Day 98: The Irish roads

Day 98 - Thursday, July 12th 2018: Kilcolgan to Burren 21 km / Total 2025 km, 22°C, sunny

Let's talk about the roads. I already talked about the sides of the roads but let's have a look at the road itself. I still think cycling in Ireland must not be so pleasant, as the roads are not always very well made, with some holes, most of them filled with asphalte that melts in the sun.

But the most important fact that every tourist driving in Ireland should know is how narrow the roads are. So on that day, as a short cycling path ended, four kilometres before Kinvarra, an old man stopped close to me and warned me about the road. He told me it was narrow, with no footpath, and hedges on every side, with nowhere to put myself apart, and very sinuous with no visibility at all. And he concluded that I couldn't walk that road and I would get killed. Well, thank you for warning me (and trying to scare me). But as there was absolutely no other way (the coastline can't be walked as there's no sand but rocks, and it's impossible to cross fields due to walls), I had no other choice. So I told him that it was everywhere like that in Ireland, that I knew that situation and I'll be careful (as always).

But, in fact, that road really had a problem: the speed limit was 100km/h! Seriously? You can't even drive at 70km/h with such a narrow sinuous road. And there's a lot of traffic: tourists cars, local drivers, trucks, touristic buses. It's the main road between Galway and the Cliffs of Moher, which are the most touristic site of the Republic of Ireland. All along the road, there are signs of protest against the destruction of the walls. So I guess there's a project to create a bigger road, or improve this one, in order to fit with the traffic. That means destroying the walls all along the road. And locals don't want to get their Irish heritage destroyed. Honestly, there are hundreds of thousands of kilometres of these walls in Ireland, so four kilometres less won't make a big difference. And it's a matter of safety. Well, at least reducing the speed limit would be the first thing to do.

And I still believe the main danger is not me walking on the road (in a country where you can find sheep on the road), it's the people driving while they are on their phone ...

Did I mention I saw someone throwing his empty bottle out of his car window in the morning? One day, someone's gonna throw it on my head.

Another fact about the Irish roads: distance. You can't always trust the distance indicated on the road signs. For example, just before arriving in Kinvarra, the road signs indicated that Kilcolgan was 8 km away. So I thought "Oh no, I've only walked eight kilometres since this morning". Next signs 10m later: Kilcolgan 10km. Wow, I've walked 2km in 10m. And at the next crossroad: Kilcolgan 9m away. Shit I'm walking back instead of going ahead! 

Apart from the road, on that day, I got into Clare County, which means that Connaught coastline is done, and the Bay Coast of the Wild Atlantic Way is over. Now I'm in Munster. And the Burren started, very rocky as well as the Cliff Coast. And everywhere, the landscape is so dry.

I found a place for my tent just after Burren, along the shore. There was a hidden place with a lot of kayaks. I thought my tent could be the same colour as one of the kayaks, instead of being the same colour as the landscape which isn't green anymore. Despite a rat in the evening and a fox in the morning, I had no visitor.