Preamble.
When I arrived at Trinity College Dublin I raised a slight
stir.
A female with a fancy bike.
Lots to talk about.
A group gathered to check in and bike-sit in
turn. One guy commented my rear bag was “quite large”.
I spent two days trying to decide what to
remove.
I caved in and took the
flipflops out but persevered with the pliers as I’d kick myself if I needed
those.
Otherwise, I was impressed how serenely calm I could be
before the Transatlantic Way.
Through the
briefing, up until the end of the day before.
We had a meal, went to bed, slept (granted it was a little late because
of heat and noise outside) then at 6am I woke with the alarm in a blind panic.
I was starting something big today.
Being first in the breakfast line was a strong start.
Day 1 – Dublin to an
Undisclosed Bay
We cycled to the start down a fine little path along the
river and herded 9 women to have our photos taken for the start of the ride.
TSK and I were in the first wave. For a few miles he kept glancing over his
shoulder to make sure I was still in the pack of 20 guys until I finally said,
“stop worrying about me and just ride!”
At the next roundabout he went straight on and I turned left. I didn’t expect that would be the last I’d
see of him for the rest of the race but I didn’t expect us to go our separate
ways so soon.
The first bit of the ride was beautiful, scenic and
relaxed. I eventually turned away from
all of the other competitors – much to the surprise of the 3 blokes sat on my
wheel.
For a while the traffic was intensely busy on my route but I
did manage to get off the nasty R road on to some back lanes and cut a few
corners off before I fell in to a village for lunch – this first audax control
suited my lunch stop and although TSK had already eaten, he rocked up from
around the corner as he had been chasing me for the last 2 miles.
He set off whilst I finished lunch and then peeled off in a
different direction.
I dodged a major
dual carriage way by joining a local lane and then a long Sustrans Towpath
which ran North for 50 miles.
Perfect,
paved, traffic free, riverside roads.
Towards 150km I was stricken with a puncture. I found a lovely rock to sit on and fixed it
calmly and methodically. I pumped up the
tube but then when I unscrewed the nozzle on the pump, the valve body itself
unscrewed, letting all the air out, just as a pair of dog-walkers were
passing. They hung around and chatted as
I worked. I deployed the pliers for the
first time to fix the valve nozzle tight before trying again. The older lady pointed out I had “a big hill
ahead”. The younger one said, “Christ
mum, the lady can’t even fix the wheel, don’t rub it in”. They offered to go and fetch a pump but I
refused under race rules and also because, having deployed the pliers, I knew I
had it fixed. They still said they were going to drive back up the drive in 15
minutes to make sure I’d gone.
I skirted around the lake which demarks Antrim from the rest
of Northern Ireland and skipped in towards Plumbridge just before the mountain
range which is far more easily climbed in the West than the East. Plumbridge was the end of my 200k Audax and I
ventured that the shop was now closed at 11:30 so settled for a chippy which
offered me too much food and no receipt.
A Frenchman in his late 50s joined me for dinner. He had limited English yet insisted on
correcting my French. I bought him a
coke to save him having to carry £19.20 in change for the rest of the trip and
to address the horror of the shop owner when the guy produced nothing but notes.
It was weird finally joining a steady and growing stream of
riders as I was identified as “the lone dot that went off on its own”. I had already exceeded my “normal” ride
distance of 200k by 20km or so but getting to Derry felt like what it was – the
first control.
At about 1:30 am I rolled over towards the bridge. Getting through the well-illuminated art
installation that is the Peace Bridge area was like being stuck in some kind of
cruel Krypton Factor game with glass and marble and stainless steel and steps
but I made it in the end to a willing group of volunteers and about 5 other
riders.
There was a lot of talking and cooling down so I got
away. I stopped in a petrol station for
a chocolate milk and stocked up on some night snacks.
I didn’t plan to stop in Derry city. I knew that on day 1 I’d have race excitement
and wouldn’t be able to sleep, even if I stopped at a reasonable hour, so I’d
already decided to keep going until I dropped on day 1. I tried my best to advise a Dutch guy who was
struggling with his Garmin by suggesting he restarts it but my Dutch and my
tolerance for others’ tech problems were reserved for, “just follow the pink
line mate, you’ll be fine”.
