Day 3: Killarney to Doonaha

3 fellers

Tom made a new furry friend in the shape of the campsite dog, who he found soaked and shivering in the entrance to the men's toilets like a canine tramp. Having nursed the little fella back to health with bread sticks and cuddles, the pooch showed his appreciation by pissing up the side of Tom's tent. Cheers. 

The offending animal (right)

Once again, we had awoken to the sound of rain. This time though, it got heavier as we huddled in the van having our breakfast. The bike team were anxious to make an early start as we had a mammoth 80 mile haul to get stuck into. We waited out the worst of the shower, then leapt into action to take advantage of a bright spell. It didn't last long though and we were soon ploughing through a wall of heavy rain, wondering what we were doing here, and getting similar looks off local drivers. To make matters worse, the GPS - temperamental at the best of times - went completely bonkers. We reverted to ancient techniques and got out a real map. Fortunately one of our team (Dad) is old enough to remember how to operate it and we were soon powering through the rain down a tiny lane. It wasn't the right lane, but it was vaguely the right direction.

Old School Technique

A long hill climb took us into the attractive town of Tralee, where we realised our unplanned diversion had shaved about 10 miles off our route and we could soon stop for lunch. The break couldn't come soon enough, as a tough morning had really taken it out of our legs. The brilliantly Irish sounding town of Ballyduff provided the perfect lunch stop in the unlikely form of a community centre. We staggered in, demanding salty, carbohydrate laden snacks off the bemused dinner ladies. They responded by laying on huge plates of tuna sandwiches, chips, crisps and a huge jug of orange squash, as well as lashings of friendly Irish charm. It was like a cross between being at school and visiting your nan's house.

As we demolished our sarnies, a plucky young Irish lad approached Dad, and spouted what to us sounded like absolute gibberish at incredibly high speed. Tom just about managed to pick out the words 'Sean', 'Kelly', 'Are' and 'You?' and as the munchkin ran off, embarrassed, we deduced that he thought dad was the legendary Irish cyclist Sean Kelly. This was confirmed as when we tried to leave, the head dinner lady cornered Dad and demanded he come clean and admit his real identity. Even after Dad had denied it several times, she still wasn't convinced, but let us go anyway.

Sean Kelly (left). Mark Probert (right)

The task after lunch now looked manageable, and we ate up a 10 mile straight road to Tarbert, where we were to take a ferry across another huge peninsula. At some point on the crossing between County Kerry and County Clare, someone turned on a massive wind machine. 

When we reached the other side, we were forced to form a tight peloton and recycle our front rider. In our heads we were Team Sky - a finely tuned racing machine slicing through the air with millimetre athletic precision. In reality we probably didn't look that cool. After a painful battle with a relentless headwind, our destination came into sight and a merciful final descent took us down to a sea-front campsite, where we found our van sat facing out over the Atlantic.