It’s a Monday afternoon in late May in western Ireland. A gentle breeze drifts through the Lough Inagh valley and teases to tiny whitecaps the cold cobalt surface of the narrow lake. I brake to a stop beside the road, straddle my bicycle, and take a long pull from my water bottle. Brilliant green fields—dotted with shaggy sheep and wild red rhododendrons--roll away from the shore, rise up out of the valley, lift to hillsides of shifting light, then disappear in the shadowy forests of the Twelve Bens (mountains) of Connemara, over a century ago one of Oscar Wilde’s favorite parts of his native country.

A century ago. It seems that long since a car has passed me, in either direction, although it’s probably only been a half hour. But right now, time seems somehow irrelevant—the pre-Celtic ruins, the endless, centuries-old stone walls, the abandoned Famine-era cottages all linked into a timeless continuum by the people who have passed through this rugged, unspoiled part of the world--“a savage beauty,” according to Wilde.

As a guest of Tourism Ireland, I am four days into a five-day bicycle tour of counties Clare and Galway, including the stark Aran Islands. I have wanted to visit Ireland for as long as I can remember and it is all I had hoped it would be and more. Already I feel an odd, nearly palpable connection to the land and the people, perhaps a result of family bloodlines: my father’s Irish Catholic mother, Alice Rooney, and other family, such as the Hughes and McConnells, who left Ireland for America in the 19th century.

I arrived at Shannon Airport in Limerick on Friday morning at 8 a.m., exhausted, having left Sacramento some twenty hours earlier and having slept little more than a couple of hours in flight. At Shannon, I was met by John Heagney, owner/operator of Cycle Holidays Ireland, who whisked me by van to my hotel with instructions to meet back in the lobby at 11:00 ready to ride. A power nap later, I was back downstairs, where I met the other seven with whom I would be traveling. All seemed as exhausted, but excited, as I was.

Heagney, an affable 30-something dairy farmer and former competitive cyclist and rugby player, has been offering cycling tours of western Ireland since 1998. We would learn later in the week that long before he met us at our hotels some mornings, he had raced home on his motorcycle to help his wife milk the cows.

Our introduction to western Ireland was a visit (Heagney delivered us by van) to the 26-acre Bunratty Folk Park, alongside the well-preserved Bunratty Castle, which dates from the 12th century but was built on the site of a much older Viking settlement. The park is a reconstructed pre-Famine village (though some of the buildings are original and were moved to the site), where visitors can watch women in period costume making bread and pies over peat-fires and squeeze into tiny, one-room thatched-roof homes where families of up to 20 once lived—and, during the Famine, often starved.

Then it was time to meet the bicycles, which Heagney had set up for us based on inseam measurements we had sent him. He gave us all laminated maps—map on one side, intersection-by-intersection directions on the other—which we attached to our handlebars, and we were off.

By now a heavy mist had begun to settle on the little backroads, softening the landscape--the empty roadways, lined to their shoulders with blackberry vines, and the simple cottages we passed from time to time, many of which had been converted to bed and breakfasts.

Later that afternoon, after having been awake for some thirty hours and ridden as many miles, my first Irish pub called. Actually, did more than call. It reached out for my trusty steed, grabbed it by the top bar, and yanked it to the roadside. I could do nothing but ride along. That was the best Guinness this Guinness fan has ever tasted.

Dinner that night was a “medieval feast” in Bunratty Castle, where we drank mead, ate pork ribs and capon with our fingers, and were entertained by a lively group of actors and musicians. I ran into the young fiddler at a nearby pub later and complimented him on his work. “Well, I did study at one of your schools,” he said. “The Julliard. Perhaps you know it…”

Day Two, after a hearty Irish breakfast of eggs and bacon and tomatoes, we were off again, this time for the little town of Doolin, the unofficial traditional-music capital of western Ireland. Along the way we passed through the hauntingly beautiful Burren, 160 square miles of gray, mostly treeless limestone that drops down to cliffs, pounded ceaselessly by breaking Atlantic swells. The most stunning are the world-famous Cliffs of Moher, five miles long and nearly 700 feet high. We also passed through tiny Lisdoonvarna, long famous for its matchmakers and today for the annual Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival each September. High on a rocky windswept ridge, we saw the Poulnobrone dolmen, the ruins of a 5,000-year-old tomb whose capstone weighs five tons. That night we dined on fresh Atlantic salmon before a brief visit to a pub for some live reels and jigs.

