Bikepacking the Kingdom – Day 2: Annascaul Lake to Ballaghbeama Gap
Distance: 122.2km | Climbing: 1,601m – Click here for GPS Route
We all enjoyed a peaceful night’s sleep by the lakeshore, and woke well rested. Or at least those of us who had tents did. Mark in his bivvy bag didn’t fare so well.
The midges which had disappeared at nightfall made a sudden reappearance at dawn, making a beeline for Mark’s unsuspecting face which was exposed to the open air. This unwelcome 5am alarm clock of midges biting his face led to Mark having to escape his bivvy bag and keep pacing for the next two hours until the rest of us arose from our midge-free palaces.
Speaking of which, this was ashamedly my first outing for my MSR tent (the super-light 1.29kg 2-person Hubba Bubba NX v6), which I had bought on sale nearly four years previously. I had great plans of doing more bikepacking and wild camping at the time which never came to fruition. So, it was great to finally set the tent up and use it in its natural environment, briefly releasing it from the prison of my dusty hot press.
It took us close to another two hours until we were finally ready to leave, due to us all struggling to figure out the packing of tents, sleeping mats and sleeping bags, along with the loading of bags onto our bikes for the first time on this trip. This is something that becomes second nature on longer bike trips, but something you never quite get the hang of on weekend trips like this one.
Once finally on the road, we didn’t get particularly far. After a quick stop to take a photo of the inspirational quote we had stumbled across the previous evening, we rolled easily downhill for five kilometres before stopping in the village of Annascaul for breakfast and coffee at a lovely little café called Báinín. All mentions of the phrase “Misery Tour” had long gone out the window as we tucked into freshly-toasted sandwiches and sipped high-quality coffee.
Suitably refuelled and caffeinated, we hit the road properly this time, leaving the charming village of Annascaul behind as we headed downhill to the southern coastline of the Dingle Peninsula. Here we continued over rolling hills with stunning views to our right over the glittering blue Atlantic Ocean, until we reached the far-stretching sands of Inch Beach. From here, we could see many hills of the Iveragh Peninsula, our destination for the day. It was amongst these hills that we were planning to wild camp that night.
From Inch Beach, we were funnelled onto the southernmost of the two roads leading on and off the Dingle Peninsula. Just like our stretch on the northern road the previous day, the southern road proved very busy, but even narrower. After a peaceful morning cycle up to that point, the next 20 kilometres were pretty stressful as we witnessed a worrying number of dodgy passes and near misses in the space of an hour.
This was our only way off the peninsula though, so we put our heads down and pushed hard to reach the safety of Castlemaine, the town that signified the end of the Dingle Peninsula. We stopped here for a moment of calm, enjoying some Tayto and snacks at the local combined shop/post office.
From Castlemaine, we navigated another four kilometres of busy, summer weekend traffic until we could escape onto peaceful boreens just past Milltown. Using these quiet back roads we slipped unnoticed onto the northern coast of the Iveragh peninsula, reaching Glenbeigh at lunch time.
It was in a carpark here that we linked up with Dan (an old friend from university who had joined me for a six-day stretch of my world cycle – that being Germany in depths of winter of all the times and places, which tells you all you need to know about the man!), the fifth member of our crew who would be joining us for the next stretch to the western end of the peninsula. None of us had seen him in a while, so we bought a haul of coffee, coke, wedges and chicken fillet rolls from the nearby petrol station, and sat cross-legged on the sun-warmed tarmac of the carpark having a long overdue catch up.
After a great chinwag, we realised we should probably get moving if we wanted to reach our planned destination for the night in the remote hills that make up the interior of the Iveragh Peninsula. So, we hopped on the bikes and continued on quiet backroads, which took us up a 100-metre climb, and right to the base of what would easily be the most challenging stretch of the three-day tour.
We had a decision to make at this point, between a 10-kilometre stretch of either busy main road towards Cahersiveen, or an off-road track over the mountains high above the road. I had ridden the off-road track (part of the Kerry Way hiking trail) eighteen years previously with my Dad and remembered the terrain being relatively smooth, and the views being well worth the 200+ metres of off-road climbing. However, memories can be deceiving as we were soon to find out.
Things started out quite well as we began climbing on a small gravel track, away from the noise of the traffic and into the lush green hills. But it wasn’t long until we were off the bikes and pushing up insanely steep sections of grass and loose rock. To make things even tougher, the climb was interspersed with locked gates, meaning we had to lift our loaded bikes over each one, a two or four man job depending on the weight of the bike.
