About this ride
Day two heads out onto the Mizen, the most southwesterly of West Cork's five peninsulas.
"This is the stretch where West Cork empties out. The towns get smaller, the sea gets closer, and the day ends at a cabin near the last of the land."
Day two picks up where the first left off and pushes west, out of Skibbereen and onto the Mizen Peninsula, the long, narrow finger of land that reaches for the open Atlantic. It is 72 km with 946 m of climbing, so this is rolling country again, never quite flat, the road tipping up and over one green rise after another. The line mostly follows EuroVelo 1, the waymarked Atlantic Coast Route, with the sea appearing and disappearing on your left as inlets of Roaring Water Bay cut inland between the fields. Along the way you pass through Ballydehob, a small, arty village strung along a hill with a much-photographed twelve-arch railway viaduct at its foot, a relic of the old Schull tramway.
The natural midpoint is Schull, a lively little harbour town tucked under Mount Gabriel and one of the most-loved spots in West Cork. Its single main street runs down to a pier busy with yachts and fishing boats, and it packs an outsized number of good cafés, shops and galleries into a small footprint, plus the only planetarium in the Republic. It is the obvious place to stop and eat before the quieter run out to the end of the peninsula. We grabbed lunch at Amar's, a friendly café near the top of the street, then pointed the bikes back into the hills.
West of Schull the land thins out and the traffic falls away. The road rolls on through Toormore toward Goleen, a tiny working village near the tip of the Mizen with a harbour, a couple of pubs and not much else, which is exactly the appeal. Mizen Head itself, the dramatic signal station at Ireland's southwestern corner, sits just a few kilometres further on for anyone who wants to ride out to the very end. We stopped short at Goleen Harbour, an eco farm on the water where a timber cabin with a hot tub and sauna was waiting above the bay. A good place to rest the legs, because tomorrow the peninsula gets serious.
