I’ve driven some pretty wild roads. Mountain roads where boulders the size of houses look ready to crush you. Roads with snow higher than the car. A road that had a wolf jogging alongside it. You want a bad omen for a road? How about a WOLF trotting next to you! That one screams, “Buddy, you’re going to die and I’ll to be there to eat you.”
But after a week of driving my family around Ireland – mostly along the Wild Atlantic Way on the western coast, where the rocky shore line meets the cold, raging ocean – I’ve found roads that redefine the meaning of “wild.”
Not wild in any traditional sense – the kind of roads where you might plummet off a towering cliff and people stand with mouths agape saying, “Did you see how the smoke spelled, ‘Holy crap!’ right before it exploded?”
This is a “wild” unique to Ireland. Part of it stems from the fact that the Irish like their steering wheels on the right side of the car and their driving on the left. This is done primarily to keep Americans confined to bus tours so they don’t run over sheep and skip all the distillery tours.
But driving this way is disorienting – like you’re in a parallel dimension or a mirror image of yourself. It takes all kinds of neural re-wiring to accomplish it and keep yourself from steering into the right lane … and a bus full of Americans screaming, “Not another distillery tour!”
Add to that the fact that in Ireland the roads are as narrow as dental floss. The emergency lane is actually a tree or a hedgerow. Often there are no dividing lines, or lines at all, aside from the occasional sheep standing perfectly in the middle of the road. It’s less driving, and more threading endless needles.
Master that, and Irish roads can still throw curveballs your way. Like roundabouts, which are actually kind of fun because people quickly notice you’re American and clear out.
Or one-lane bridges on blind switchbacks. What’s that? Picture yourself rocketing down a cute, pastoral road at speeds normally reserved for Formula 1 cars. Then suddenly signs in Irish warn you are about to die. You spot a one-lane bridge on a curve with a yield sign that has been knocked over next to some skid marks. No bother. You’re going too fast to yield anyway. So you pray to your favorite saint and hope no one is coming around the blind bend.
This is really, really fun. (Translation: More scary than a glowing meteor covered in botulism speeding toward you.)
It’s even better if you arrive at the exact same time as an Irish tour bus. Because, if you can stop in time, the bus driver will give you a very polite look that seems to say, “Listen, lad, this one is just simple physics, and my coach wins every day.”
Ever reverse on a one-lane bridge on a blind switchback? Also fun.
Repeat this three to four hundred times a day, and there you have it! Most of my hair has fallen out, and I’ve aged at least 45 years. The one positive is I’ve never seen a wolf trotting beside my car, but only because he won’t fit with all the sheep.