I wobbled out of Derry and into the reassuring countryside,
pausing in a field to hide from an approaching boy racer insistent on burning
tyre rubber and revving his engine as loudly as possible.
I took a leak by some hay bails whilst I
considered a camp then carried on going.
The skies were pouring with fog.
I suspected either one of the riders had set fire to their bib shorts or
the boy racers were actually fleeing the scene of a crime as an icy wet stream
of cloud slicked off the moor.
It felt bloody cold, remedied by my Rapha windproof which was
warm enough to keep the chill off, even when the sleeves-wetted out with the
combination of fog, sweat and sunscreen.
I traced my way over two moors which took a long time as I
wasn’t yet completely used to the weight of the bike and had to walk some of
the hill climbs.
Just as I acknowledged
that dark had come, I convinced myself that dawn was on the way.
If I could just make it to that I could get
good progress on day 1 – maybe even ride through.
Unfortunately, coming off the second moor I started to get
dozy and awareness of fatigue setting in.
I started looking for bivi spots which combined remoteness and low
elevation for warmth. As I descended
some switchbacks, the possibilities were good and then I found a beach with one
rider sleeping and another just leaving.
I laid my tent down on the sand (didn’t even try to pitch) and crawled
inside with my sleeping bag, closing the midge net behind me to keep the sand
flies off.
From my vantage point, over the next two hours, I watched
the sun rise out of the sea where I faced vaguely North East. One of my biggest regrets of the trip is not
getting my camera out to record it but… sand flies.
Day 2 – Undisclosed
Bay to Letterkenny
At 7am I got up and went skinny dipping, flashing my full-on
bouncing boobs at a lady walking her dog as I leapt over the waves to avoid a
full-frontal splash. I quickly got in,
had a rapid swim then ran out and got dry.
Once dry I was warm but I wrapped up and folded away the tent and sleeping
bag to pump the blood to make sure. I
brewed up and ate porridge chatted to TSK who had camped elsewhere at midnight
and set off early. The ride out from the
beach was hard but by the time I got to the café at the entrance to Malin Head
I was in fine spirits. With a start to
the race like that, I didn’t care what happened to the rest of the week – I had
nailed my holiday on day 1.
Approaching Malin head I saw riders outside a shop. I thought I would get some lead on them if I
passed but even better than that, around the corner was a café. TSK joined me as he was leaving the loop of
the island. I also had a chat to Laura
Scott.
When I left, a number of us were heading one way or the
other on Malin Head.
We cycled to the
top, took pictures, rested.
Realising I
hadn’t cleaned my teeth yet, I used the wonderful washroom facilities.
I nearly had a nervous breakdown when someone
flew a drone overhead and I thought it was a Hornet.
Malin Head – places I was looking forward to
Number 1.
The coastal roads continued to be gloriously scenic for some
distance though I was starting to struggle with snoozies. On noticing a sign to a bird hide I
remembered these are excellent places to sleep. I spent some time in one in
Kent once, wishing I’d brought my sleeping bag and not booked into the fancy
pub for my work trip.
I pushed my bike down, locked it up outside and slept for 40
minutes in the happy hum of the wooden hut.
All insects were outside, it smelled of pine and it was womb-like – warm
and dark. I put my head on my shoes and
kept my knees propped against the wall to aid recovery and not get in the way
of anyone entering. I needn’t have
worried. I lay undisturbed.
Eventually the lovely country lanes degenerated into a main
road nightmare. As I hauled along the
hard shoulder, a chap passed me on a road bike, calling out, “Hey, Don’t you
remember me from last night?” It’s
usually a worrying thing for a girl to hear.
Indeed the local cycling club rider, manning the control in Derry, had a
short conversation with me the night before about not riding as a couple with
our respective other-halves. He rode
away, leaving me with the advice not to stay in Letterkenny overnight.
The main road got worse and as I barrelled along trying
desperately to zone-out the traffic with my head down I found my first cash-haul
of the race. A whole £1. I started to doubt if I was on the right
route but realised that Ireland is not just one long chain of beautiful rural
villages but requires the occasional main road effort to link areas together. In Letterkenny there was nothing that
persuaded me to stay and a few things that persuaded me not to – traffic, old
lady busses, my new friend’s advice. As
I rounded the last roundabout out of town, a middle aged drunken man rushed to
his feet, ran across the pavement to ask me the time. I’m sure he was just waiting for a bus but he
was a bit too close to comfort and a bit too eager to be near me so I shouted 8:24
as I sprinted away.
