Day Sixteen

Great weather today and a brilliant ride if a bit fraught at the end.
I slept for eleven hours last night and woke up to find the only other person in my dormitory was the spitting image of Oliver Hardy, but without the humour. He was a Hungarian working here for four months. Which is as much as we could communicate to one another as he was still learning English and I haven't started learning Hungarian.
But the conversation was more than I managed to prize from the American girl running the place as a holiday job. She was definitely not a morning sort of person. She had struck me the night before as being a happy clappy Christian sort of girl but this morning she was without any happiness or clappiness. She had baked some bread and told her friend the night before how moving it was to make your own bread. But having tried a bit for breakfast it was so heavy I could not imagine it moving anywhere and feared it would lodge somewhere in my gut, never to move again.

At a little town called Newport I stopped to do a bit of shopping and a very fat American in front of me was complaining to the shopkeeper about the content of his newspapers.
'This Irish Independent is far too liberal, you guys don't half slam everyone. Who do you think you are?'
'I just sell the papers, Sir.' said your man.
The American was not going quietly. 'Well, have a nice day, or as we say in America "Give 'm Hell."
The small shop sighed with relief as
he squeezed his bulk through the door and waddled off, I bought my bits and pieces and your man said 'you have to listen to them, don't you. Now would you like some Hell to go with your apples.'

The ride to Crossmolina (rhymes with 'nothing could be finer') was great - amongst the hills and along unused remote roads. Then on to Ballina (also rhymes with 'nothing could be finer' but as they are working on phase two of their sewage system the place was a mess and will one day, no doubt, be a lot finer.) I decided to abandon plans to get to Sligo Town as Miss Happy Clappy's estimate of 90 kms to Sligo was well out. So I headed for a place on the coast called Easky. There was a great surf spot with lots of surfers but no camp site and both B&Bs were not open. I had already done 90 to get there and had to go on 27km more trying various places on the way. Until I got to this place, Aughes which is a lovely little hamlet on a surf beach in the middle of nowhere with a pub. So I'm fed and bedded for the night.

117km today.