May 31, 2025 to June 2, 2025
Bilbao to Kilmore Quay, Ireland, mostly by ferry
We are finally on the road again after a wild week in Bilbao and San Sebastián. As indicated in my previous post, Saturday morning we took a van transfer from San Sebastián to Bilbao and successfully picked up our freshly beautified bicycles at Motor Verde before riding off to the ferry port outside Bilbao in the town of Gexto.
The ride was about 18 km, largely along the Nervion River and the day was cloudy but warm enough so that it just felt great to be back on the bike. Highly recommended ride by the way. It’s an urban landscape the whole way but the bike trail makes it really easy. Dave’s knee held up okay so we felt like we are good to go (we think). When we reached Gexto there was an attractive harbor with an unusual type of ferry.
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The 29 hour ferry ride departed at 11 am the following Sunday morning, necessitating a stay in a hotel near the ferry port: this limited our options and we wound up at the URH Palacio Oriol, an old, sort of odd hotel in a big palatial looking building. It was right on the harbor so the views outside our window were nice, somewhat mitigated by the fact that the train ran directly below our window. The advertised air conditioning did not materialize despite Dave’s efforts so we did open the window. Fortunately, the train noise was more amusing than annoying.
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When we arrived we had a delayed entry into the hotel lobby as a family was hosting a confirmation party and the front steps of the hotel were taken up with numerous family photos - that went on for quite a long time.
I finally managed to scoot by during a change in personnel on the steps and the checkin procedures were laughably bad. Staff was nice but very slow. I was lucky we got to the lobby when we did as a big crowd gathered in line a few minutes later and there was a bit of a revolt when it took the staff so long to check people in. We wanted to pay for a beer and a water out of the lobby honor bar and finally gave up and just took them (later we fessed up and paid). The hotel clerk was too busy to deal with our bike storage causing us to pull our bikes into the courtyard also to be managed later.
The hotel was fine, although old, and a bit of an adjustment after our two 5* places the previous week. The hot water and tub were good, always a positive in our book. We were also very happy to see it had a restaurant so we could avoid going out that evening because the weather had deteriorated and we would have to negotiate a steep hill to and from the restaurant. Dave described the meal we had in the hotel restaurant as a great Rioja wine, a decent gyoza starter and a mediocre pizza. We were enjoying the wine while watching the downpour that we would have had to walk in had we not eaten at the hotel. But, it was a relief to eat a bit more modestly and Dave managed to use our VPN so we could watch Dept. Q on Netflix afterwards which was a treat! Small pleasures are wonderful when one is on the road.
The following morning our ferry was set to depart at 11 am so we had a serviceable breakfast at 8 am and set out for a 5 km ride to the Brittany Ferries port in cool weather. Since we are departing from the Schengen zone we had to go through passport control and managed to get our passports stamped - a relief because we want to make sure there is a record that we are leaving the Schengen area. To our advantage on this trip, the Republic of Ireland is part of the EU but not part of the Schengen treaty. As a result, our time in Ireland will not count against our valuable 90 days in the Schengen area.
It was a long process and when we successfully got through passport control we stood around for a long time (30 minutes or so) with three other cyclists planning to board. That of course allowed plenty of time to compare notes on our travels. The solo traveler was Scottish and he was bike packing with the absolutely lightest load imaginable including camping gear. There was a couple who were on small e-bikes, having ridden from Roscoff (another ferry port in the north of France) to Bilbao and then home to Ireland on this ferry. Finally the staff directed us though and we had some very nice ferry personnel help us anchor down our bicycles.
Our cool but spartan little cabin was ready and we were able to unpack and get situated.
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It turned out we had paid for a room that included the Commodore Club. I didn’t actually know that when I made the reservation, this perk came with the cabin I booked. I picked a cabin with a porthole and two lower beds (rather than bunk beds) and those two elements make the ferry cabin more expensive, hence entry into the “premium club.”
The Commodore Club was a bit like sitting in the United Club at the airport, as there was lots of space and lounge-like chairs and they served reasonable food and drinks pretty much all day. It was quieter than the rest of the ferry which we appreciated.
The ferry did not seem that full which was pleasant. It’s not quite the start of the season.
