How an IT consultant created Ireland’s most spectacular end-to-end cycling route

Three hours later I’m cresting the sublime Glenveagh National Park though a cleft of treacle-colored moorland flecked with mauve-flowering heather, the surrounding hilltops rounded like eggs.

It never does rain.

Yet even if it had, this wouldn’t have dampened the freewheeling insouciance of a 12-day, end-to-end cycle traversing the entire length of Ireland’s Atlantic west coast: 1,050 kilometers from the southernmost point at Mizen Head to its most northerly outcrop at Malin.

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A few years back, 50-year-old Paul Kennedy registered the trademark ‘MizMal (a portmanteau of Mizen-to-Malin) as his fledgling company, Wild Atlantic Cycling, attempts to create an identity for this challenge—something akin to the increasingly popular British end-to-end challenge, Land’s End in Cornwall, southwest England, to John o’ Groats in far north Scotland, known as LEJOG.

“I’ve had plenty of clients who’ve done LEJOG, but enjoyed MizMal better,” says Paul one evening, as I sup post-ride recovery Guinness, more agreeable than sickly-sweet electrolytes. “Not just the west coast’s unique culture, but they found it edgier, remote, a more real experience.”

Paul, from Bangor in Northern Ireland, worked in IT for 25 years before identifying that MizMal might be something special. “I walked away from a comfortable lifestyle,” he says. “Stress and type one diabetes was killing me. My profession was stealing my soul”.

The achievement of cycling an entire country end-to-end is unforgettable. You need the motivation on such long-distance cycles to get out of bed every morning and just repeat what you’ve done the day before, over and over again.

A keen mountain-biker who grew up on a farm, Paul arranged to ride the length of Ireland with friends, some four years earlier. “After the first day, I began wondering if I could make a business out of this ride,” he recalls. “The rich Gaelic culture, landscape, and music were very different to what I was brought up with in a strict protestant Northern Ireland family”.

The achievement of cycling an entire country end-to-end is unforgettable. You need the motivation on such long-distance cycles to get out of bed every morning and just repeat what you’ve done the day before, over and over again.

I’d cycled LEJOG previously, but at times, I’d pedalled long stretches of uninspiring countryside just to get the challenge done. Sometimes the road traffic was terrible and felt dangerous.

The MizMal is a different beast. From the beaches of Bantry Bay to the bogs of Connemara, it proves a visual feast as Paul’s chosen route follows small, traffic-free lanes, every wheel revolution immersing me deeper into a Gaelic Atlantic culture as rich as the creamy milk of County Kerry.

Days take on an easy bucolic rhythm, averaging 88 kilometers. I’m within a group, but cycling at my own pace, discovering an Ireland well off-the-beaten track.

Beyond Bantry Bay’s wineglass-shaped white sand beaches, the MizMal descends into what Paul describes as one of Ireland’s remotest places—the Black Valley. It exudes mystery; a sparsely inhabited valley secreted within the MacGillycuddy reeks, Ireland’s highest range, incised by waterfalls and cobalt-blue tarns, the only traffic blackface sheep with curled horns like cinnamon swirls.

“Its few inhabitants only got electricity back in 1976,” says Paul.

After that, beyond 180-meter-high dark volcanic cliffs at Moher, it’s an impressive ride into The Burren, a World Heritage area of limestone pavements, formed in warm tropical seas 330 million years ago, uplifted and cracked over time.

The final drag that day into Ballyvaughan, population 190, follows clear bottle-green ocean, revealing offshore kelp forests. “I’ve never cycled a more inspiring road, a real strawberries-and-cream ride,” says fellow rider, Peter, from the Wirral, near Liverpool.

I celebrate with a few drams that night at O’ Laughlin’s, a whisky bar since the 1850s. “I’m sixth generation here,” says softly-spoken Margaret O’ Laughlin. “My daughter will be the seventh if she’s not too distracted by the young men”.

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The craic throughout is lively. On another night in Westport, pub music from a duo playing guitar and pennywhistle leaves me cycling next day with the anthemic ‘Dirty old town’ looping around my brain.

‘I met my love, by the gasworks wall,
Dreamed of dreams, by the old canal.’

Beyond Galway, I’m among the red fescue-hued bogs of Connemara described by Oscar Wilde as possessing “savage beauty”. Countrymen fill tractors with cut turfs of peat, to be burned locally. Connemara’s white horses, local lore suggests, spawn from Andalusian stallions that swam ashore when Spanish Armada galleons foundered offshore around 1588.

With fellow rider, Peter Hackman, a retired BA pilot, we seek out a memorial to Alcock and Brown who in 1919 crash-landed their biplane among these bogs to complete the first transatlantic flight.

Malin Head maintains an aura of wild extremity: Brooding, windswept and glistening briny cliffs lending an enchanted edge-of-the-earth feeling.

I’m not comparing myself with such daredevils, but a sense of impending achievement bubbles up. My fellow riders are sharing my exultation. “I’m loving this, every day and every hill, good and bad,” says Bob from Taunton.

“I rode LEJOG, but found it a chore at times. This is a joy, so little traffic”.

Saying that, the tenth day to Sligo City provides unexpected adventures I could do without.

During a morning evoking poetry and tragedy, passing WB Yeats’ grave and following the striking Donegal coast past where the IRA assassinated Earl Mountbatten, blowing up his boat in 1979, my inner tubes burst four times. At times, the MizMal’s roads are rough. I’m riding a lightweight carbon-fiber road bike and sometimes felt a little stronger-framed bike might’ve spared punishment of both body and wheels.

Triathlete Jane, a GP from Belfast, shares a little of that pain. “I was sore by day four so switched to two pairs of cycling shorts,” she says, as we ride into County Mayo and onto Innishown Peninsula. You need staying power to see this through and she tells me she rode one day sick, consuming only a bag of marshmallows. All she could stomach …

The finish stirs memories of completing LEJOG. I rode that ride north-to-south [known as the JOGLE] and finished in Land’s End, a scenic anti-climax, sullied by a treasonable decision by planners to allow a tacky theme to tarnish the UK’s most southwestern edge. Yet Malin Head, by contrast, maintains an aura of wild extremity: Brooding, windswept and glistening briny cliffs lending an enchanted edge-of-the-earth feeling.

A spiteful dig onto the final coastal cliff seems to be the MizMal’s way of saying: ‘OK, you’ve conquered me, but I want you to remember how tough it’s been’. I’m cheered over the line by Paul and the support team, unsure whether to laugh or cry, yet imbued with the spirt of the wild Atlantic.

“It’s got all the ingredients of a world-class ride with the satisfaction of cycling the entire length of a country,” says Paul. “It could become quite big”.

It’s hard to disagree.

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The writer’s trip was hosted by Wild Atlantic Cycling who offer seven or 12-day supported/guided group rides including B&B accommodation, vehicle support and lunches. Wild Atlantic Cycling did not review or approve this story.