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The B+B, The Alpine House, is perhaps the most polished and sophisticated of the ones I've stayed at on this trip. There are 13 rooms here, and it is really run more like an inn. The staff of about three people is
very attentive, polite, and accommodating. The rooms are quite large and very clean. The breakfast menu allows us to choose among four main dishes. I have poached eggs for the first time in years, and their coffee is fresh-perked and very tasty. At £18.50 this is a
bargain, esp. when I think of the narrow closet of a room I had in Galway for £18.00. We do some shopping in town; I buy sweaters of soft, gentle wool for Lauri and Jamie, and a CD by the Dubliners. We have lunch at a pub after picking up our laundry which is folded neatly and smells fresher than it has for weeks. We don't leave for Slea Head until about 2:00 p.m. Again the wind is strong off the ocean and from the southwest. Mike and I wear our "Sam and Eddie Memorial Ireland Tour" T-shirts over our long sleeve biking shirts. At times it is a bit too cool, but we have a lot of sun, and it is the right thing to do on this bike ride out to the furthest point west in Ireland. It
is a view of the ocean and its vastness that reminds one of man's mortality and nature's eternality. The empty, ruined houses on the closest Blasket Island are a stark reminder of life's brevity. The hard-polished island has stood in the sea for millions of years, but man has spent only a few thousand hard years on
the islands only to give up finally this century. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut puts it. And so go fathers. I've often thought of my father's trip one summer during the Depression when he and his friend Mutz high-balled it out of Chicago for the west and northwest, working for farmers along the way and earning enough for room and board and a little spending. I try to imagine them in an unreliable model-T Ford putting along the wheat plains of Kansas
and Nebraska, curving through the Badlands of South Dakota and entering the great, vast Big Sky country of Montana. As a boy, I remember looking through my father's cigar box full of artifacts from this trip, arrowheads, dried rattlesnake rattlers, photos, and the like. Even then it seemed a great adventure into strange, distant lands. It captured my imagination. And
when I was just a child, my mother tells me that I always asked my father why I was not in any of the photos. And when he would say, "You weren't with us," I would cry and ask him why he didn't take me also. My mother tells me that it did little good to try to explain that I hadn't been born yet, that she
and my father weren't married yet. I apparently felt abandoned, left behind on my father's great adventure. So here I am some fifty years later off on my own adventure, and now with a married son of my own who is old enough to understand and who won't have to be consoled for being "abandoned." Much of the road out to Slea Head is uphill and depending on the direction of the curves part of the route is into the wind. But the road hugs the cliffs along the ocean. The views
are spectacular. The peninsula south of Dingle, the ocean, the Blasket and Skellig Islands, and Mt. Eagle are all part of the scenery. The day is clear, dry, and often sunny. In Ireland you can't ask for much more. We even push things a bit by wearing biking shorts - it is time to get a little color on those "blindingly white" gams. An ancient Celtic fort overlooks the ocean on one of the cliffs, and "bee hive" housing complexes are
scattered here and there along the road. We stop at one such location where enterprising lads have a hut set up to collect an admission from tourists - we gladly pay and wander among the ruins along with the sheep. The ancients were masters at stone work, using no mortar but somehow managing to create huts with stone
roofs including a final capstone that is removable and therefore, serves as a chimney. Stone walls are strung along the outer edge of the road for much of the coastal route. This is reassuring since we are often pedaling along cliffs with sheer drops. In the strong southeast wind, the seagulls often simply float in a holding pattern above the cliffs and just over our heads. At Slea Head a typical Irish homage has been erected - a crucifixion scene that pays tribute to all those Irish men and women over the centuries who had to leave Ireland in order to find work. From this spot we have a great view of the Blaskets and the one
rocky island that is called variously "the resting man" or "reclining man." It looks like a bearded man is reclining on his back. The air is so wonderfully cool, clear, and bracing, perhaps, like nowhere else I've been. We
just stand looking out to sea and sucking in the air. It is like taking in oxygen from a tank. The air seems full of energy We stop and have tea at a little cafe in the tiny village just beyond Slea. We sit outside on the patio to feel the heat of the sun and to avoid the uproarish and boorish laughter of a senior citizen American who is engrossed in conversation with two ladies
and who seems to find almost everything they say quite hilarious. He was at the table next to us, and he was disturbing the peace. The ride back to Dingle is amazing. Almost all of it is with the wind and most of it is downhill. We make the return in well under one hour and after dilly-dallying our way there and enjoying the sites and sights
we are back in Dingle by 6:00 p.m. after a delightful afternoon of 23 miles. We decide it is a pizza night, so after hot baths we take our chance with a local version of pizza, and it is acceptable. They do not make us forget Pizzeria Uno or Due, but they are ok. We catch music in town
again, and I chat with a couple from Baton Rouge, LA, and some young people from the USA, Germany, United Kingdom, and Holland. We return home, I pen a fax to Marcia, read, and lights are out by 12:30 a.m. (974 miles) |
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