Riding Stats (Link to Tom’s Strava)
Accommodations (daily mileage, elevation, etc.)
Route Tracker (track our northbound ride on a Google Map)
Dolly Parton said, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow ya gotta put up with the rain.”
True dat. Ireland is so beautiful because she has so much rain and today she gave us buckets of it.🌈
Below is the County Mayo welcome sign. They forgot to add: “Come for the scenery. Stay because your rain gear is already on.”🤣
It was actually a decent ride with 22 miles on the fantastic Great Western Greenway with a nice riding surface and no traffic.
We passed a well known bronze statue on the Greenway which portrays a father and two young barefoot sons waving goodbye to their mum who was off to work in the potato fields in Scotland.
It was a steady, heads down, 47 miler (Garmin forgot to record some of our ride) without any breaks. We didn’t want to stop and rest for fear of chilling.
At one point I turned to Tom and said “I could use one of those turf log fires right about now.” 😂
When we got to Mulranny it began raining even harder and we didn’t know exactly where our hotel was. Going back and forth down the main drive with Google doing what Google does sometimes in the rain (get confused) I can happily say no harsh words or eye rolls were exchanged. 🤣
We celebrated Mother Nature giving County Mayo what she needed today with a pint at our Pub of the Day and a tasty dinner at McLoughlin’s.
As with most pubs there’s a variety of taps that include at least a pilsner, a lager, a cider and most definitely stouts. McLoughlin’s offered all three popular Irish stouts on tap: Guinness, Beemish and Murphy’s. They also had a Guinness 0.0 on tap for our teetotalling friends.👍🏻
What’s a bit comical in the pubs we’ve visited is the prevalence of Coors and Heineken. And we haven’t seen fountain sodas, only canned or bottled soda is offered.
So today we toast to McLoughlin’s for offering so many stout choices. What a wonderful Irish world in which to be cycling!
And gratefully I finally found my warm in McLoughlin’s.
Towns we cycled through included Westport and Newport.
Click on the link below to see the hot mess of a day: 😂
