Watch out for the undulations
By Michael Muckian

A strong crosswind blew across the bog, catching us sideways as we peddled our 15-speed bicycles. Traveling the hilly terrain of the Connemara peninsula in a narrow line along narrow, bumpy roads, we met few humans and fewer cars. The roadways were primarily shared with sheep and cattle who looked at us as strangely. The rhythmic clicking of the gears sounded like insects.

Most of our International Bicycle Tour group was here for a pleasant summer cycling adventure. Some of us, however, were searching for ourselves through the personal history and shared experience. If a return to the land of one's lineage is the best way to unwrap the folds of familiar fabric, traveling that land in a way that brings us closer to the terrain, the people and the climate could only deepen the experience. In the end, we sought greater understanding of what it means to have to dig into the rocky soil of one's own past to find the taproot that leads to the heart.

It all started with the cycling tour.

Day One — Monday
We boarded the bus at Shannon Airport for Oughterard in Co. Galway, two hours north. Once there, IBT guides Ken Baldwin and Mick Henighen fitted us to our bikes and offered crucial basic survival lessons about cycling Irish roads.

Day Two — Tuesday
Our introductory day of cycling started with a pleasant, easy 15-mile ride that took us to the shore of Lough Corrib and a ferry ride to Inchagoill Island. A hermitage for early monks, the island contains several ecclesiastical ruins, including those of a chapel credited to St. Patrick.

On the other side of the lough, the ferry dropped us off outside of Cong, the village where The Quiet Man was filmed in 1952. The town hasn't changed much since then. The area around the village offered our first experience with rampant greenery, wild livestock and the miles and miles of stone walls lining Irish roads.

Day Three— Wednesday
At 25.5 miles, this was our first day of real adventure. With our baggage in the sag wagon and Henighen at the wheel, we followed Baldwin to Furbo on the shores of Galway Bay to spend the next evening.

Outside of Moycullen, the planned route was under construction, forcing some quick thinking and alternate planning. We took our first major hill that day, a five-mile ascent up the backside of the East Mountains. There was a crested a golf course at the crest and much needed Guinness at the clubhouse. Then began our gentle but unrelenting descent to the sparkling shores of Galway Bay.

"The route is flat today," said Henighen. "However, some portions are flatter than others." We would learn to be wary of all future assurances.

Day Four — Thursday
To date, the weather had been lovely, warm and sunny. Then, it took a turn for the worse in more ways than one, making our 23 miles even more challenging.
Accompanied by wind and squalls, we traveled west of Furbo down the single busiest highway of our entire journey — and during the morning rush hour, too. The narrow roads were clogged with heavy traffic. As lovely as the stone walls were outside of Cong, they now became formidable barriers that offered few escape options for harried cyclists.

At one point, Jeanie, my wife, felt the close brush of a tour bus that drove her off the road and headfirst into a stone wall. The cycling helmet may have saved her life, but the collision with the pavement sprained her wrist and raised a massive bruise on her thigh. Yet she climbed back on her bike and soldiered on. Except for a brief period of sun, we finished the day wet, bruised and tired at a small hotel outside of Carraroe.

Day 5 — Friday
The day's forecast predicted continued rain and gale winds with gusts up to 40 m.p.h. We were about to christen this the "Rocks and Rain Tour," but the weather softened for our day's 20-mile run.

The trip continued west to the Twelve Pins (sometimes called the Twelve Bens, the gaelic word ben meaning a peak), forming the center of Connemara National Park. There, Baldwin halted the tour and took a group picture. Our trip across the peat bog was among the trip's most memorable, as was our first exposure to Connaught.. Given the windy, barren landscape, it was easy to see why so hard it was to chip a living out of the stony soil. The endless array of vacant, ruined stone farmhouses bore that out.

"There are no hills along this stretch, only undulations," Henighen reminded us as we pumped furiously past both peat harvesters and sheep, each of which voiced separate opinions of the wisdom of our uphill exertions.

Day 6 — Saturday
The weather had cooled, but the bright sun made it a lovely day for cycling. Large cumulus clouds stacked up off the Connemara coast as we paralleled the water for a well-done 24 miles.

Whole entering Roundstone, my bike chain broke climbing up yet another "undulation" and I coasted to a halt. While my bike was being repaired in the village, we stopped in at Roundstone Musical Instruments — located in an old Franciscan monastery. Proprietor Malachy Kearns, who has demonstrated his work at Milwaukee Irish Fest, showed how to make a bodhran.

The night was spent in the market town of Clifden where Baldwin celebrated his 68th birthday. We surprised him with a potent Irish whiskey cake. The party was followed by a night of music and pints at several local pubs.

Day 7 — Sunday
The last day was fragmented as everyone prepared to end what had been an exhilarating week. Yet we began with an optional tour to Clifden Castle, a former manor house built as a faux fortification overlooking the sea and since abandoned. We stayed that night in Ballynahinch Castle, a opulent former manor house once occupied by the English landlord of that region of Connemara. A second optional cycling tour took us to Dan O'Hara's Farm, an archeological dig and concession that had reconstructed a pre-Famine stone farm .

O'Hara had been driven off the land because he couldn't pay the "window tax," a doubling of his levy when he put a glass window in his two-room home. O'Hara eventually died in poverty while selling matchsticks on the streets of New York. So naturally, there had to be a salutary toast of poteen to the unfortunate's memory. That helped put our stay at Ballynahinch, where O'Hara's landlord had lived, into its proper perspective.

 The time spent on the tour and with the locals we encountered had a more profound effect than I might ever have imagined. In addition to coming closer to understanding myself and my Irish roots, the week astride a bicycle in the wilds of western Ireland helped me to face my heritage truly head-on.
 
 

IF YOU GO Tours of western Ireland begin and end at Shannon International Airport. International Bicycle Tours hosts several excursions of Connemara each summer. For more information, contact IBT, P.O. Box 754, Essex, CT, 06426, Telephone: (860) 767-7005. Fax: (860) 767-3090. E-mail: bikeibt@worldnet.att.net.