Day Three we loaded our bikes onto a ferry for Inishmor, the largest of the Aran Islands and home of Dun Aengus, the remains of a huge, cliffside stone fort at least 2,000 years old--about a half-hour ride from the ferry landing. The Aran Islands, to which electricity was not brought until 1974, are also famous for their wool fisherman’s sweaters, whose individual weaves were originally family-specific—in order to identify the decomposed bodies of drowned fishermen. You can buy sweaters today at the homes of weavers themselves or at the Aran Islands Sweater Market.

Later, in Spiddle, County Galway, I listened long into the night to a crooked little chap playing guitar and singing traditional Irish folk songs. I was brought nearly to tears by the haunting “Grace,” about Grace Gifford, who wed Joseph Plunkett, one of the rebels of the 1916 Easter Rising, two hours before he was executed by English soldiers.

A highlight of Day Four was lunch in the tiny seaside town of Leenaun—fresh oysters, mussels, salmon—where even in this remote village, cranes and concrete trucks signal Ireland’s economic boom. (The European Union, identifying Ireland as a developing country, is pumping millions into the economy. Unemployment is almost zero. Many locals told me that those who long for the “good old days” are crazy.)

That afternoon, we stopped at Kylemore Abbey, near Letterfrack, a daunting lakeside neo-Gothic mansion built in the 19th century. Today it serves as a convent for Benedictine nuns, who run the visitors center and the restaurant, where they serve fresh local salmon and their homemade jams and scones. Later, we passed through the “savage beauty” of the Lough Inagh Valley, where, exhausted after some 40 miles, we stopped for drinks (Guinness is good for you!), before piling the bikes onto the top of Heagney’s van, for a short ride to Clifden.

Day Five was a potpourri of scenery, tiny fishing villages, green pastures sloping down to the sea, stone walls sprawling in every direction, sheep in the narrow roadways, tiny cemeteries beside the ruins of centuries-old stone churches, and peat bogs, where men, their cattle dogs resting nearby, dug peat bricks by hand and stacked them to dry by the roadside. On distant hillsides, “Famine Ridges,” where blighted potato crops were left unharvested and a century and a half ago, still crease the land.

Soon, we met up again with Heagney, who transferred us to Galway City, a lively university town, where music and youthful energy seem to pour from every doorway. I could have easily spent a week here, exploring the narrow little streets and historical sites, including the Spanish Arch, through which Portuguese and Spanish ships entered the city in the 16th century carrying wine and spices. Galway is also where Nora Barnacle, James Joyce’s wife, grew up, and today the family home is a museum dedicated to the couple.

It’s a Wednesday morning in late May in Western Ireland. Heagney’s van pulls to a stop at Shannon Airport under a sign that says “Departures.” Unexplainably, or maybe not, I’m completely choked up and have to look away from Heagney and my mates. Could that have really been five days?

Heagney gives me a hearty, rugby-player’s handshake, and I head into the terminal to double check my flight time: 11:15. Correct. Damn! Five days? Five short days when time did indeed seem irrelevant. In a land to which I’ll someday, somehow, cycle back.

If You’re Going

Several companies offer bicycle tours of Ireland, as well as bicycle rental should you want to explore on your own. Visit www.irelandby.com/activities/cycling.htm for links to more information.

Cost for a seven-day tour with Cycle Holidays Ireland (www.cycleholidaysireland.com) is $1,250 Euros (about $1,500). Included: Airport transfers, bicycle and helmet, van support (for luggage, etc.), seven nights bed-and-breakfast accommodations, and all dinners. Excluded: lunch and alcohol. Riders need not be Lance Armstrongs, as each day offers several options in terms of length and degree of difficulty. One of our group had not been on a bicycle in four years, and he fared very well.

Heagney generally runs tours mid-June through September.

For more information on visiting Ireland, including, Dublin, log onto www.discoverireland.com