Irish route dilemmas

I've an interview published this week on The Departure Board. When Mick phoned I told him to go and take a look. Later, I asked him what he thought. 'It's good,' he said, 'but I thought you could have talked about me a but more.'
'But it was about me. Not you.'
'Yeah but let's face it, if it hadn't been for me you would never have done the Lejog ride in the first place. And if you hadn't done the ride you wouldn't have written the book. And if you hadn't written the book you wouldn't have done the interview. So it's all thanks to me really. I deserve more credit.'
FFS!!
'Well you are in one of the photos.'
'Am I?'
'Yes. You are in the distance, and you've got your back to the camera, but you are in it.'
'Hmm. Well next time, don't forget to thank me for basically being the driving force behind your little venture.'

Mick in photo

He did have a point though - it was his idiotic enthusiasm that had talked me into doing the ride from Land's End to John o'Groats. That and a few pints of Butcombe in the Miners Rest in Long Ashton. I haven't been back to the pub recently, mainly because it's halfway up Providence Lane which is a bit of a bastard to cycle up. But maybe we should revisit - for old time's sake and also to get some hill practice. The last few rides have been gradient free jaunts along the alluvial wetlands of North Somerset. Pleasant though these are, I fear they are not good training for the south and west of Ireland.


I've been doing some research for the ride. Most people seem to cycle from Mizen Head to Malin Head - Ireland's End to End - in about 5 or 6 days. Calculating that we are at least  three times as slow as everybody else, I am allowing 21. Even Mick and I should be able to manage it in that time.

Mind you, although the shortest road distance for Mizen to Malin or 'M2M' is 345 miles, our route is going to be considerably longer than this.
'Here we go again,' said Mick. 'Lands End to John o'Groats should have been 870 miles or so. You turned it into over 1000.'
'You liked the scenic route though!'
Mick conceded that he did, and we agreed we wanted to keep off main roads as much as possible. The trouble with the Irish scenic route though is that there is an awful lot of scenery. Which mainly involves being on the coast. And the south west coast wiggles in and out like nobody's business - four fat fingers reaching into the Atlantic Ocean.

'We'll miss out a couple of fingers,' I said.
I told my Irish friend Mary that we were not visiting the Sheeps Head or Beara peninsulas.
'You can't miss out Beara!' she exclaimed, 'it's magnificent.'
OK, we'll miss out the Ring of Kerry. Probably too many tour buses anyway.
'We can't miss out Kerry!' exclaimed Mick. 'We can't go to the south east of Ireland and miss Kerry. My sister's been, she says it's beautiful.'
'Ok, we'll miss out Dingle.'
'You can't miss out Dingle!' said Adrian, who has Irish roots and has toured the area extensively. 'There are fantastic pubs on the Dingle Peninsula!'
Bugger. It looks like we are going to cycle three of the four fingers. Maybe we should tour Sheeps Head Peninsula as well, it seems churlish to miss it out if we're visiting all the others.

At this rate it's going to take us three weeks to get to Tralee.