I was a bit annoyed at myself as I had few supplies on board. I kept riding until I found the last place
that probably still belongs to Letterkenny – a restaurant / pub called
Larkins. They were still open at 9pm and
brought my food promptly. I got chatting
to the manager about what we were doing and about local sports people and as I
found myself nodding off, I asked if they had anywhere I could sleep.
I was presented with a grand open grassy area near the
stream. I camped up against the fence
under the cover of trees and chatted to the owner who came out for a cigarette. I turned a blind eye as they burned their
rubbish in the “incinerator” (metal box), hoping no sparks would set fire to
the tent and bedded down for the best nights’ sleep I’ve ever had between two
roads.
Day 3 – Letterkenny
to Crolly
At 7 am I was awake with the light. I packed up my stuff then sat on the deck out
the front of the pub to eat what fruit and cereal bars I had. Next: Glen Veigh. I’d been looking forwards to this – number 2.
As I approached Glen Veigh I caught up with James, taking
pictures. He was riding on a Brompton
and explained to me he had a spare chain ring in case his knees started to give
him trouble on the ride. He didn’t want
to put it on as it would deprive him of all power on downhills and even the
flats (with a good tail wind). At the
end of his explanation my own bike started playing up and I lost my top 5
gears. Not really knowing what the
problem was, I said I’d address it at the next village.
The descent was great fun.
Adrian (the organiser) had asked me to look for a spot which someone had
lost off their bike. Although I had the
tracker location I didn’t know my own location as my phone chose that moment to
stop offering me the internet. I called
Adrian but my tracker wasn’t updating my position, so clearly we were in a GPS
blackspot. James didn’t see the spot
either as he walked his Brompton down the descent so we figured it had jumped
off the side of the path. I did my best
to keep up with James on the flat with only 5 gears and we arrived at the café
not far apart for lunch together… or breakfast – or whatever you want to call
it.
We climbed out of the café and onto the next long descent where,
despite my tricky gears which I found I could now get up to 9th gear
by bunnhopping, I left James well behind, freewheeling the Brompton. I was just pleased I could now bunnyhop a
20kg bike that I could hardly lift last week.
As I stood on the pedals to power up the hill on the edges
of Falcarragh, I switched down some gears and snap! My gear cable failed
completely. Like a bolt of lightning it
instantly dawned on me that I had none of the little tube one needs to do an
internal cable replacement on my bike.
It would have been grammes to carry but I did not even think of it.
James offered to help but I sent him on his way as I
shouted, “Good news: know what the problem is. Bad news: gotta fix it”
I brought some tape for this exact reason and set about
cutting down the old cable and retrieving its innards from my lever. It snapped right at the lever (caused by a
bad handlebar tape job by me) and I needed my pliers to retrieve the snapped
ends. I taped together the old and new
ends of cable and tried to pull it through – no luck. It was just too fat for
the hole.
A lady came out and offered help and, realising she couldn’t
help, tea. I was too polite and
desperate to say no. Whilst I drank my tea
and stared at it, waiting for the answer to come she went to get Kevin from next
door who “has a bike” and he brought his tools.
He also brought strimmer twine but sellotape really doesn’t stick anything well with stainless steel so I
insisted on persevering with the cable.
Kevin made loads of silly suggestions including turning the bike upside
down to let gravity work on the cable to pull it up the tube. Stupid Kevin – rules of the Velomnati exclude
turning bikes upside down but also I needed to get the cable down the tube not
up it… but then his reasoning helped me think… I did need a better cable as a
lead and suddenly realised I had brought two cables with me!
By this point the third rider had stopped to offer me help
and spare cable but finally we were all under control and (this time with
confidence) I could tell them it was in the bag.
I boldly pulled out the old cable, pushed the spare new cable up the hole and
gripped it with my wonder-pliers through the massive cable ports (thank you Kinesis
/ Mike Hall geniuses) then tape-wrapped it to the new cable and pulled it all
back. Three of us held our breath as the
cable gradually wobbled out of the hole to a great sigh of relief. The lady made more tea.
