It’s gray and wet as we ride out of Tralee, through northern County Kerry and into County Clare. The roads are quiet on this Saturday morning. The clouds are low and intermittent rain hints at the arrival of fall. We pass through charming Listowel, three time winner of Ireland’s Tidiest Town award, as a banner entering town proudly announces. We stop for a mid-morning snack at Lynch’s Bakery, where a friendly older man in line tells us, in one long non sequitur of a sentence, that the coffee at Lynch’s is excellent and that the U.S. now has a Department of War. We smile. And he’s right, the coffee is excellent.

Further up the road, we see evidence of small scale peat harvesting. The carbon-rich soil, which comes from peat bogs, is dug up and then dried in small piles before being burned for heating fuel. It’s being phased out as Ireland moves to conserve its peatlands and protect its sensitive water systems, but we still smell the heavy and oily peat smoke as we ride through small villages and further down the road see a group of young men cracking jokes and throwing dried peat briquettes into a tractor trailer. In the distance are wind turbines.

We arrive in Tarbert, where we catch the small ferry to Killmer.

In Kilmer, the rain clouds are heavy and we arrive at our accommodations just as the sky opens. We are staying in a tiny house on the edge of a huge estuary that attracts many types of migrating birds, who seem delighted with the rain and sing contentedly. It rains heavily for the next 12 hours.

We sleep well and awake the following morning to clearing skies and a renewed sense of optimism.

We head off towards Doolin on beautiful country roads and past countless dairy farms, catching intermittent views of the frothy sea.

Ireland has some of the loveliest back roads for cycling, some of the most picturesque countryside, great butter, beer and bread and among the friendliest people on earth. It also has an amazing culture of lawn ornamentation, which we admire along the way.

We arrive in Doolin to catch a ferry for Inisheer, the smallest of the three Aran Islands in the North Atlantic off Ireland’s west coast. We wait in a small cafe and enjoy hot coffee and a smoked salmon and red onion relish sandwich on blaa, a soft and moist Irish baguette. It is delicious.

The ferry trip to Inisheer is an adventure. The seas are rough and the small passenger ferry bucks over the swells, sea spray soaking us in the open seating area. At this point, we are very used to being wet.

From the boat, we see the famous Cliffs of Moher, which are beautiful from this vantage point. Since featuring in a Harry Potter movie, they are overrun by tourist busses and we are happy to have missed that experience in favor of quiet country roads.

We arrive on Inisheer and cycle to our B&B, a small and comfortable house overlooking the sea. The owners are raising four young daughters on the island, the youngest of six months sitting happily on the hip of the kind woman who shows us to our room.

We get cleaned up and enjoy hot tea with toasted brown soda bread slathered with Irish butter and raspberry strawberry jam purchased earlier just up the road.

An evening walk around Inisheer followed by dinner at the local pub (fresh fish and chips with just enough of a smear of mashed peas to be healthy) make a great ending to the day.