Self-Guided Tours - Connemara and the Burren (10 nights)

With 9 days of superb biking through some of the most beautiful and best loved landscapes in Ireland, this tour is guaranteed to drip feed your memory pleasure banks for a long time after your return home. Starting with an exploration of the remarkable Burren region to the south of Galway Bay the tour then takes you north through majestic Connemara and to the Aran Islands before finishing with the magnificent terrain of South Mayo. If this is your first biking trip to Ireland, it will certainly not be your last!

Region and Routes
The region to the south of Galway Bay, known as the Burren (routes 1, 2, 3) is a unique lunar-like landscape which has been described as 'an immobilized rough sea'. Cromwell’s surveyors in the 17th Century reported it as a savage land, yielding neither water enough to drown a man, nor a tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury him”! Besides its wild beauty, the Burren is of special interest to both botanists and geologists.

The Cliffs of Moher (route 2), to the south of the Burren, are one of the grandest natural sights in Ireland. A series of jutting headlands, stretching for about 5 miles, the cliffs drop vertically to the Atlantic Ocean. From the cliff tops, there are great views of the Aran Islands, and of Connemara beyond.

Bounded on the east by the two great loughs of Corrib and Mask and on the west, north and south by the Atlantic Ocean, Connemara, almost an island, captures the essence of the West of Ireland. At its center, the Twelve Bens rise from a plain of bog lands, boulders and black lakes that combine to produce a unique landscape. The surrounding coastline is a beautiful patchwork of little islands, mini-peninsulas and promontories.

Iar Connaught (route 5), between the western shore of Lough Corrib and the northern shore of Galway Bay, is a wild and uninhabited expanse of low granite hills, small tarns, bog and coniferous forest. Dry stone walls, typical of much of Galway, criss-cross the landscape. Offshore, the Aran Islands (routes 4, 5) stand guard at the entrance to Galway Bay. The islands are the summits of a tilted reef that stretches out from the limestone surface of Clare and the Burren.

In Connemara (routes 5, 6, 7) the rocky mass of Errisbeg rises above Roundstone Bog, an untamed uninhabited boulder strewn, lake–spattered blanket bog stretching from the coast to the slopes of the Twelve Bens, which occupy the heart of the Connemara National Park. The area to the north and west of the park is a torturously indented coastline of alternating rocky and sandy coves.

In the east of the region Joyces Country (route 8), named after a Welsh clan who settled here in the 13th century, is a mountainous, river-threaded tract of land, with valleys and tarns hemmed in by sheer cliffs. North of Killary Harbour (routes 7, 8) Ireland’s only true fjord, the beautiful valley of Doolough lies hidden amongst the mountains of the Murrisk (route 9). Further north, Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holiest mountains, stands in splendid isolation above the shore of island-strewn Clew Bay (route 9).

The details:

• Duration: 10 nights
  
• Suggested start dates: Any day from mid-April to Mid-October
  
• Bike rental: Available
  
• Luggage transfers: Available
  
• Airport transfers: Available
  
• Trailhead town: Galway, Co Galway
  
• Destination town: Westport, Co Mayo

Included in basic tour:

• 10 nights accommodation (with breakfast)
  
  
• Detailed itinerary including:
  
  
  • route maps, cue sheets and written directions
    
  • directions to and contact details for accommodations
    
  • information about en route attractions and interest sites
    
  • details of en-route services including suggested refreshment stops
    
  • information about trailhead town, staging towns and destination town
    
  • suggestions for evening meals and for evening entertainment
    
  • telephone helpline
    
    
    
• Trip preparation information about
  
  
  • what to bring (including recommended clothing list)
    
  • getting to and from the tour from arrival & departure points
    
  • money
    
  • climate and weather
    
  • shopping
    
  • eating and drinking
    
  • tipping …………etc.

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Attractions and sites of interest on or close to the routes >

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