I finished the cable routing, explaining to Kevin what I was
doing. To make him feel better about his
tools, I used the 10mm spanner to tighten the nut on my multitool that was
coming loose. It didn’t need tightening
really but it made Kevin feel useful.
The lady invited me to wash my hands in her sink and
apologised for the mess. I explained I
had 3 bikes in my kitchen and a few dishes in the sink was nothing. I left 2 hours after the cable snapped.
2 hours later I was in Crolly.
On my Google reccee I’d been keen to stop at
Crolly campsite but as the day had progressed I’d originally put it out of my
mind with the intention of continuing.
However, it was 6pm, I’d not eaten dinner, was hungry and staring down
the barrel of a long climb or two.
I
decided to call it a night, camp and shower and head to the pub for
dinner.
I ate a steak and talked a lot
of French to some Irish couples who come to the pub to practice their French
every week.
I had a half pint of beer
and slept well, despite the midges and one other resident snoring German.
Day 4 – Crolly to
Benabullin
I got a good start on Crolly. On the road by 6:30. There was a twinge of regret that I’d not
pushed on but it felt good to have a half day in the bag that wasn’t chosen by
me failing but was chosen by fate. It
also felt good that my shifter was running a lot smoother.
As I left Ardara I
was passed by a van advertising popcorn and coffee and I thought, “Imagine if
he’s set up at the top”.
When I saw him
set up at the top; well, I thought I was imagining it.
I sat patiently on the wall whilst he boiled
his water and threw some corn in the machine then enjoyed a half bag of popcorn
and excellent coffee before embarking on the second climb of the day then
dropping back to the coast.
Suddenly all
we could see to the West was Canada (imagining).
The views across the peat bog were unchanging:
miles of moorland stretching away. No
buildings given that they would sink into the peat bog, never to be seen
again. Eventually I pulled into Donegal
itself. Of all the beautiful restaurants
on offer, I didn’t fancy company that day.
Instead I fancied crispy beef and boiled rice with some spring rolls. The Chinese takeaway at the end of the
harbour obliged and I sat on a bench watching tourists get off a seal-watching
craft whilst I dunked my rice in the sticky spicy sauce and dribbled spring
roll juice on my knees.
It’s a good job I stocked up on high energy produce because
when I pushed my bike away I felt my headset wobble like a sack of
potatoes. I’d had a sneaking suspicion
since the ferry terminal that there was a problem and now it was manifest, on
my radar, noticeable. I took the top cap
off the headset, engaged the allen key and watched the expander bolt disappear
down into the depths of the fork. The
bit that was supposed to hold the front wheel to the rest of my bike was not
working well. It was a miracle I made it
down GlenVeigh in one piece.
Asshats.
I took every bag off my bike and turned the bugger upside
down. Velomnati rules say: Fuck the
rules when you’ve dropped the headset bolt down your head tube. Thankfully, it dropped right back out again
and, bike righted, I set about tensioning it approximately so that the whole
damn thing would be held together again.
At least without any bags on the bike I could check the alignment and
then once the bags were on the bike, I didn’t have to look at it for the rest
of the trip.
I rode away from Donegal like I was riding a new bike.
TSK had commented that the Sligo day was much less scenic
(euphemism for hilly) than Donegal and so it transpired as I continued on
towards Sligo along rolling coastlines.
As I turned onto a minor road, I saw a sign for hostel accommodation
which sometimes implies a campsite too.
Enquiring with an elderly man scraping the moss off the wall around his
house, I established the location of the accommodation but after inspecting the
dorm (all that was left), I decided I had a few more hours in the legs and less
desperation for a bed in the presence of others. I said I’d do the horseshoe into the local
hills then see if I felt like coming back later. The climb ahead of me only seemed to be about
450m and 10km ish so about the same as the “Surprise View” climb near home. The view from the top was indeed a surprise
as the sun set over the islands and inlets and gave a great light show of
silver.
Descending from there took me into a forest where I found a
covering of sturdy trees, a limited breeze for risking branch-fall but just
enough to keep the midges sensible.
I
stumbled around in the dark a bit with the bike, climbing over fallen trunks
but settled for the night secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be
discovered.
I did stand on a tent pole
in the dark and snapped it 4 inches from the end which wasn’t a problem on the
night due to the excellent furrows of the perfectly aligned tree patterns.
