I woke up at a leisurely 10am (yeah I’m still a bit jetlagged, that’s 5AM for you EST). Had a quick tea & toast and went off to buy a bike. The mountain trail bike shop was quite helpful, I explained to them my trip and they got me a decent bike with a good lock and a piece of equipment on the back to hold my duffle bag. They explained that I should be able to not just abandon it and sell it at a second hand bike shop (like theirs) at the end, I hope so.
I then went down to the docks and suited up and decided to get it all set up (pictured). I reviewed my maps and decided to name my bike before I took off, after tossing around several names I decided to name it ‘GO!’
I at lunch at Longreah and saw a really interesting church there with the story about the cromwellian invasion (pictured) and finally I understand the song lyric I’d sang so many times from the Pogues about “to hell or connaught”
Most of the way was highway, not like US interstates which would be horrible but great biking roads with giant side lanes. The problem came when I got to the rural 2-lane roads, which in the US we call these bike paths (pictured). I scared a herd of young calves into a stampede, fed another cow, and talked to some ancient fellow cutting shrubs for a bit. NO RAIN THOUGH!
81 km travelled, from Galway city to Banagher, which I’ve renamed boring-er. Jokingly, as it turned out to be fun. They may not be the best at math around here, the road signs on the way here said 17km to banagher then while on the same direct route it went to 20km, then back to 17m all in a 20min journey. The best was when I got to an intersection where on one side it said 8km and on the direct other side not more than 15 feet away it said 9km. Then it said 5km for about 30minutes and all of a sudden I was there, and no sooner was I asleep with a sunburn and painful ass form sitting all day. I woke up an hour later, and watched a soccer match at the local pub and wolfed down fish & chips and a couple guinness.
I saw an place across the steet that looked extremely shady but had a sign saying live music every night... so i went in, as there were about only 2 other choices in this town, both of which were smaller than my building in NYC. I went in and it had a beer garden and I listened to some good irish tunes on accordian and piano. The players must be there often because there were oil paintings of them on the walls all over. Just when the crowd was getting good & rowdy, a stag (& partial hen) party came in and took over. They obviously knew the singers and took over the piano and the accordian joined in. The guy was my age and sang amazingly, playing pop hits. Their friends saw me hanging out and asked me to come over and i learned that the guy was the 3rd runner up in Eurovision as ireland's representative (think american idol but represented by country). So that was pretty cool, i hung out with them and partied all night to get home to a locked inn. fortunately the workers were leaving just then (literally in a car in the street) and let me in, that would have been a cold wet night otherwise...
Banagher is not the most scenic town but its on the Shannon which reminded me of the pogues lyrics:
Take my hand, and dry your tears babe
Take my hand, forget your fears babe
There's no pain, there's no more sorrow
They're all gone, gone in the years babe
So I walked as day was dawning
Where small birds sang and leaves were falling
Where we once watched the row boats landing
By the broad majestic Shannon
Bike is "GO"!
ReplyDelete