Friday , april 13th 2001
Castletownbearhaven - Sneem (121 km)
Today again some nice wheather. I cycled along the 'ring of Beara' to Kenmare. The 'ring of Beara' is a beautiful road along the coastline. It's sometimes realy steep and heavy to cycle, but it's definitly worth it, and there isn't a lot of traffic (but this could be different in the touristseason.) First I wanted to stay in Kenmare, but it was such a fine day and the cycling went realy well, so I decided to go on to Sneem on the wellknown Ring of Kerry. The youth hostel in Sneem has also a campsite, so I wanted to stay there, until the owner saw me putting my tent up in the mud (the site had been turned into some kind of swamp by the rain the day before!) So I told me that I would get a room in the Hostel for the price of a tent. These Irish folks are friendly people!


Saturday , april 14th 2001
Sneem - Kilorglin (98 km)

Today's piece of cycling was along the Ring of Kerry, which is the road around the Peninsula of Iveragh. It is one of the most wellknown places for tourists in Ireland, but mainly the southern part is the most spectacular one. This is also the reason why most tourbusses (and there are lots, lots and lots of them!!!) drive anti-clockwise around it; to start with the more boring part and end with the more spectacular part. So if you ever want to cycle there, do it clockwise, otherwise the uncountable number of busses on the sometimes realy narrow road, will drive you into madness! But it's a long way around it, and I think it's less beautifull than Beara, there are even a number of longer parts which are simply boring. So think twice about it. I heard some stories of people who cycled only a part of it, and then went back trough the mountains in the interior of the peninsula, this is perhaps a better option than cycling all the way around it. Somewhere on my way I met a realy slow cycling competition; I cycled nearly as fast as the slowest part of the group, while they had racingbikes and I had a touringbike with a lot of baggage. The campsite at Killorglin was a bit disappointing, it was large and full of mobile homes.