It was however a worry for me over the next
few days – would the pole and the tent survive a breeze and rainfall and keep
me dry?
In all likelihood I could make
Connemara by early evening and could stay there to shelter if I wanted to but
I’d like to carry on.
I checked the weather,
it was getting wetter but wind speeds were just picking up to a modest 20 mph.
Day 5 – Benabullin to
Ballycastle
Dignity and I climbed our way out of the trees in the
morning and headed into Sligo for Breakfast.
I pulled into a car park to brew up but didn’t have enough water for a
coffee so I packed my stove back up. As
I zipped it into my frame bag, a sharp pain shot through my back. It had been niggling all morning and now it
was properly gone. I gingerly lowered
myself to the hard ground and tried to massage it out using my legs then rolled
on it. More shooting pains. I lay still for a while then levered myself back
onto my feet. I could at least, it
seemed, stand up.
It seemed my race was over.
I considered getting into Sligo to see a doctor or physio but decided
that they would only tell me to keep it moving so I tried a walk.
I did a lap of the carpark.
I tried pushing my bike – that was possible.
I would at least walk into town and make a decision as to
what to do. If I had to walk all day, at
least I’d make 15-20 miles progress.
After 2 minutes walking down the road I decided to do a deal
with my body and see if we could ride the bike.
Leaning forward to get my foot over the frame was the hard part. Setting off was the hard part. I could just about ride with my body hunched
over like an old lady so I got on the drops and started my ride into
Sligo. So long as I didn’t need to stop
too often I’d be OK – as we approached the city with traffic lights.
The lights were mercifully green. I went into the pharmacy
then the café to get coffee and cake for breakfast. I sat on a bench watching people meet for the
first time and wondering what to do. The
Ibuprofen I’d taken in the morning started to kick in and I wolfed down the
Co-codamol and applied deep heat to my lower back.
I concluded there was nothing better to do than try so, as
well as taking the drugs, I got my allen keys out again and moved the saddle
forward and tilted it to take as much strain off my back as possible. I then went on to complete a loop of
Sligo. I still have no idea what that
loop was in there for as I didn’t notice any particularly stunning scenery, though
all my effort was concentrated on one pedal stroke after the next and not
hitting any potholes that might give me grief.
The loop brought me to a Super ValU store where I sat to eat with the
teenage school children congregating where I’d left my bike. No-one wanted to sit with the smelly old bike
lady with twigs in her hair so I was soon on my own again.
I could climb hills in my lowest gear, still hunched over
the handlebars like I was sprinting against Mark Cavendish on a very slow
summit finish. Where I was no longer
able to sustain the ridiculous riding position, I got off and walked the hills
thinking, “brilliant, I am 1/3 in to this adventure and I’m already walking the
little hills. This is going to be one
long challenge”.
A little later I arrived at Esky – a place I’d sussed for a
bivi spot and one which encouraged me to go look at the Tower located
there. I ate food in the lee of the Tower
then used the public facilities (which were few and far between) to fill my
water bottles and empty well… other stuff.
I decided the best thing I could do was give my back a night
in a real bed so I started looking for B&Bs. The scenery along the coast was amazing,
looking over towards Achill Island – my 3rd place to look forwards
to on the trip. I noticed a big sign for
a B&B which looked new but decided to just knock on doors. My main aim was a village with a café called
Mary’s. It would probably be closed by
the time I got there but that gave scope for other eateries surely.
When I reached Ballycastle the first thing I saw was a sign
for free camping in the beer garden of the pub.
Very tempting but I had promised my back a night on a real mattress. After several conversations with several
different villagers, the owner of the B&B I’d been aiming for decided he
didn’t want to work and instead I ended up in the company of an ex-Manchester
cop, Mary and her little daughter, Mollie.
In the midst of all this I learned that TSK’s uncle Mike had
taken a fall and was in hospital, very near to death. He was one of the few Rodgerses outside of
close family that I had any opportunity to spend time with as they lived
locally. On my wedding day he put his arm
around me and said, “You look like a strong woman. Rodgers men need strong women”.
Mary made me a new bed and ran her own bath for me to relax
my back, chatted for a while then left me to my bed.
I ate my emergency food and slept like a log.
