Interesting place, Ireland, but kind of strange.

I recall seeing one sign that read In the past 5 years, 116 people have been killed on this stretch of road", and thinking "Well, why don't you fix up the friggin' road, then, instead of putting up a sign?"

They also tend to throw down pea gravel on top of hot tar on roads, even on curves in the roads. My motorcycle has ABS and a traction control system, the instrument panel looked like Las Vegas at night with the warning lights for activation of these systems frequently flashing on and off.

The highways department doesn't spend much time trimming the vegetation at the side of the roadways... hedges often encroach onto the road, making it very narrow. Maybe that's to bounce the motorcycles back onto the road after they hit the pea gravel in the corners.

People in the northeast corner of the island appear to be very patriotic, everyone has a flag of some kind hanging off the front of their building. But the flags are all different. Maybe they just like bright colours.

I got lost in a big city in the north, and stopped into a pub on the main street (Shankhill Road) to ask for directions. Someone asked me "What foot do you kick with?" I told them that the Honda PanEuropean I was riding had electric start, and no kickstarter, and they all laughed. I guess they don't have many modern motorcycles there... I didn't see very many. Lots of pretty tall fences, though.

Nice island, but like I said, kind of strange.

Michael

Michael, that's a rather naiive description indeed. It has humour and total inaccuracy in equal measure!

plan is to arrive Dublin and do clockwise journey, to the South then North - have done a good part of Wild Atlantic Way a few years ago in a motorhome, but will now be on Motorcycle.
Travelling round to Larne - ferry to Scotland - then north across to East coast and then plan route back to North Wales
Thats the plan anyway
Looking forward to it

Ok, so Ireland so far for me...

Anything worth seeing and not a tourist trap will be behind a fence or a gate and possibly accompanied by signposts with wording along the lines of "EXTREME DANGER" or "CLOSED". This is, I gather, because people here are terrified of liability. Up to you what to do.

There's plenty of hidden places (often requiring a degree of walking to reach) and roads that are pretty decent and twisty. Motorways and National roads are usually boring, regional ones of wildly varying standards will take you through places instead. But you will need to expect anything on the blind side of the curve. Deer are plentiful, so are random branches, loose chippings, the occasional sheep, walkers, horses, bicyclists. Anywhere.

Don't trust other drivers speed. Here speed limits are routinely ignored by people, and a good bunch do drive as if they have xray vision to see around curves.

Maybe not now (maybe!) but you can have days that will have sun, rain, hail, and snow, more than once.

People are very nice here, specially in rural areas away from Dublin. (frankly, I'd stay away from it altogether). People will want to talk with you about anything just because you are both in the same place. A couple of times I stopped by the road to check the gps, and people went outside their house or garden just to check if I was all ok. Stopped to take a picture on a lonely road? Someone will stop, or slow down and ask.

I was walking through some place, it clearly said something along the lines of "private property stay away". I asked some locals in front of the gate that I couldn't go there, could I? They say "oh go ahead, you're ok"

The west has possibly the prettiest sights and the most published ones. For the east they have started to promote "Ancient East". I hope they fix the goddamn uneven surfaces...

The Road Safety Authority saying the loose road chippings are someone else's problem while at the same time running safety campaigns regarding level crossings is pretty accurate.