Lap of Ireland

[munkygunn182]

Evening all,

Heading off to the Emerald Isle at the end of the month (25th) with one of the other supervisors from my work. Plan is, I'll sail from Cairnryan to Belfast on the Friday evening after work. He'll sail from Liverpool - Dublin and ride to Belfast, aiming to arrive in Belfast early evening.

From there, we've essentially got no plan. I've got this as a rough, but would appreciate peoples input:

Day 1: Belfast - Donegal (via the causeway) - 167 miles
Day 2: Donegal - Galway (via Newport/Westport) - 202 miles
Day 3: Galway - Killarney (via Miltown Malbay) - 142 miles
Day 4: Killarney - Waterford (via Cork/Youghal) - 128 miles
Day 5: Waterford - Dublin (via Wicklow) - 107 miles
Day 6: Stay in Dublin
Day 7: Go our separate ways home - 103 miles to Belfast in my case

Total trip length: 849 miles (+70 miles each way to Cairnryan for me so 989 miles total)

Reasonable or optimistic? Worth mentioning he's riding two up, I'm doing it on a BMW R1200RT, so might as well be on a sofa .

Got plenty of experience of Ireland from work, but only operating up and down the East coast.

Any input/recommended routes would be amazing!

[MisterTommyH]

The days don't seem too far fetched to me.

I did a short trip last year. Days were:
1: Birmingham-Holyhead-Dublin-Waterford (via Wicklow).
2: Waterford to Glengarriff.
3: Glengarriff to Lisdoonvarna (including going over the top of the ring of Berra, complete loop of the ring of Kerry, all the way to the end of the Dingle peninsular and the Shannon Ferry.

This wasn't too taxing. Was on my own, but nothing that two bikes shouldn't be able to cover.

[munkygunn182]

Glad I'm not being overly optimistic, obviously we're riding at a casual pace and stopping to check out towns/cities along the way, hence the relatively short distances.

[STRAMASHER]

The interesting roads are atrocious! Particularly the further North and West you get. No potholes, but lumpy n' bumpy.

The road up to the cliffs of Moher is like a race track though.

If you are not planning on getting anywhere fast .... its still lovely over there. West is best.

RT with the way its front end works I would imagine will be spot-on.

[munkygunn182]

Glad to hear the distances aren't being considered too over the top etc - it's the only distance riding I've done!

Sounds great! It'll be a piece of p1ss.

[munkygunn182]

Glad to hear it

[Winder]

Yeah, that'll be a gift mate. I done it t'other way round, see here
http://forums.sv650.org/showthread.php?t=199421

[Winder]

I notice your daily mileage is very low, if you are willing to up it just a tad on day 4 then i have a suggestion for you.
Rather than the dirext route from Killarney to Cork head South from Killarney on the N71 passing through Kenmare and Glengarriff and follow the road to the South coast and East all the way to Cork.

Once at Dungarvin follow the R675 along the copper coast to Tramore and then up into Waterford.
It's still only a 200 mile day so not that far even for the weak bottomed folk and it will be 1 million times more interesting.

https://goo.gl/maps/ITH8B

[munkygunn182]

Thanks for the recommendation - methinks I shall be doing that!

Yeah the mileage is generally planned on being direct(ish) routes - I know we'll deviate every day, but they at least give us some form of idea if it gets to worst case scenario and is hammering down with rain.