Wednesday , april 11th 2001
Durrus - Mizen Head - Durrus (77km)
Again fine wheather, so I decided to cycle to the lighthouse at Mizen Head, the most south-westernpoint of Ireland (and Europe) while leaving all my stuff at the campsite in Durrus. I was somehow disappointed by the lighthouse, instead of a tall red-and-white tower, I only found a small light ontop of the cliff. But according to my map there was another one near Spanish Point, about 8 km from Mizen Head. So I cycled there, but I couldn't see the lighthouse at all! On my way back to my tent I bought some food in the nice town of Skull (and Schull on some signs), and cycled via something that looked like a mountainpass near Mt. Gabriel.





Thursday , april 12th 2001
Durrus-Castletownbere (114km)

Today again real Irish weather: rain in the morning and it didn't get really dry most off the day. I wanted to go to the youth hostel near the Healy pass on the peninsula of Beara. This lead me trough the town of Bantry, where there was a hell of a traffic-chaos, thanks to a new trafficguidance. Behind Glengarriff the road went higher into the mountains, which were all covered in clouds. It was a bit scary to cycle on a large road with quite some traffic, while you couldn't see anything further away than 50 meters. So I kept listening all the time for traffic from behind. The last part of the route was the Healy pass, which was one off the nicest places I've seen in Ireland with sheeps just walking across the road. It is really steep and long,I had some problems getting up there with all the load on my bike. But it was worth it, the only pity was that you couldn't see the view, when you were on top of the pass. Going down again was a lot easier than up! Unfortunatly the hostel was closed because of mouth-and-foot-disease, so I had to cycle to Castletownbearhaven on the other side of the peninsula. It was getting late, but weather was getting better, and I had a nice ride trough an amazing landscape. I was a bit tired when I got there, and finding the campsite at Castletownbere turned out to be a problem, no one could tell me were it was, even not the locals. Strange. So I decided to stay there at a private hostel. Once there, I apeared to be the only one there, and I had the whole hostel to myself!