Ireland Bike Tour - Cycling Day 5, Sheep Shearing, Flowers and More Slide Shows

If you’ve ever been to a county fair or watched a movie about Australia you have seen sheep sheering, but usually with electric shears. In this part of Ireland they use hand shears and probably sheer the sheep faster and cleaner than with the electric ones. This was a great day for photos, including a good number of flower close-ups. There was a really great mountain behind our Lodge that I was so tempted to try to climb up.

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The slide show above features more of the Irish landscape including ruins, mountains, streams and beaches, as well as sheep and sheep shearing and ends with lovely views from our hotel.

The slide show below features Irish flowers.


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Ireland Bike Tour - Cycling Day 2, To The Burren Slide Show

Today we did a circle route through the remarkable Burren, a landscape that almost defies description, although parts of Ottawa's Lime Kiln Trail with it's underlying Limestone hints at it. And, of course it's Ireland so there were more ruins. This was the second hardest climbing day of the tour.

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The slide show above starts with a view from our hotel room and covers more of the Irish landscape, more ruins of churches and castles, cemeteries and stone fences and finishes going through the remarkable geology of the Burren.

Ireland Bike Tour - Cycling Day 1, The Irish Landscape Slide Show

Today we got setup on our bikes with our self-guiding instructions so we could ride on our own while Jeff went ahead with the van and then would mysteriously appear on his bike cycling towards us to make sure we were not lost. We rode to the Cliffs of Moher which reportedly has spectacular views, but all we saw was fog. But after the longest climb of the trip, 220 metres, we were not riding back up there again no matter how sunny the next day was.

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The slide show above features the remarkable Irish landscape including those famous stone fences, a scenic beach, ruins of castles and a remarkable old cemetery, but no photos of the Cliffs of Fog.