The road over the Healy Pass hasn’t changed much since I was a child. The surface is smoother now, but the weight of the hills, the curve of the climb, the anticipation as you near the top - all of that remains.

As I came over the top this time, a half-forgotten memory surfaced: a battered old Ford Cortina straining up the incline, my mother muttering a prayer that we’d make it. Most times we did. Not always.

The Beara Peninsula has its own kind of gravity. You can feel the earth under your boots and the sky pressing down on you. The weather here rolls in off the Atlantic, full of salt and rain, and rises when it hits the Caha mountains.

I remember the Gaelic football, the local religion. It meant everything in rural communities hollowed by emigration, scrambling to gather enough young people to field a team each weekend. High-altitude pitches where rushes grew thick in the grass and sheep droppings scattered across the field. Sometimes the moisture-laden air would dampen the acoustics, and it sounded like kicking a heavy bag instead of a football. Other times, voices bounced off the hills like you were calling to someone miles away.

In this video, I came up the south side from Adrigole. The view from the top, on a clear day, is stunning. Glanmore Lake and the valley stretched wide below. But today wasn’t one of those days. Rain blurred the lens, soaked the road, dulled the colours. I’ll go back when the skies are clear.

After this clip ends, I turned north and climbed higher into the hills, thinking there might be a back road to Kilnamartyra. There wasn’t. The tarmac gave way to broken track, and I lost all phone signal. I pushed on for a while, unsure where I was headed, until I ran into two young lads - couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen - stranded in the middle of nowhere with a beat-up old scrambler, barely held together by string. They flagged me down for help.

The older one had hurt his knee. They’d been trying to kick-start the bike for ages, wedging it up against a little stone bridge to keep it upright. It was far too tall for either of them. They must have been amazed, and relieved, to see a fully grown adult roll up, out of the blue, on a motorcycle. Unfortunately for them, I’ve got short legs, stiff hips, and the agility of a sack of spuds. After a few awkward attempts to mount the thing myself, I also ended up having to wedge it back against the bridge and asking one of them to hold the clutch while I gave it a kickstart. Eventually it coughed back to life in a cloud of black smoke thick enough to fumigate a cow shed. “Are you sure that’s safe?” I asked. “Ah sure, just needs a bit of an oil change,” came the reply.

I headed back towards bigger roads. My evening ride had been a nice break after a busy day. But I couldn’t help envying those boys, spending their summer up in the Shehy mountains, messing with dirt bikes, exploring the hills, a bit of fishing. No schedules, no signal, just complete freedom.

I’ve never been good with talking. Not the small kind that fills silences. Not the heavy kind that’s supposed to matter. Every day, the same cacophony of hollow conversations - a torrent of idle nonsense, borrowed truths, and the occasional spark of original thought. We talk in circles about Trump, AI, the housing crisis. It’s all noise, and none of it really goes anywhere.

But when I get up on my Moto Guzzi, amid the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind, there’s a different kind of silence. No need for small talk. The road doesn’t speak. It just pulls.

I twist the throttle and the journey unfolds. Instinct and momentum carry me forward.

Through damp, mossy forests where gentle deer pause and look up. Along a boreen that winds up the mountain, past black lakes teeming with tiny trout too small to eat.

Over the bog road that sags and swells, where a pheasant bursts from the purple heather but doesn’t disrupt my flow. Down a narrow stretch where grass grows thick between the wheel tracks and the stone walls close in. A rabbit finds itself trapped ahead of the Guzzi, white tail flicking as it bounds along - nowhere to go but forward, until it finally slips sideways into the safety of the ferns.

Sometimes the road brings me to misty cliffs and desolate hills out west, where the wild Atlantic hurls itself endlessly at the rocks - erupting in bursts of fury, then receding in a fizz of sizzling foam. It can be sketchy riding out here: loose surface, sharp bends, sudden gusts. But on the bright side, if you drop your bike there’s no one around to notice except for a few spray-painted sheep.

Feel the cool mist on your face. The pockets of cold air, then warm. The hum of tarmac, the scuff of gravel. The wind carrying faded traces of yesterday’s slurry and last week’s gorse fires. The sweet scent of hawthorn, the earthy punch of wild garlic. The brine of the bay, the stench of the estuary.

On these roads, my voice is irrelevant. I don’t need an opinion on American foreign policy, or Apple’s latest acquisition. The hush of the wind silences me. The rumble of the engine decides for me.

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