Day 82
When Komoot turned red
Well all good things must end, we were to leave Beara, beautiful Beara. You should go, just don’t tell anyone else. She wasn’t to let us go easily though, oh no, she has teeth does beautiful Beara.
Before we set off, we had a good chat with Nick Sanders, a motorcycling fellow camper. Turns out he is quite a guy with an incredibly interesting life. He has cycled around the world many times by bike and motorbike, solo and fast. And so much more. Go look him up, nicksanders.com and buy his books!
It had been raining all night and everyone was somewhat damp, but as Tom and I set off the rain had eased. Komoot had decided to take us a short cut, no long ride back to Kenmore but a road through the hills. We hoped for another Healy Pass, we got the road to hell. It started fine, a beautiful country road slowly climbing up the hills. It got steeper; a group of lightweight road cyclists struggled past us. They wisely turned off, we carried on up. And up, the road, and I use that term loosely, got narrower, rougher and steeper. For friends from home, think Chimney Bank and Wrench Green before it was resurfaced, only worse. Komoot graded it red! On a mountain bike it would have been a great challenge, on our fully loaded tourers it pushed us to our physical and mental limits. At times we struggled to push at all. We did though, Tom found the strength to help me. Finally, we reached the top. I was literally shaking and numb at the same time. We had done it. The descent was very gentle on a good tarmac track, I was still in shock when we reached the bottom.
From here we headed up the Caha Pass, fortunately passing the totally wonderful Molly Gallivans. It’s a mix of cafe, shop, gardens, museum and history tour. Today for Tom and I it was sanctuary as we slowly calmed down and ate lunch. The apple crumble was almost as good as my mother-in-law Sue’s and my lovely friend, All Terrain Lorraine would have shopped till she dropped. I nearly bought her a hand knitted cardigan they were just so dam perfect! The owners Frances and Stephen were both very Interested and envious of our trip though somewhat shocked by our route choice!
As the rain eased, we headed back up the Caha. It was wonderful, a quiet smooth climb. In the 1800s tunnels had been hand carved through the rock. The last and longest made me feel as if I was cycling through a mine. We sang, badly but joyfully as we rode through it.
The rest of the ride was much easier but we were very relieved to reach our campsite. It appeared to be deserted apart from two very friendly dogs. We had the place to ourselves, tent up, showered, meal cooked we relaxed in our campers kitchen, what a day!
