The first year on my allotment plot in Sligo taught me one thing above all else: the Atlantic does not care about your plans. I lost courgette plants to a single June gale, watched rows of spinach go horizontal and never recover,…
Most beginner cycling advice on the internet was written with somewhere flat and dry in mind. The Netherlands, maybe, or a sunny rail trail in California. It is friendly advice, and some of it is fine, but it does not prepare you…
If you've spent any time cycling or driving through Mayo, you'll have noticed the scattered houses across the hillsides and bogs, whitewashed gables set back from boreens, new timber-framed homes on sites that have been in the same family for generations. Building…
The Kerry section of EuroVelo 1 takes you around the Iveragh Peninsula, better known as the Ring of Kerry. It is one of the most spectacular stretches of Atlantic coastline anywhere in Europe, and also one of the most debated among touring…
I had it all planned out. Seven nights along the Mayo coast, moving roughly every day or two, wild camping with everything on my back or strapped to the bike. I had read about Leave No Trace principles, I knew the basics…
There's a particular kind of daydream that gets people. You're scrolling through property listings late on a grey Tuesday, and there it is: a stone cottage somewhere outside Clifden or up a boreen near Roundstone, asking price somewhere between tempting and "well,…
Gardening on the Clare coast is a lesson in humility. You pick something out at a garden centre, plant it with care, and by February it looks like it lost a fight with the Atlantic. Salt burn, waterlogging, wind scorch, the occasional…
I left Malin Head at half seven on a Tuesday morning in late September, feeling quietly pleased with myself. I had a full water bottle, a bag of overnight oats I'd made the night before in the hostel kitchen, and what I…
Ireland's Atlantic coast is one of the best places in the world to tour by bike. It is also one of the most demanding. The roads west of the N59 corridor are narrow, often patched rather than resurfaced, and the shoulders where…
