Full Irish Breakfast

After a few months of forced break between holidays, moving home and repeated storms, that Sunday 14th of February, we decided to change the routine and nothing better than to go for a Real breakfast in a nice place we found in Kinsale, which is perfect because they serve Irish Breakfast all day long, so we can still go there for breakfast even if we get up late 😉 .

So we got up, not that late, and as it was not raining and they had forecasted a dry day, we decided to go with the bike. Only with mine, the roads are still in bad conditions after so much rain, and not very convenient for the SP2 suspensions.

So after putting on our textile wear (Juan was wearing for the first time a warm jacket and boots), at about 10am we took the bike and were on the road again.

Our new home is a little bit further away from Kinsale, though the road is good. I got a little bit cold in the first kilometres of motorway. When we took the bike out it started raining slightly, but it stopped after a few minutes, and the sun appeared to warm us up a little.

The road to Kinsale is nice, I enjoyed the sun and the landscape, and after a while we arrived to Kinsale.

So we went for breakfast, full Irish Breakfast of course, with egg, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomato, black and white pudding, toasts, butter and jam. With tea for me and coffee for Juan.

After a good while with our breakfast, Juan told me that he did not want to go back home, nor to go for a walk, so we stayed there with another tea/hot chocolate…

When we finished, he still did not want to go back home (to be precise, “go back home” meant by then having to unpack boxes and stuffs so that we could start cooking in the new home… ).

Well, then we would go on with the ride-out, and go back later… So I suggested to go to “Old Head of Kinsale”, where we went for our first ride-out last year in May.

So there we went. The road is very nice. Though at that time of the year and with all the rain we had during winter (one storm after the other, no low temperature, but unusually heavy and followed rainfalls), we have to be very careful as the potholes have gone even bigger and close to the farms the tractors leave the road very dirty with mud (and others…)…

When we got to the cross indicating “Old Head”, we found ourselves with the road closed, a Garda diverting traffic, and many many people, men, women and children walking on the road. There was a “Fun Walk” organised to collect funds for Charity, that was taking the same path as we wanted to Old Head. The Garda told us that we could get to Old Head taking a diversion to the left further up the road, but maybe because we were concentrated in not riding over anybody, we missed the cross. So we followed suit and after a good while, the road got quite bad and we decided to go back.

At last we ended up taking a road we already took many times, along the Ocean coast and with several nice beaches. On the lower part of the road, the beach had invaded the road (in spite of the dunes) which was covered with sand and even pebbles. We stopped further up, above a beach. There were many surfers.

The sun was shining but the wind was quite strong, so the temperature was not too high. We stayed there for a while, enjoying the sunshine in our faces, and listening to the relaxing sound of the ocean waves, then we went.

We followed the road to Timoleague, where we had been in one of the last November ride-outs.

And as we were there, I suggested we could go to the nice beach of Courtmacsherry, and from there we would start the way back home.

Courtmachserry was very unprotected from the wind, and it was not too warm. So we did not stay too long. We decided to go back home through the shorter way, through Bandon. Just before leaving the village, we got across 2 bikers. Juan tells me “the first bike wasn’t Jim?”. I hadn’t seen it (I may have been looking the other way…). And while he was telling me, another bike came by, a green Kawasaki… Finbarr! We beeped… he saw us and slowed down. So we turned around to catch them. They stopped in the hotel of the village, which has such a welcoming chimney 🙂 . That’s so funny to bump into them! They had planned to go to a Charity Run, but arrived too late, so they just went for a ride-out. They were 4 bikes, one who had come down from Galway for the day.

So we all went for teas and coffees while we updated ourselves on the past months and chatted about holidays plans.

After a good while enjoying the warm atmosphere of the pub and the company, we finally had to leave…

And of course, we followed the group and went back… through the longest way, through where we came from… and with a short stop in Kinsale.

The sun was still shining but we now could now see very dark clouds on the horizon…

At the first raindrops we thought that it was a good time to go back… we said goodbye and all left.

All in all, we arrived back home at about 5pm, quite tired but we can confirm that we had completely disconnected from routine… that’s what it was all about.

A Full Irish Breakfast! 😉

V’s