Done with Dingle

I slept well after a nice evening in the hostel kitchen last night. I met some nice people again and enjoyed the West Kerry brewery beer I bought from the pub earlier. I know I should have gone out to enjoy some trad music in one of the pubs, but I was pretty tired and not really feeling like going two kilometers to the town. Besides I had very good company in the kitchen.

The Rainbow hostel in Dingle was very nice and full of people as well. I met a few fellow cyclists as well, who were coming from Galway direction. They named a couple of nice campsites along the way.

I headed out in the rain around 9.30 in the morning. The Conor pass was the first obstacle on my way. It is the highest mountain pass in Ireland. This meant that the first eight kilometers from Dingle were uphill, but luckily not as steep as the hill couple of days back in Portmagee. It did wear me out though and a short break after getting on top of the hill was more than welcome. It really is a shame that the visibility was so bad. The view from the top is supposed to be very beautiful.

It rained more or less the whole day, with a 10 minute break in Tralee. I had to buy new brake pads there, since Coming down the Conor pass in almost zero visibility, took the rest out of the old ones.

I continued for another 25 kilometers from Tralee to the north and I'm now laying on my bed in a very interesting hostel in Listowel. It's called the Billeragh house and it's a big old house (built 1760) now owned by an old farmer. He didn't let me shower before he'd chit-chatted with me for 20 minutes. A very nice old fellow, but at that moment I'd rather been under a hot shower. He also let me wash my laundry. I think I won't have to do that again before leaving Ireland.

Just one more week and I need to be in Dublin again. The time has gone by so fast. I've still got about 350 to 400 kilometers to go. It looks like I'm going to make it to Galway like I hoped. A few days ago I was not so sure, but I'm rather confident now that I'll be able to do it.

Tomorrow I'll cross the Shannon with a car ferry in Tarbert. That will save me a bunch of kilometers, but it also means I'll miss Limerick on this trip. Galway has a higher priority than Limerick aka "stab city".