Today we were riding the Ring of Kerry, up to the Dingle peninsula.

We woke after a pretty good night’s sleep and had breakfast in the camp kitchen before packing up and heading off to the Ring of Kerry. As the campsite was actually on the north of the Healy Pass (which we had to reroute past yesterday) we could pick up a little bit of the narrower part of the Healy Pass [1] heading towards Kenmare [2], before we made for Moll’s Gap [3] and then joining the Ring of Kerry at Sneem [4], the “knot in the Ring of Kerry”. Moll’s Gap takes you a little further north than the Ring of Kerry but takes you through a spectacular mountain pass before joining back onto the Ring again. I’d ridden some of these roads before and couldn’t wait for this section.

Our first proper day in Ireland was to be mostly travelling down to Kerry, through sunshine and rain.

We got packed up in County Wexford and headed off down to County Kerry, via Cork. Initially the plan was to ride along the coast via Skibbereen although the weather was windy and heavy showers were hitting us from time to time so it ended up being a lot slower progress than we expected. In fact at one point we needed to quickly take shelter in a filling station to avoid huge hailstones! So we headed for Bantry where we’d pick up the coastal route around the Ring of Beara and up over the Healy Pass. I’d ridden the Healy Pass before and it’s absolutely incredible so I was very excited to get to that section of the ride. Our campsite was just over the other side of the pass so it’d be only 30 minutes or so over the top when we got there.