Sunday June 15th - From Mizen Head to Kenmare

After not enough sleep we were all woken by alarms in time for breakfast at 8am. When we arrived last night it was too dark to see the stunning view of Barleycove beach outside our apartment window. This really is a lovely part of the world and to make it even better there was hardly a cloud in the sky.
One fry-up later we all assembled outside and got ourselves ready for the off while John fixed a puncture which had mysteriously appeared overnight. It was a 2 mile ride down to Mizen Head and the bike felt really strange with all the weight on board. Having stripped it down and rebuilt it I was waiting for something to fall off because I had forgotten to tighten a screw somewhere but I got to Mizen Head without any problems. We had several group photos taken and then set off at a fairly relaxed pace. About 5 miles later something didn't feel right and I looked down to see the chainwheel moving from side to side every time I pedalled. Last week when I was out cycling the bottom bracket axle was making a racket so I borrowed some tools from Rob and fixed it before leaving for Ireland. . . at least I thought I had fixed it. It would have been a major job to re-adjust the bearings at the roadside so I decided to plod on and see if it got any worse. I had visions of having to stop every few miles to tighten the bearings but it reached a point where it didn't get any worse and I decided to live with it. The rest of the gang made helpful comments like "Why don't you throw that bike away and get a new one !" which helped a lot.
The roads in this area were fairly flat but we did have a bit of a headwind to contend with and when we reached Durras 20 miles later we were ready for a drink. Most of us stopped at a pub in the town but Pete, Lee, John C and Cumbrian Robert (sorry - don't know surnames yet) who were leading at the time didn't realise and kept going. We had our drink and set off again, next stop Bantry. We found the other four in a pub in the town and decided to have lunch there. My meal arrived before everyone else's so when the four were ready to leave I joined them. John had to then fix his second puncture of the day - this one had mysteriously appeared while he was having lunch.
We made our way around Bantry Bay which looked stunning even thought it had clouded over a little by now and then found ourselves in a quaint little town called Glengarriff. We could have stayed on the main road but Pete Lewis (yes, I'm blaming you Pete !) decided that we should turn off and go through a country park and rejoin the main road further up. It started off ok, but after a while we started to think it might be a dead end so we stopped a passing motorist and he gave us directions to get back on track. Unfortunately the only way back onto the main road was to go up one of the longest, steepest hills I have ever encountered. It went on forever and I didn't even attempt to ride up it. With all the weight on the bike even pushing it up the hill was too much for my legs and cramp soon set in. It levelled out a little in places and I tried riding again but it didn't last long. After what seemed an eternity I could see the main road up ahead and the other four at the top waiting for me. The only consolation was that, even if we had not taken the detour through the country park we would still have had to have climbed the same height but the main road route was longer so it wouldn't have been so steep. In Pete's defence this was something that Steve, the trip organiser, had said we might want to do so I guess it wasn't all Pete's fault.
We got back onto the main road and climbed a little more until we reached the top of the Caha mountain range, a little over 1000 feet above sea-level. At the very top a tunnel had been cut through the hill, it would have been nice if they could have built the tunnel 900 feet further down but never mind. We watched a coach drive very slowly through the tunnel with what looked like inches of headroom to spare and gave him a clap when he made it.
After such a climb the only way now was down the other side, and what a downhill it was. I clamped my camera to the handlebars and videoed the descent which lasted six and a half minutes and passed through two more tunnels. When we reached the bottom there was a coffee stop waiting for us. It was now nearly 6pm and my legs had had enough. We set off again with about 12 miles to go to Kenmare where we would be staying the night. The road surface, which had not been great all day, suddenly got worse, my back wheel landed in a pothole and within seconds the tyre was flat. We found a place to fix it and removed what looked like a small nail in the tyre. Just as we were about to get going again the rest of the group came along and we all started discussing 'that hill'. The second group had gone up a different hill only to find it was a dead end and then they had to come back down and go up the one we struggled with. All of a sudden I didn't feel so bad.
It was a really good end to a long day with a flat ride into Kenmare and a really nice B&B waiting for us. I had a go at fixing my bottom bracket and then we headed off into town for dinner. On the way there we saw a sign saying that Tralee, our destination for the next day, was 143km away - that's 89 miles ! We asked a waitress how far it was and she said 'about 50' but she had trouble counting how many meals we wanted so we still weren't sure. I just hoped she was right and the sign was wrong.