Waterford to Ring Of Kerry.

So I finished up at Doolin a few days ago. I had actually written the next few day's entries but they disappeared in to the ether, so here I go again

Day 7 Cool start Sunny later great riding weather

Greenway here we come

An early start, as we drive east to Kilmathomas to start on our bike ride on The Waterford Greenway. Kilmac' is in the middle of the trail. The bikes are good and once I got a good set of gears working for me the ride was pretty easy. (Rick's on a busman's holiday) We rode though farmland and alongside the Siur River. in the end we did 23kms, however we went the wrong way! We were planning to go to the Dungarvan end of the trail but ended up in Waterford, didn't realise until we were about 5 kms out.
Change of plans, we stayed in Waterford and had lunch then toured the Waterford Crystal workshop. I did buy a little treat, It wasn't this bowl though.

Presented to B Obama.

We did get to Dungarvan on out way out.It was a long drive home so we headed west for home.

Day 8 Late start sunny day.
Time for a slow day, we took our time heading out today as were planned to stay in the local area and visit Ballingary our local village and Adare the nearest town.
Ballingary is about 2kms from here on small local roads with no sides just hedges, its a nice little village with the full compliment of pubs (5) and churches (2) that we've seen anyway.
Adare is a very pretty town about 10kms away, there are tourist shops ,thatched cottages, a lovely big park and Church/castle precinct.

Adare Cottage

We were home early enough to have afternoon tea out in the sunshine 'in the garden'

A drop of cider with cheese and biscuits

We have thought a couple of times about going to the pub for tea, but as it means one of us has to drive home it doesn't seem quite worth it yet. We'll do it when we can walk home. We have been having wonderful pub lunches while we are out and about instead. The seafood is great

Day 9 A bit overcast with drizzle then bright sunshine.


Today we set off for Tralee and Dingle. Tralee is about 1/2 hour from here and a reasonable size town with the requisite conveniences ( nothing much else was open yet) from here we set off over the Mish Slieve Mountains via Conor Pass which was spectacular, where so much of the scenery we've encountered so far has been soft rolling green hills with patchwork farms dotted around the pass was towering stone walls dropping away to glacial lakes way below, We  stopped on top to take photos of both sides and were very nearly blown off the mountain by a very strong gust of wind coming straight off the Atlantic.

Conor Pass.

The drive down into Dingle was just as picturesque, it's a fishing port also pretty tourist but very pretty itself for all that. We lunched here the drove around the Dingle peninsula, every turn gives a new type of view. I've run out of superlatives...
From here we headed for Killarney and home.

Dingle

Day 10 There's talk of storms on the west coast, not for us it's sunny again.
Another big day around The Ring of Kerry, from Kenmare and back via Tralee.

The Pikeman Tralee

 Kenmare is another really gorgeous town the streets are colourful with enough pubs to keep eveyone happy for a very long time. The drive takes us along a gently protected coastline for some way then we Pass Waterville and there's nothing but the Atlantic ( next stop New York). the views are once again gorgeous.

First stop on the Ring Of Kerry

After a quick lunch in Cahersiveen we head for home as we have to get packed up ready to head north to Galway and Co Mayo for our next few days.

The Atlantic.