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After discussing possible routes with my host, Jim, I finally decide to do a short first day - just to give myself a chance to get "my legs," test the bike, and get into Ennis early to get a room at the Abbey Hostel.
Host Jim calls his friend Tom, who organizes bike trips in Ireland and who lives "right up the road," and Tom tells me he will help me find a good, low traffic route to Ennis. Wonderful, except Jim gives me typical Irish directions which are full of stops and starts and erasures. I travel up and down this "mile" and find numerous cross roads unmentioned by Jim and no "brown brick house." I say the hell with it and head for the dreaded N-18, which is the main route to and from Shannon Airport. At least there is a slight shoulder to separate me from the hurtling lorries and cars. After about four miles, I see a sign for Quin by back roads, and according to my map this route will eventually get me to Ennis. The route is scenic and very quiet, and after stopping one car and asking two people in their yards I manage to wind my way through weed-grown lanes, and I dribble into Ennis at 2:00 p.m., a one and one-half hour trip from Valhalla and a total of 15 miles.
Ennis is a busy market town that is also in the midst of a Pan-Celtic Festival, and it is replete with very narrow one-way streets. I have no idea where the Abbey Hostel is, so I
do a spin around town in hopes of running into it. It's a bigger town than I thought, and its streets are a maze. My hope is a fool's hope. So I go through the routine again: I ask the natives who are wonderfully polite and generous with their time but hopelessly confusing to an American even if you ask them to repeat themselves, which they always do in a completely different way including turns that are often in different directions. It takes three separate sets of directions - an elderly gentleman, a middle age
man, and a group of skin-heads. The skinheads get me there. Irish directions are like an experience in Dante's Hell. Each time you ask, you spiral down a bit closer to your destination. The accuracy of the first set of directions determines the number of people you must ask. In any event, I keep spinning through the great roundabout in the heart of the city. It is memorable because of the great statue of O'Connell,
the 19th Century "Liberator," which at least always helps me find my way back because it rises high in the air on a great multi-storied pedestal.
When I find the hostel, I am amazed. It is beautifully located on the Fergus River directly across from the decaying medieval Friary. Swans and mallards are floating in the clear water. The rooms are acceptable but the private room with my own key which guarantees security costs £15, which makes a B+B at £16-20 a better deal because of full breakfast, security, comfort and other amenities. I stroll about the city which bustles with festival goers. I have a
pint in a pub and watch with great interest the news story on TV about the English National Race Day being canceled because of an IRA bomb threat. The TV shows helicopters hovering over the track while people scramble to evacuate as quickly as possible. The headlines in the Sunday newspapers variously proclaim the
event "shameful" and "disgraceful" if they are sympathetic to the English or rather benign if nationalistic - e.g.."Bomb Threat Shuts Down Race Day."
I take a self-tour of the Ennis Friary which no longer has a roof, but I am the lone visitor, and so it is easy to be alone with my thoughts in this wonderful setting. Some parts of the Abbey are from
the Middle Ages, but most of what remains dates back to the 16th century. It is a wonderful late afternoon stroll. I have dinner in the Cloisters Pub - seafood chowder with chunks of fish and crab claws with great chunks of meat on them, tomato/cheese sandwich and a Kilkenny beer, the "Cream of
Ireland."
Maybe it is the first-day anxiety, or maybe the blustery and cold north wind in my face while biking or both, but I can't keep my eyes open, so reading and writing will wait for another day, and I am in bed and asleep by 9:30 p.m.
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