Читать книгу The Wild Atlantic Way and Western Ireland. 6 cycle tours along Ireland's west coast онлайн

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This guide adopts and adapts the Wild Atlantic Way to suit the cycle tourist. The official Wild Atlantic Way is a driving route. As such it includes long stretches of main road when quieter and more scenic alternatives are close at hand for cyclists. The ‘Way’ also skips two excellent cycling spots – the Aran Islands, where there are no car ferries, and Killarney, which is a sublime day-ride away from the coast. (See Appendix C for a detailed breakdown of the ways in which the route described in this guide differs from the WAW driving route.)

Since not everyone has seven weeks to spare for a full Wild Atlantic Way tour, this guide offers six self-contained tours based on sections of the Wild Atlantic Way, each of which can be fitted into one week or two. For the full Wild Atlantic Way experience, the distinct routes link together into a 44-stage, 2400km trip along Ireland’s west coast.

Geology

The beauty of Ireland’s Atlantic coastline is based on its geological foundations. The island’s oldest rocks are found in the north and west. For a large part of its geologic history these parts of Ireland were part of the continent of Laurentia, the bigger part of which is now part of Canada and the northern United States. These rocks remain as the foundations of the island to the north and west of the fabulously named Iapetus Suture which runs from the Shannon estuary to Clogherhead, north of Dublin on the east coast. Ireland’s oldest exposed rocks are the 1.8 billion-year-old granitic gneisses of Inishtrahull, an island visible from Malin Head in the far north west. Further south along the Wild Atlantic Way you will find the 200m high Cliffs of Mohr, made of Namurian slates and sandstones about 320 million years old. Close by are the rock pavements of the Aran Islands, and the neighbouring Burren, shaped from slightly older Carboniferous limestone.