decades, there was quite a pong!
INTO THE BLACK
Dropping down the other side into the Black Valley, don’t think your legs will get a rest because you’re ascending again as soon as you hit the bottom, gradually at first before peaking near Top Cross. At this point the smooth tarmac on much of Kerry’s road network gives way to ramshackle path, strewn with debris. It makes excellent use of my Specialized Sequoia’s mountain bike tyres, particularly down the rip-roaring descent. We make a U-turn once we reach the R568 that takes us onto the early slopes of Ballaghbeama, which, even at its steepest late on, isn’t as searing as Ballaghisheen, on either side, despite topping it for altitude. Another stunning pass, we crest it in blissful tranquillity, and it offers the perfect opportunity for photographer Joe to unleash his drone and take the picture that opens this article.
The descent is yet another thriller, one where you need not be anywhere near the brakes, and brings us back into Glencar for the second time in as many days. From here it is an hour or so back to the foot of the Gap of Dunloe where, rather than attempting a second ascent and going into the red again, we pull over at the bar at Kate Kearney’s Cottage and sink into the black – a well-deserved pint of Guinness.
ROADS LIKE BALLAGHISHEEN REMAIN SOMETHING OF AN UNDISCOVERED DELIGHT, WITH AN EXHILARATING, BRAKES OFF DESCENT