Today we moved from Cork to Killarney, travelling along the N71, a road that hugs the coastline as it moves around the south-west corner of Ireland.
Somewhere around a place called Bonane, our trusty TomTom GPS directed me to leave the tarred two lane road and proceed onto a path that looked a little more off the beaten track than the earlier sections of N71 had. As the GPS had not failed me so far, and following a quick check to see how many of the eight or nine normally “visible” GPS satellites were being received, we continued as directed.
The road became narrower as it climbed up into the mist. Visibility was reduced to only a few metres. The road turned into two tracks in the grass with rocky outcrops adjacent on the right while the left hand side was not visible as it was shrouded in cloud – which was probably a good thing as I expect there was a drop off which would have made Christine very uncomfortable. The car never made it out of first gear as the incline was steep and my speed was cautious. On a number of occasions, it looked like we might have reached the peak which was a scary thing as, like being on the front of a roller coaster, you have no view of what’s ahead as you crest the top of the climb. We met one oncoming vehicle and I reversed till I was able to edge off the road among the rocks enough to let the other car go by. Fortunately, we only passed one vehicle along this path. Occasionally, shadowy movements in the mist reminded me that there were likely sheep (or creatures from the Jurassic period) lurking about.
Eventually we reached the peak of this route where the fog was not as thick and discovered a plaque naming this location as Priest’s Leap. The track down the other side was not as exciting as it had been on the way up with the gradual clearing of the mist until we reached the base of the valley.
We eventually rejoined the actual N71 and made it to Killarney without any further interesting deviations.
I expect the GPS had directed me along this goat track because it thought I needed some excitement. I know it’s routing algorithm is currently set to fastest, but I’m not convinced this path would have met that criteria.
Bahahahahahahah that’s so Irish. Love it. Sort of similar thing happened to me in Devon. The GPS keept taking me down the ‘lanes’ and I was often driving through (what seemed to me) people’s back yards. I got some waves! They’re friendly in Devon! Anyway, i had to get into the settings and change the preference from shortest. The lanes were certainly not the fastest!