Dublin to Kilkee: The Great Trans-Continental Car Adventure

We were up the next morning at the crack of 11, grabbed a quick breakfast, and set off for our grand trip across the great continent of Ireland. From east coast to west coast in a single day (actually about 4 hours). We took the wide, smooth M7 highway for about 2/3 of the trip. Wide lanes and sparse traffic made it a dream. It also allowed me to see the benefit of hedgerows. The median separating east and west traffic used about 10 foot tall hedgerows the whole way, and it was rare indeed to even see the other side. Even taller hedgerows lined the sides of the highway.  
But once we got off the M7, the highways got ridiculously narrow again, and coupled with speed limits of 100 km/hr it certainly had my attention. Imagine our Ontario country roads, but 3/4 the width, faster speed limits, and absolutely no shoulders. Ok, if you’ve imagined all that, then add cyclists.  I’m not kidding. Although I only passed 3 of them, that’s at least 3 who are crazy.

We reached the sleepy seaside resort town of Kilkee without incident. Checked into the B&B, and were soon exploring the town. What surprised us the most was that the sand beach was about 50 metres from waters edge to the sea wall. A massive beach that was well populated by people wearing long sleeved shirts and long pants.

After incredibly delicious fresh cod and chips, we decided to head out to a nearby long and tall promontory for the view. Looking back we were amazed to see 3 different whirlpools out in the bay. Hard to show in the picture, but these whirlpools were there for the hours we were walking.  Here’s one of them.

From that amazing and slightly scary promontory, we then went farther north to another even taller and longer and scarier one. Gorgeous views, along tall cliffs. The pictures just don’t do it justice. This will definitely be one of my favorite times from this trip.

During our walk we saw one island that looked exactly like the Luke Skywalker island from the movie, but turns out the real island is just a little farther south down the coast. 

And then as we were walking past we saw a familiar cave/cliff formation to the north. Looks just like the seaside cave from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Turns out, it almost is! The Cliffs of Moher, which is the one used in the movie, are basically in the same set of cliffs, but about 50 km north of us.

We headed back to Kilkee after that, wandered a bit through the town, ate some pizza, watched the Olympics while drinking Guinness, and that was it for another great day in Ireland.