The Connemara tour (or the extended version that includes the Burren)
is the ideal choice for a first Irish bicycle tour. Connemara in
the far west of the country has an abundance of fabulous scenery
while the fishing villages and little market towns that punctuate
the routes give you a great insight into the country and the people.
The roads go around the mountains rather than through them, so the
terrain is suitable for cyclists of all levels of experience and
ambition. The tour includes an overnight on Inishmore, largest of
the Aran Islands.
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 1), 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 1, 2) 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 the south of Connemara (routes 2, 3) 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 (route 4). 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
5), 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 4, 5), Ireland’s only
true fjord, the beautiful valley of Doolough lies hidden amongst
the mountains of the Murrisk (routes 5, 6). Further north, Croagh
Patrick, Ireland’s holiest mountains, stands in splendid
isolation above the shore of island-strewn Clew Bay (route 6).
