Day 4 - Killarney to Adare - projected distance 59 miles.

We were glad to move on from Killarney this morning, away from the hordes of tourist buses that clog the town centre. There really is an astonishing number of hotels and guest houses in Killarney, serving as a start and end point for touring the Ring of Kerry. It's a busy town as a result, and if you really want to buy models of shamrocks and Guinness t-shirts, you'll have no problem here.

The hotel served a great Irish breakfast with home-made porridge and soda bread toast, and pancakes with maple syrup for the children. A good start to the day then got better. As I was checking out and the lady at reception fetched my bike, she asked me whether I was cycling professionally. I think this may have had more to do with the weight of my bike rather than my fine physique, but I'll take compliments any way they come.

Setting off under leaden skies, but dodging the showers, I passed through more small towns with shops laid out along a high street. These look very different to the UK. Apart from the ubiquitous Centra foodstores, nearly all of the shops seem to be local independents. There has been very little spread of national chains. A lot of the shops seem to place a lot of emphasis on cost and value. Excepting the Marks and Spencer stores in Cork and Killarney, the food shops are more generally of the Centra / Costcutter / Lidl variety. Much as Ireland has 'celtic tiger' growth economy pretensions, a lot of it is still relatively agricultural and unsophisticated.

After Castleisland came the first big hill of the day, rising to about 800 feet, up to an impressive scarecrow at the summit. Again though, it was a very gentle rise of 3%-4%. This might be tempting fate, but I have not yet come across any steep hills which really tire my legs - nothing yet like the vicious hills of Devon (or Clifton). Before coming to Ireland, I had been warned about the roads, but so far I have found the major roads to be excellent and all in lovely condition. There has been a lot of road improvement works, an I was interested to see a sign saying that a new road had been "funded by the Irish taxpayer and the European Union." Maybe that's where all of our European money went.

I made good progress today, clocking up 50 miles in three hours exactly. Fortunately I've had no trouble at all from any vehicles, not even the terrible drivers of Newcastle West. Passing through the town this afternoon I saw the garda attending to two separate minor road accidents at consecutive junctions.

The weather has been changeable, and five miles from the hotel it ... changed. I felt a few spots of rain and braked to stop and don my rain jacket, but I was completely soaked before I managed to get it on as the rain arrived in a deluge. I arrived at the hotel utterly drenched and dripping. Maybe that's why the owner looked aghast at my white lycra.

This evening we went into the local town of Adare for a pub supper. It's a strange little town, famous for its row of thatched cottages which have attracted tourists and turned Adare into an upmarket bijou destination. Now it's a very odd mixture of Centra and Versace.