Northwest 200

[Antimatter]

My wife and I are planning to visit Ireland in the spring of 2020.  I'd like to spend a day watching some of the racing at the Northwest 200 road race, and wanted to know if anyone has been and has any tips for attending.  Or for Ireland, for that matter.  FYI, we're not culture-vultures; we prefer countryside and nature over cities,, which we view as the necessary evil/location of the airport.

[Bill_Walker]

Are you riding or driving?  We were there last year, driving.  Started in Shannon and kinda did a clockwise loop around the island, ending up in Belfast.  We were avoiding a lot of the more touristy stuff in the south.  We were in the area of the NW 200, but missed the event by a week, intentionally on the part of my wife/trip planner.  But I did see a line portrait of Joey Dunlop in a cafe in Bushmills!

We kind of are culture vultures, and hit a lot of museums dealing with Irish history, and many of the non-museum sights are also steeped in history.  Our itinerary ran Shannon (airport)->Limerick (overnight)->Kilkee->Galway->Derry->Bushmills->Belfast.

En route from Limerick to Kilkee, we made a stop in Foynes at the interesting Foynes Flying Boat Museum.  For a short time before and during WWII, the Shannon River was THE "airport" for trans-Atlantic flights, and Foynes was the terminal.  It's also were Irish coffee was invented.  There are no actual flying boats, but there is a full-size mockup of the cabin of one to let you get a feel.

 

Loop Head, a peninsula near Kilkee, is quite beautiful.  A few days there gave us a nice rural start.  We went out dolphin watching, too.

The Cliffs of Moher are awesome, of course.  The Rick Steves Ireland guidebook (recommended!) has a nice Connemarra/Mayo driving loop out of Galway that takes in a lot of very pretty countryside, as well as Connemarra National Park.  Galway definitely does have traffic/parking issues, though.  But downtown is walkable, it's a college town, and has good pubs!

 

One absolutely unforgettable highlight that I'd recommend: fly hawks on a Hawk Walk at the Ireland School of Falconry (http://www.falconry.ie) on the grounds of Ashford Castle in Cong. You don't have to stay at the very expensive castle hotel.  We drove there from Galway.

 

 

Derry (aka Londonderry, to the English) is fairly small and easy to get around.  We did a nice drive out to the countryside, but most of our time in town was learning about history and especially about The Troubles, which may not interest you.

 

Around the north end, we saw beautiful-but-touristy things like Carrick-a-Rede Bridge (a rope bridge connected to a sea stack), Dunluce Castle (one of many ruined castles and cathedrals), and the Giant's Causeway.  And we toured the Bushmills distillery.

 

On the way to Belfast, we hiked in Glenariff Forest Park and walked the Gobbins Cliff Path. In Belfast, in addition to cultural things, we went to the Titanic Museum (Titanic was built there). 

 

All the countryside (and Ireland is mostly countryside) was beautiful, so all the drives from town to town were beautiful.  But the roads are narrow and often lined with hedges or stone walls.  And of course, you'll be driving on the left.  If you're driving, rather than riding, I'd advise renting the smallest car that will hold you and your luggage.  Also, there will be rain.

If you're interested, PM me your email address and I can share my wife's very detailed planning notebook with you.

[Antimatter]

Thanks, Bill - PM sent.

[jmseattle]

Agree with all the suggestions above.  Depending on what you wish to do on your trip, less may be more in terms of covering miles.  The distances in US terms are not great, but the narrow and winding roads, many desirable view points and areas to hike or explore, and random sheep in the middle of the road, make for slower traveling than the lines on the map and the mileage would suggest.  We elected to stay in a few different locations in Airbnbs and use each as a base for day trips in that area.  An unexpected experience was that whizzing along twisty country roads in the car with the stone walls seemingly inches from the passenger side window on the left could be nausea inducing for my wife (who was not inclined to drive a stick shift on the left...).  For me, riding would be the best way to explore the countryside.  If you are considering renting a bike, an acquaintance used Celtic Rider with good results (https://www.motorental.ie/).  Before we decided to rent a car rather than ride, as my daughter decided to join for a stretch of the trip, I corresponded a bit with the Celtic Rider owner who was very responsive.

[Bill_Walker]

2 hours ago, jmseattle said:

Depending on what you wish to do on your trip, less may be more in terms of covering miles. 

Yeah, there was a Donegal driving loop in the Rick Steves guidebook that we ended up shortening considerably, because it was looking like taking 8+ hours!

 

We, too, have learned to never stay less than two nights in any place we actually want to see.  On our trip, we went and saw Lough Gur on our way from the Shannon airport to Limerick (partly because getting outdoors in daylight ASAP helps with adjusting to the time change), spent a night in Limerick with no plans to see anything there, and then spent 3 nights at a B&B in the small town of Kilkee, with our days spent mostly outdoors exploring the peninsula.  It was great for decompressing and adapting to the time change.  Then we had 3 nights in Galway, 3 nights in Derry, 2 nights in Bushmills and 3 nights in Belfast.

[Red]

After 10 days in Scotland we took the ferry from Stranraer to Belfast, then trained to Derry.  Spent a few days there.  I am not a fan of Derry.  It's clean and safe and there's some good food.  It's close to places like Bushmill's.  But there is a palpable pall.  Most folks are still affected by the 'Troubles'.  The tour guides on the subject actually lived during the period and it comes through loud and clear in their presentations.  

We trained to Dublin and had a great time.  The book of Kells, St Patricks cathedral. Guiness, Hill of Tara, New Grange, and many more.  Downtown they have this deal called the hop-on hop-off bus.  You can ride all day as much as you want.  It stops at all the major tourist places.  We made one round trip just to see what we wanted to see, then went round again and stopped at our desired places.  Buses are plentiful.  There's an electric train with good schedules from the ourskirts of town.  We stayed about 15 minutes south of Dublin.  It's cheaper, more home town friendly, and only minutes from Dublin by rail each day.

After Dublin we spent 4 days on the Dingle peninsula to decompress before our flight out.  The weather was perfect.  The town (Dingle) was small and walkable.  Plenty of tours for hire for sight seeing both by sea and by land.  Food, music, pubs were fantastic.  Small and friendly, much like my hometown except everything is in Euros .   If I ever make it back Gallway would be on my list.  

We did everything by train, bus, taxi, or hired tour.  Light weight rain gear and good walking shoes are a must.  Rick Steves book is a pretty good guide on how to pack light.