Renewed, I set off with the intention of making Conemara to
the usual local voice of, “That’s an awfully long way” as well as some
mutterings about wind. At this point I
hadn’t learned to stop listening to those voices and had to keep checking my
race notes to make sure it was feasible.
There was Achill Island in the way – so it would depend how hilly that
was. It was a long way to Conemara but
it was actually going to be my last ditch attempt to catch up the rest of the
race – or at least the back-of-the-middle of it.
Day 6 – Ballycastle
to Achill Island
I rode away from Mary’s watching the scenery go by in the
fleeting sunshine. Achill Island – the
places I’m looking forward to seeing number 3.
There was a long way to go and as the coastline disappeared it was
replaced with long expanses of low moorland road linking small clusters of
houses that could hardly be called villages.
They went on and on without coffee or sustenance until lunchtime.
I’d used up all of the food I bought from England on the way
to one lonely garage at the end of a long straight road.
I bought cheese, tomatoes and pancakes and
settled down to make my own coffee, having suffered a rather bad petrol station
one the day before.
 |
| A little reminder |
As I was paying, the
lady on the counter advised me that “gale force winds are coming”. I needed to
check this out.
The wind speeds were
rising to 20 but I hadn’t checked the gusts and she was right – up to 50 mph
gusts were on the way.
Once I’d brewed up an, admittedly, luke-warm coffee and
eaten lunch, I felt much better. I had
my first sighting of another rider in two days – Julie Bienvenue. I was all perky and filled with lunch. She was arriving (as I had) empty and
shallow. We exchanged a few pleasantries
but I got on my way. I was really
pleased when she caught me up later and we rode some distance together on the
approach to Achill Island, chatting animatedly about being women working in
mens’ worlds. I thought I had it tough
in engineering, she works for French cycle clothing company, “Café du
Cycliste”. We compared high-end kit, me
in full Rapha for the day, her in CdC.
We rode side by side under the rules except for thinning to single file
for passing cars, where she surged ahead and I got ahead on the downhills like
the crazy beast I am.
I told her about my interactions with a Dutch guy who
couldn’t operate his Garmin on day 1 and she told me about an Irish guy
navigating the whole thing on his phone.
Oh how we laughed at others’ adventures.
Welcome to the party guys.
We separated at the Achill Sound Bridge as the tide seethed
underneath us and I went to top up water and buy food in the Spar and Julie
stopped for food in a café. I spent time
talking to the Achill Island dot-watchers who had seen us arrive on their trip
out for barbeque meat. They told me to
look out for their food stash outside their house on the second loop of the
island.
I set off for my loops.
It’s difficult to describe Achill Island as the word “beautiful” doesn’t
cut it.
Great cliffs rise out of the
sea.
Beaches span acres of open sand
with big field spaces in between.
Hidden
coves house amazing swim spots with sandy shores.
Blue-green waters tickle at the toes of black
rock.
In between, rangey hills tempt the
hiker (or fell runner) to conquer rolling peaks.
Tiny colourful cottages dot the shores and
pepper the roads and there are so few people there.
By the time I reached the most Westerly point, I desperately
wanted to stop there, on one of those beaches and watch the sun set and wake up
there in the morning and go for a swim but I couldn’t because a) I was racing
and b) the storm was coming. Any notion
I had of a romantic skinny dip in the morning would literally be pissed on, and
no doubt about it.
As I continued my loop I was further haunted by perfect bivi
spots on remote sandy beaches with rocky coastlines like combs poking into the
water.
Then there was the cross-over
point where the first loop becomes the second loop – big open campsite fields
which seem to go on for miles with views of the mountains.
The second loop seemed a little crueller
I found the house of the dot-watchers with a
“Welcome TAW riders” sign, bottle of water, chocolate and bananas.
No sign of any BBQ so I carried on up to the top of the hill
to sit on a bench overlooking their house and eat my banana. I scooped down and up the other side of the
next climb to a car waiting at the top, two big guys jumping up and down
cheering, “Come on Andrea!” We exchanged
an empty banana skin for a full one and had a quick chat before they watched me
climb the zig zag slopes out of the second loop. I bloody had to ride it with them watching me
across the valley.
By the time I was leaving the Island it was drawing close to
a late dinner. I fell into the Achill
Sound Hotel at around 9pm and begged for food.