We had company on the ferry as our friends, Jim and Diana, took the same ferry over with us to see Ireland. (These are the same friends that met us last year in the Costa Brava for a Trek Travel holiday). After they disembark they are picking up a car and planning to see much of the Southern coast of Ireland (as we are) but they are covering everything a lot more quickly! We hung out together most of the day (with a nap thrown in) and had a last supper together in the dining room followed up by a fun visit to the top deck to see a magnificant sunset: as you can see, it was windy!
Brittany Ferries is French so all the wait staff had French accents and they served French wine at dinner - a good change of pace. The boat, the Salamanca, feels new.
Sunday morning we had more hanging out in the lounge while we both worked on the journal. We had not posted anything for over a week so friends and family were starting to get worried about us, as evidenced by a few emails we received wanting to know if we were OK! Ah, the pressures of our fans!
We had some fun conversations with people in our lounge. We talked to one Dublin couple, Dave and Mary, who rent a place outside Alicante on the Costa del Sol. They go over every year for an extended stay although he is still working in Dublin. There is a direct flight between Dublin and Alicante that they can use for mid-trip travel. (I think the Costa del Sol is very popular with Brits and Northern Europeans). David was an avid cyclist himself and talked about seeing the professional racers training in and around Alicante. Mary left her phone number and invited us to go for a drink when we are in Dublin in a few weeks. We will definitely plan to look them up.
We talked to a second couple, Alistair and Ashley, who live in a town right in the middle of Ireland called Tullamore. Alistair runs a travel company in Mallorca (called Sunvelo) so they spend a lot of time out there. It was fun talking cycling in Mallorca - which is known to be a cycling Mecca. Ashley was from Bangor, outside Belfast, and noted that Belfast has changed a lot since I was there in 1998. (We plan to ride there later in June). They gave us lots of tips on riding in Ireland and were reassuring that the Irish drivers would be kind to us in the rural areas. We hope so.
I was in Ireland 25 years ago and remembered how friendly everyone was — that feeling is all coming back to me now.
We disembarked around 3 pm and that was a bit of a drama. The cyclists were sent down to the third deck (purple stairs, deck 3) but when we got down there we couldn’t get to our bikes because huge trucks were blocking everything. They squeeze the trucks in so close you cannot get around them. We tried every which way to reach the bike area (all the while we were frantically searching, we also were hauling our panniers) and it was stressful because the trucks all had their motors on and were anxious to get off the ferry. Dave talked to one staff employee who sent us in one direction - fruitlessly. At some point we ran into two other cyclists with the same problem: they were just as stressed as we were - which made us feel better, since they were young and much heartier than we are! Finally we had another employee lead us to the area by squeezing in between a bunch of trucks; the other two cyclists at first balked over the route as being unsafe but we finally found our bikes, loaded up and rode out.
The ride out was a bit harried as well. We had to clear customs again (another passport check) and the route out of Rosslare Harbor was full of trucks anxious to get on their way. Brittany Ferries does not have a segregated lane for bikes which meant the cyclists scooted by the long line up of trucks waiting for customs control on a very narrow lane next to a barricade — which made me super nervous but since we were following the other cyclists we guessed it was okay on the etiquette front.
At some point we finally peeled off the main road onto Eurovelo 1 (after Dave rode around the roundabout, having missed the exit) and we enjoyed a relatively bucolic ride to Kilmore Quay, 25 km away. We were on the Norman Way, according to the signage. For history buffs, the Norman Way is a route along the South Coast of Wexford that replicates the Norman entry into Ireland in 1169 about 100 years after the Normans invaded England. The Normans were invited over to Ireland by the deposed Irish King Diarmuid McMurrough of Leinster, who sought Norman help defeating his local Irish rival. This clearly was a case of be careful what you wish for: the Normans never left, despite Irish resistance. Norman knights started marrying into Irish royalty to create stronger ties. The Norman influence can be seen in changes in agricultural practices, the building of distinctive Norman towers, the creation of monasteries and construction of churches.
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We had been warned - repeatedly - that the roads are narrow and the drivers do not watch for cyclists, but that was not our experience during our first 25 km in Ireland. Yes the roads were narrow but traffic counts were low and nobody ran us down. A good start.
The only downside: it was very windy. We rode into a headwind for the whole 25 km and it brought back memories of the eight days we spent in Sweden riding up the Kattlegattleden coast in 2023. That actually isn’t an entirely positive memory as the winds there were brutal and unrelenting. The weather report for this area is for strong winds for the next week (I haven’t looked past that) so we shall see.
Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 1,054 km (655 miles)
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4 days ago