About this ride
The opening leg of the Wild Atlantic Way, through the heart of West Cork.
"Day one of the Wild Atlantic Way, and the sea will not leave you alone. It keeps slipping inland to find you, one green-walled inlet at a time."
The Wild Atlantic Way is a 2,500 km coastal route that runs the whole western edge of Ireland, and Kinsale is its official southern start. We rolled in the day before as a warm-up: the train down from Dublin to Cork, then out to Kinsale by bike to line up at the start proper. It is a lovely place to begin. A medieval fishing port turned bohemian harbour town, Kinsale is known for its tight streets of brightly painted houses, its yacht-filled harbour guarded by the star-shaped Charles Fort, and a food scene good enough to have earned it the tag of Ireland's gourmet capital. We started with breakfast at the Post House on Main Street and, like most people, spent longer than planned just wandering the colour before pointing the bikes west.
From Kinsale the day is pure West Cork: rolling and rarely flat, threading quiet lanes and short R-roads over one green hill after another, with 946 m of climbing stacked into 68 km. The coast pulls away and then keeps sneaking back, the Atlantic reaching inland through tidal inlets and river mouths that shine at low tide between the fields. The midway town is Clonakilty, one of the prettiest main streets in the county, all hand-painted shopfronts and a real food town: home of the famous Clonakilty black pudding, a Friday market on Georgian Emmet Square, and the birthplace of Michael Collins. It is the natural place to stop and eat before the afternoon push.
The last stretch drops toward the water at Glandore, a tiny sheltered harbour with the twin islands of Adam and Eve at its mouth and the Bronze Age Drombeg Stone Circle a short detour inland. It is the kind of view that only really lands when you have earned it under your own steam. From there it is a short run into Skibbereen, the market town at the gateway to the West Cork islands, where we found our first B&B and the easy hospitality this coast is known for. One day down, seven to go.