Thanks to some good team work passing the bikes over numerous gates, we made it up the steep grassy slopes to a section of track I remembered vividly from eighteen years previously. Here, the track narrowed and the ground to the right fell away steeply to the main road and the Atlantic Ocean far below. Signs appeared warning of the danger as we carefully navigated this section of track, taking in the vertiginous views.
After a break here to admire the stunning views, we jumped back on our bikes and continued climbing into the hills. It was here that the track took a turn for the worse, turning into a far rockier and more weather-beaten track than I remembered. We inched our way through the rocky terrain as our bikes and bodies took a battering. It was a reminder of how memories fade with time, as I could have sworn this was a relatively smooth track of gravel and grass for its entirety. But it seemed my mind had forgotten the difficult parts of this track, remembering only the easy-going sections and the fantastic views.
I felt very guilty at this point as we all bumped and bounced along the track to the top of the climb, before beginning a longer, even bumpier descent. Ciaran and Dan were both on road bikes with narrow, slick tyres. And even worse, Ciaran was on a shiny, brand new bike that really could have done without this baptism of fire. I had promised them this would be a smooth track, which was a key factor in them deciding to come this way rather than doing the main road. That was a bad mistake on my part, so I made sure to apologise to them both.
After a much tougher descent than expected, we reached tarmac again and enjoyed a swift descent out of the mountains, followed by a flat pedal along boreens into the town of Cahersiveen on the northwest of the peninsula. Here, our group was temporarily reduced to four as Dan diverged to his converted campervan (which he had parked up here earlier in the morning before cycling out to meet us in Glenbeigh). He would join us again at our wild camp later all going well.
With 85 kilometres already in the legs, and three mountain passes ahead of us, we got some much-needed pizza and snacks into us, then stocked up on water before starting the long, lonely road into the interior of the Iveragh peninsula. It would be 75 kilometres until we would reach another shop, something almost unheard of on our small island nation.
The next two and a half hours passed in a blur as we raced up three mountain passes in a row in the cool, evening light. First up was a gradual, 160-metre ascent which warmed up the legs after our break in Cahersiveen. After a gradual descent down the far side, we passed the 100 kilometre mark for the day just as the road turned sharply upwards through thick woodland.
We were now ascending the infamous Ballaghisheen Pass. A 2.7-kilometre climb averaging a gradient of 8% with some short, sharp ramps to keep you honest. I really started struggling at this point, with my lack of fitness (comparative to the rest of the group), an aching knee, and my heavy bike and knobbly tyres all conspiring against me to make this ascent so much tougher than it should have been.
After a real struggle, the four of us summited the pass where we were rewarded with expansive views across the rugged interior of the Iveragh Pensinsula. Unfortunately the sun had long since disappeared, but the grey skies and low hanging cloud added a certain dark, brooding atmosphere which suited the sparse wilderness below.
We layered up at the summit of the pass and threw ourselves into the swift, cold descent down the far side. The grey skies, strong wind and lifeless landscape around us made us feel very isolated as the four of us traversed this lonely interior of the peninsula, a far cry from the traffic-heavy coastal roads earlier in the day.
After traversing some boggy marshland in the fading light, we reached our final climb of the day, the narrow single-lane ascent up the Ballaghbeama Gap. I was on my last legs here, with fatigue properly hitting. I was ticking over 120 kilometres at this stage, with 1,500 metres of climbing, on a loaded mountain bike, something my current fitness was barely capable of. It was just a case of putting the head down, ignoring the fatigue and pain in my knee, and just spinning the pedals in my lowest gear.
While battling on up the climb, I was constantly scanning for a wild camp location, as I was worried there wouldn’t be anything suitable at the top. The others were keen to push on and get the climb out of the way, and were sure that there would be somewhere to camp at the top. In the end they were right, and as we finally crested the climb, we found a series of flat, grassy patches right at the summit that had more than enough space for three tents, a bivvy bag, and even a layby nearby for Dan’s van.
It was a fantastic feeling to end the day at the summit of the pass after my longest distance in the saddle in seven years. It had been 12 hours since we had left our wild camp on the shores of Annascaul Lake that morning, and we had seen so much in between. I was absolutely exhausted, but more than fulfilled at what we had seen and achieved over the course of the day.
We quickly set up our tents before darkness fell, and then piled into Dan’s converted campervan for cups of hot tea and biscuits. The five of us chatted here, reminiscing over our university years, where the five of us had all met in university’s mountain bike club, and chatting about where life had taken us all now.
We all went to bed pretty early that night, crawling into our tents and bivvy bags on the summit of one of the most isolated mountain passes in Ireland, a pretty cool way to end one hell of a day on the bike!
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