Hours, Not Kilometres: Running the Wild Atlantic Way Without a Load

The road out of Shannon runs dual carriageway for a stretch, then narrows past Ennis to two-lane blacktop that would count as a luxury on the Nairobi to Mombasa road during a bad rains week. It reminds me of the old climb out of Kikuyu on my usual route, potholed for years before it got resurfaced, trucks queuing four deep behind anyone crawling along in second gear with an overheating engine. Nothing here queues like that. The road through Ennistymon runs tight around the shopfronts but sealed edge to edge, no crater waiting to swallow a wheel, and I don't begrudge a euro of whatever it cost the county to keep it that way.

There's no CB in this car, which took some getting used to on day one. Old habit dies hard, though, and somewhere past Lahinch I catch myself keying an imaginary mic anyway. 'Breaker, you've got surf shops three deep on the left and a coach half over the white line up ahead, watch your mirrors.' Nobody answers back. Just the wipers, going for the fifth time that hour against a sky that can't settle on an opinion.

Ennistymon goes by, then Lahinch with its surf shops shuttered before nine, then the turn for Doolin and the ferry pier, then the cliffs road itself, tour coaches already stacked three deep in the layby by the time I pull in.

Two hundred and fourteen metres at the highest point, according to the sign by the visitor centre, and I stand at the rail longer than I meant to. The biggest drop on my usual road is the escarpment edge above Naivasha, dust and euphorbia the whole way down. This is water all the way down instead, white where it hits the rock, and a wind that wants your hat more than it wants your money. Parking runs ten euro at the barrier, card only, no slot for coins, which would never fly with the drivers I run with back home, half of whom keep a sock of small notes for exactly this kind of gate.

Four hours from the cliffs down to Dingle if I take the direct road through Ennis and Tralee, longer once the peninsula loop itself is added on, and the surface changes about as often as the weather does. Good dual carriageway past Ennis, a patched but honest regional road through Tralee, then narrow again past Anascaul until Slea Head Drive is barely wide enough for two cars to pass without somebody folding a wing mirror in.

Inch Beach goes by on the left, a long flat run of sand that every coach stops for from the layby above it, then Anascaul, then the turn onto the loop itself, past drystone walls and a scatter of famine-era cottages with the roofs long gone.

Somewhere on the loop, oncoming traffic backs up behind a farmer moving sheep across the road with a stick and a dog that clearly runs this shift every day. 'Yeah, breaker, hold what you've got, livestock crossing and no shoulder to pull onto.' The farmer lifts two fingers off his cap by way of thanks. Back on my usual road that's a herd of cattle wandering onto the highway near Mai Mahiu at dusk, same problem, different animal, same result, everybody waits.

Dingle is still a working harbour, trawlers tied up alongside the pleasure boats and gulls working the ice plant outflow the way they'd work a slaughterhouse back home, dropping in fast and arguing over scraps. A van by the pier does battered cod for twelve euro that I'd pull over for again without asking twice. A second van fifty metres along does the same plate for nine, and I watched it sit in the fryer oil a beat too long before it reached the counter. Nine euro isn't worth reheated batter. I know which one gets my business next time through.

Five hours from Dingle down to the Cork coast if I stay off the motorway and follow the R roads the whole way, which was always the plan since making good time was never the point of this trip. The road holds up fine past Killarney, then narrows and greens up past Kenmare, hedgerows close enough to slap the wing mirrors, nothing like the wide verges I'm used to running with room to pull a rig fully off the tarmac if something goes wrong.

Kenmare gives way to a run of small villages I don't catch the names of fast enough, then the roads open out again past Cork city, and I turn off for Ballycotton on a whim mentioned three times already by people I met in Dingle. The village sits off the main road, a fishing harbour with a lighthouse island past the wall, and the pub I duck into has the low ceiling and dark wood of a place that has never once considered renovating for the sake of it.