The choices were chicken goujons or scampi. Scampi was perfect and I wolfed down the
mushy peas, which I usually give a wide berth.
Thoughts of 50mph winds and lashing rain starting any time soon filled
me with anxiety and dread as I nodded into my dinner for the fifth time. I texted TSK to tell him where I was and he
replied with, “stayed there 2 days ago, lovely bloke”.
The secret was out.
What would I do? I could use this
advantage of being there at 9pm, fed and watered to get some gain on my two day
delay. The road ahead was all Greenway
which TSK described as “lovely with plenty of bivi opportunities” but did I
want to risk my tent with its broken pole in 50mph winds. No.
Did I want to risk not finding any other accommodation? No.
So far on Ireland, alternative bivi shelters – bus stops,
abandoned buildings (without a new build right next door) were completely rare
at best.
I checked on the price of the room. 40 Euros without breakfast. SOLD.
My bike was locked in the lobby of the hotel on full view for the night
(slightly unnerving but it gave me good incentive to be up at 6:30 to make sure
it wasn’t left unlocked with the patrons).
As I wheeled it inside, the rain was already quite insistent.
I got clean but didn’t do any laundry because I wouldn’t be
able to dry it off. I got my tent pole
out and taped it with tough-tape but it was still floppy like the most
uninspiring penis ever so I packed it away temporarily and wondered what to do
next with that. I checked my race notes
and made a plan for Connemara the next day – looking forwards to a free night
of accommodation and a great hostel experience.
I would arrive early and sleep but then leave early and continue as I
meant to. I dropped into a fitful sleep
with dreams of Achill Island.
Day 7 – Achill Island
to Connemara
Porridge eaten, coffee made, all with the joy of an electric
kettle. I was sorry to leave the island
– particularly because it was raining quite heavily. My disappointment was soon replaced with the
joy of the Greenway off the Island and through Mulranny to Newport. 17 miles of traffic free cycling. TSK was right, there were numerous bivi spots
but many quite far away from Achill Island.
The rain fell consistently. The
Greenway dodged on and off the road and I never really was sure if I should
keep following it or get on the road so I went with the flow, getting on and
off from time to time but in the end the Greenway was more enjoyable so I stuck
with it. I rode a rollercoaster of, “I
could have done this last night” / “I’m glad I wasn’t doing this last night”.
At one point I dropped off it into a town offering a “proper
café” at the convenience store but when I got there the café was shut and there
was just machine coffee which looked bad so I pushed my bike back up the 30%
grade hill, rejoined the Greenway and later came across a sign for Rosies with
distance markers 1km, 500m then a map (!) telling me how to get to it and it
was right on the route.
I hung my wet coat and trousers to drip in the porch,
grabbed a cushion for my tush and revelled in them spoiling me with coffee and
pancakes with Nutella.
Through the bright lights and big city of Westport, I felt a
little out of place and it was a relief to start heading back out along coastal
roads, finally towards Connemara. I had
a few checks of Trackleaders along here, to see where Julie had got to and
noticing that another rider, Patrick Marren was also nearby. I was a little jealous of Julie who seemed to
have spent the night on Achill Island though I was glad to have been back to
the mainland by the time the rain hit.
I didn’t really notice the weather getting worse. As I started to climb the mountain range of
Connemara, I still had my waterproof jacket sleeves pulled up to my elbows as
it was warm enough to enjoy the weather.
About half way up, I pulled those sleeves down over my forearms,
introducing a big slug of water to the inside of my coat. And up I climbed.
With the warmth of the climb, I was still comfortable until
I reached the summit. A number of cafes
/ restaurants presented themselves but the thought of getting cold and taking
off wet layers, only to need to put them back on again, was too much to bear so
I kept riding.
As I started on the downhill, the wind picked up. Gusts were blowing me 5ft across the road so
I cycled right down the middle of the roadway.
It was just wide enough for a car in each direction so I was effectively
blocking the road. If a driver had
approached from behind they would have had to wait for me to sort myself out
before they passed (good) and thankfully, none did. Oncoming drivers I could see so I had enough
time to move gingerly over to the edge of the road and put my feet down for
security to avoid being blown 3ft off the edge of the road into the wet bracken
or worse, buffeted onto the wrong side of the road into the path of an
over-taking driver.
