On the Great Ocean Road in Australia, the wind can be a fierce, shifting force—cool off the ocean in the morning, hot and dry from inland by afternoon. I once rode from Port Campbell into a cool January morning, bundled up as if it were autumn. But within an hour, the wind swung north. The road baked. My bottles got warm, and I felt like I was cycling through a blow dryer.

And yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered something very similar—except it was colder, wetter, and a great deal funnier.

It was the west coast of Ireland.

Cycling from Achill Island to the Dingle Peninsula, you don’t ride into the wind and rain—you ride with it. Day after day. Relentless, horizontal rain across Counties Mayo, Galway, Clare, and Kerry. The kind of wind that makes you lean sideways to stay upright. Within the first three days I was soaked to the marrow and already contemplating the early bus back to Dublin. But you press on, don’t you?

Then you discover the rhythm of it. The beauty, even.

Because every evening, somewhere along that endless Atlantic fringe, you find a pub. You peel off wet gloves, sit near a radiator or a peat fire, and wrap your hands around a glass of Guinness or a bowl of chowder. The heat creeps back into your body. You hear fiddle music leaking from a corner table. Someone starts to talk about politics, or farming, or how their cousin used to race bicycles in France in the ‘80s. Suddenly, you’re not in the rain anymore. You’re part of something.

I found that again, oddly enough, on the fringes of the Great Ocean Road.

Rolling into the small inland town of Koroit on my way from Warrnambool to Port Fairy, I stopped in front of the old Irish pub. The sign on the wall? Classic Irish absurdism. The menu read:

7-Course Irish Meal: 6 Pints of Guinness and a Potato.
Standard Package: One Pint. Deluxe Package: Double Whiskey.

Next to it, a poster announced:

Husband Day Care Center.
Need time to yourself? Want to go shopping? Leave your husband with us!

I laughed like I hadn’t laughed since County Clare. The absurdity, the wit, the proud irreverence—it all clicked. I was half a world away, and yet I could feel the same warm strain of humor running through the town as I had in Doolin or Dingle. It wasn’t just the Guinness (though there was plenty of that). It was the culture—the attitude that life is hard, often wet, often unfair, so you may as well laugh at it.

Koroit, of course, was settled by Irish immigrants, who looked at the fertile volcanic soil around Tower Hill and figured it was perfect for growing onions and potatoes. Naturally. It made sense to them. I thought of their descendants still farming here, still drinking here, and still quietly shrugging at the absurdity of the weather.

That’s the thing about bicycle travel. The places are different. The weather changes. The languages shift. But there’s a kind of emotional continuity across these far-flung landscapes. In Ireland, it’s in the kindness of strangers who wave from tractors and flag you down to give directions you don’t need. In Australia, it’s in the long, empty stretches where the wind changes everything, and a gas station Gatorade becomes the most important drink of your day.

You don’t always know why you’re riding. You just know you need to. And at some point, it stops being about the map. It becomes about the moments—the wind, the pub, the weird hotel menu that reminds you you’re not just a traveler, you’re part of a global, invisible web of people who think: Yes, this is a perfectly reasonable way to live.

Cycling isn’t efficient. It’s not always fun. But it keeps you honest. You can’t fake your way up a hill into a headwind. You have to earn your shelter. And when you get it, it stays with you.

I’ve written a lot of cycling guides—not only to Ireland, the Great Ocean Road, the South Island of New Zealand, and more to come. They’ll tell you what you need to know: distances, elevation, logistics. But they’ll never quite convey what it feels like to ride these places—the fatigue, the foolishness, and the little flickers of magic that make you say: I hope this journey never ends.

Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? For some of us, cycling isn’t a phase. It’s not even a sport. It’s a way of making sense of the world—one soggy pint and sunburned roadside at a time.

The post A Potato and a Pint: From Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way to Australia’s Great Ocean Road appeared first on Footloose Cycling.

Back on the Dunlicky Road, the next stop to make is at the Kilkee Cliffside viewpoint. Stunning! But there are more amazing cliff views to come – the Candle Stick, Kilkee Cliffs, Illaunonearaun island, until at km 9, the road takes you inland. You return to the cost at the hamlet of Ross and must detour to the Bridges of Ross, very rugged coastline, impressive rocky bay, craggy cliffs and cool blue ocean frame your view. The remaining “bridge,” of the former three, where the ocean carved a passage under the rocky landmass by eroding soft bedrock under it, is a short walk further. However, the Derrynadivva Bay and beach steal the show.

Continue on Coast Road, more stunning cliff sites to come and tempt you to divert off the quiet farm road. At Cavan junction, you join R487. The main road cars take to the Loop Head Lighthouse, just 2k ahead and at the end of the road. Walk around the lighthouse, see the informative display on its history, and note the best view around the head of the peninsula is from a bird’s-eye view perspective.

Then turn around and ride back. Take the R487 to a picturesque bay at Kilbaha. A short distance around the bay, get off the main road and ride the scenic Coast Road, with more beautiful bays ahead — Rhinevilla Beach, and then the charming little fishing village of Carrigaholt at the mouth of the Mayarta River. On the promontory is a castle framing the view of the Carrigaholt bay. While you could ride further along the south coast, for almost an overload of picturesque bays and inlets, it’s time to turn back inland and head back to Kilkee for a Guinness and a bowl of hot chowder. Cycling Loop Head Peninsula is undeniably one of the best stages of the Wild Atlantic Way.

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