The view out of our window:
It was not right in the middle of town. However it was only a 15-20 minute walk away. The road in between was very beautiful.
These plants were everywhere.
Unfortunately this cow did not want to look at the camera. There were cows everywhere.
The road we were walking down.
Amy doing what she did our whole trip. I have a lot of pictures but nothing compared to what Amy has!
There are palm trees in Ireland! I would never have guessed.
And closer up so you can really see them:
These walls were everywhere in Ireland. This one is a lot neater and well maintained than most.
Right as we were about to enter the town we saw a flag blowing away down the street. Amy ran and grabbed it. She was holding it up and so I took a couple of pictures (as you can see here). We were looking around to try to figure out where it had come from when a lady came across the street. She seemed to think we had removed it! We explained what had happened but she still seemed a little suspicious! All we did was keep her flag from being blown into the water and try to figure out whose it was.
We thought it might have originally been attached to the wall at first.
After the flag we came into the town itself.
The view back the way we had come.
All the signs were in Gaelic.
Amy and I decided to take the Rick Steves bicycle ride around Dingle. We rented bikes from this funny little place at the back of a dingy pub. They were nice but it was a funny place for a bike rental place. Unfortunately it was 11 or 12 by the time we started. The book suggested starting early but we thought we would be ok.
Here is the first place we stopped to look at. An old house:
We were riding around a bay.
Our second stop was an old graveyard.
More scenery from the bike:
I have no idea what the garbage bags are for but they were everywhere!
Here is Amy on her bike.
Our third stop was at a beach. It was very pretty. I took pictures of our bikes. Here is Amy's:
And mine with Amy in the background:
On the rocks by the stairs leading down to the beach.
Flying off the steps.
The Steps
The beach was very beautiful.
The sand was very soft. It covered half the beach.
The other half was covered by rocks.
This was in the retaining wall at the top of the beach. I am not sure what it is for exactly. Drainage?
Me looking very silly at the beach:
A ways past the beach we came to a museum. It was very small but had some very old and very interesting artifacts. The weather was very odd. It was warm but very windy. I kept taking my sweatshirt on and off. It was also very sunny. I was very glad I had brought my sunglasses.
After The museum we came to the ruin of a fort. Here is the sign:
And here is the fort:
We didn't go down into it because it was starting to get pretty late in the afternoon by this point and we wanted to finish the bike ride by 8pm, when our bicycles were due back. Also it cost a bit and you could see other stone ruins for free.
We stopped several times in our ride to take photos. Here is one of them:
The scenery was very, very beautiful. Every now and then something like this would happen though. Powerlines + pretty Irish landscape.
The next place we came to were the stone beehive huts. It is amazing how long they have survived! I was also amazed that people managed to live in them. The ground is so full of rocks farming would have been almost impossible.
After riding on a while we came to the upside-down bridge. It is exactly what it sounds like: a bridge with the stream running on top of it.
The edge of the bridge
We decided to ride across it.
We were getting a bit tired by this point, not too much but a little. We were riding along the side of a cliff. The road was very, very narrow and one lane much of the time. Luckily there were not a huge amount of cars. Even so we were passed very frequently. It was unnerving sometimes. Also throughout our whole ride the wind was blowing very hard off the water. Somehow whatever direction we were riding in the wind blew against us. A mile or so down the road from the upside-down bridge we stopped and took pictures.
Our road was between the grassy drop in this next picture,
And this stony cliff. 
After riding around the cliff we came to a rather large hill. Here is what we found on the hill:
And more of the land that we rode through on the hill. I reached the top a while before Amy so had plenty of time to take pictures.
Blackberries, they are everywhere!
The road we were riding on.
Getting ready to ride again:
Amy coming down the other side of the hill.
It was pretty sunny at this point, however it was getting rather late.
By this point we were a bit tired and rather hungry. I had a tiny bit of food but Amy had left hers at the beach by accident. She really needed food. After going a long, long ways we finally found a little store and got something to eat.
The last place we visited was an old church. It was after 8pm when our bikes were due back by this point.
Steps to get over the wall.
Close-ups of the church.
The walls were very thick!
Amy quite liked this stone.
After the church we had another long hill. A really, really long hill. It was about 9pm by this time and starting to get dark. We were both very, very tired. Somehow we made it up. After the hill there was a wonderful 3.2 km coast down the other side into town. Here is what it looked like at that point.
After getting back we returned the bicycles. They didn't really care we were late. It turns out that the only reason they say the bicycles are due by 8pm is that the bar gets crowded after that. Still, it was just fine. We grabbed some food and returned to the hostel. There was a little party in the hostel that night, a rather nice one but we were way too tired to participate.
The only thing we did do that night was look again in the Rick Steves Ireland book (we had looked in it every time we stopped on our ride and it had been wonderful). We found out the ride we had done was 45.7 km! It definitely felt like a really long way. I really enjoyed it though. I think I may have to do more bicycling.
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1 comment:
I've been there! I loved Dingle, but the best part was that I was sick at the time and they had Hall's at the little corner store. Oh, Ireland. :D
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