Day 4: Dungarvan to Blarney

70 miles

There can be an advantage to not knowing where you’re going at first. I left the silent campground at about 8am after using the brilliant morning sunshine to dry everything before packing…

…and cycled through Dungarvan to join the L2022. All I really knew was that it would take me towards the medieval town of Youghal (pronounced Yoll, as far as I can tell).

As it turned out I’d picked the most spectacular local climb to start the day. It went out into the stunning countryside and began climbing, from sea level, up and up, 100 feet…200…300…

400……500…where I met two friendly dogs leaving for a day of rampaging around the fields doing god-knows-what. Their owner left in a van but they stayed with me for a few minutes.

The views were just getting better and better the higher the L2022 went:

And still it went up…600…700…finally topping out at exactly 800 feet of non-stop ascending, which I realised was more climbing in just under two miles than I did in the whole of Florida.

In the tiny village of Clashmore I met Sean who was a big feller just standing above the road by the War Memorial watching everything go by. We chatted for a bit and I asked him my usual question, ‘Where would you go for breakfast in [insert town name here, today ‘Youghal’] if you were really hungry?’

‘Oh there’s two or three on the high street, you can’t go wrong, but promise me now, promise me, you won’t stop and that bloody chipper by the road, alright? The fat they use is so bad it’ll give you a heart attack, I’m telling you.’ He clutched at his own heart for emphasis.

I had in fact saved ‘J.J.’s Diner’ to my possible stops, mainly because of the name, but thank god I gave it a swerve and headed into town instead. On North Main Street I found ‘Cafe 108’ and was invited to wheel my bike right inside to the back garden. This was definitely the place for me.

A mixture of cultures created a pretty decent breakfast dish: french style pancakes, cooked in butter and served American/Canadian style with maple syrup and a dusting of icing sugar, and some delicious Irish bacon, then two pieces of the freshly-delivered local soda bread, toasted, buttered, then drizzled with the remains of the maple syrup. I was very hungry indeed after the morning’s ride but this sorted it out perfectly.

Riding out of Youghal to find the brand new Greenway I’d heard about, I was stunned by how lovely this small seaside town is. Great atmosphere and busy without being annoying. And the sea looked so tempting…

…but having decided I was up for more distance today and wanted to reach Cork and Blarney, I still had many miles left to cycle, so kept going along the immaculate path which I think has only just opened.

When I reached the old station stop for Killeagh, I had a detour to make. Two years ago I started the ride from Nova Scotia to Florida in a tiny hamlet near Halifax. So why not Halifax? Because the hamlet was called Mount Uniacke, which is an anagram of I Can Uke On Tum.

When I noticed on the map that 3 miles north of the greenway was the tiny hamlet of Mount Uniacke, Co. Cork, I couldn’t believe my luck. Back in Canada I’d failed to launch the trip with a song on the uke because it had begun to pour with rain at the crucial moment, so here was my chance to finally put things right.

The 3 miles turned out to be all steeply uphill at about 7%, but I was spurred on by the plan. At the top I discovered that Uniacke is a very sleepy place indeed, with a modest old town sign:

I decided to make the Old Village Pump the musical venue, because it was the only thing even slightly like a centre of the village.

Afterwards I chatted with Michael who was painting his stunning thatched cottage and had wondered what I was up to over at the old pump.

Then I completed the rest of the Youghal – Middleton Greenway, and began the slow crawl along cycle lanes, pavements, busy roads and even briefly a motorway…

…towards Cork, where I followed the river into town then turned north to reach the campground at Blarney, another long climb, before it got too late. There’s lots to say about both those places but I think I’ll leave it for tomorrow. I do hope you can contain your excitement until then.

Sign That Is Funny

*See IoT July 14th 2024