In addition, I started watching for the 50mph gusts moving
across the heather and stopped to put my feet down so that they couldn’t do me
any harm. As they blew over, I waddled
along astride my bike for they were short-lived enough that it wasn’t worth me
getting off and back on again. Only two
coaches scared the living daylights out of me.
The scenery was still awesome in all its wetness.
I didn’t particularly want to stop to
photograph the epic places I had previously considered beautiful bivi
opportunities but I did shelter in front of one stopped van to picture Dough
Lake, giving a thumbs-up to the occupants of the vehicle for sheltering me
before setting off again, jabbing at my Garmin map to zoom out to cries of
“Where is the fucking hostel!!!”.
I was colder during this trip than I was during the storm. For instance, I didn’t put my gloves on at
all through the storm. However, by the
time I reached the hostel, the water coming in the neck of my coat had met with
the residual water off my forearms and the sweat rising up from my belly to
completely saturate me through inside my coat.
I didn’t really want to add any more layers and get them wet.
I splashed into the hostel grounds. I knew the race organisation had left the day
before but I still almost expected that someone at the hostel would be looking
out for us. Apart from another riders’
bike outside there was no-one there. A
note on reception said, “we return at 5pm, please make yourself at home. Coffee, tea…” (you had me at “coffee,
tea”). I took my waterproofs off and my
jersey and hung them up, made a coffee and sat down to check Trackleaders,
catch up with friends and wait for my free night’s accommodation.
I’d just started on my coffee when Julie arrived. She had watched my coat disappearing down the descent and decided that it must be possible so had set out to follow me down the hill. We had a chat and then she left to talk to
her husband on the phone. The warden arrived
and there was much talk of whether or not people had booked. “I was just hanging onto the coat tails of
the Transatlantic way” I said. He
laughed at me and coldly said, “They left on Saturday”. So much for the hero’s welcome.
As Julie and I chatted, Patrick introduced himself.
I was charged 42 Euros for my room which I relented on,
muttering something about him having a captive market. Patrick (who emerged from the bar) booked
into the last single room at 35 Euros and Julie was ripped off for a private
family room at 60 Euros.
I must have looked poor because my 42 Euro room had 4 beds
in it too. It also smelled of drain and
so I had to have the windows open to let the smell out. On the plus side, I got the radiator working
so promptly baked and slung all my kit and shoes all over the place to
dry.
I set about making my dinner and kept looking outside at the
rain and wind. I wished I’d turned down
my room and got another 30 miles down the road to the next hostel but then I
was drying and my kit was drying and surely I’d be able to sleep right?
I cooked my dried “curryrice” whilst all the other
international beautiful young things cooked fresh fried mushrooms and ham pasta
sauce and exquisite Chinese dishes. I
didn’t see either of the other riders. A
twitter comment lodged in my brain, @CrispyCX commented, “seems like it’s all
going to plan… if there is a plan” and I acknowledged that, beyond surviving
day 1, riding 100 miles a day average and my race notes which were a rough idea
of potential bivi spots every 50 miles, I really had no more of a race
plan. So I decided to make myself a race
plan – or two – to help me get to the finish line in time. My 100 mile a day target was OK but I didn’t
have any margin for error or disaster so I came up with a plan to over- achieve
and one to get me to the end in once piece.
A just-in-time plan.
I reluctantly went back to my room to sleep. My sleeping bag was airing. I slept under the duvet. I had the feeling that I was drying the mattress
out, not the other way around. Although
the room was warm, the wind whisked through the windows that I had to have open
to get rid of the smell and the storm raged outside. I was used to this and the earplugs kept
enough of that noise out and the eye mask kept enough of the uplighters light
out but then the hefalumps started upstairs.
People moving. Every time I woke
up I looked at my watch. 10pm, 11pm, 12:30, 1am.
I started to think I would need a decent night’s sleep at
some point soon. I tried dragging my
duvet into the common room but there were no sofas just chairs. I fell asleep
instantly but was aware that I wouldn’t be in a good physical state in the
morning if I slept draped over a chair.
Then some beautiful young things walked through the common room at 1 am
turning all the lights on.
I found my phone and stood in reception to get wifi to book
the Travelodge in Galway ahead. I’d need
another good night’s sleep to recover from this one and the storm and if I
didn’t NEED it I’d cancel the room tomorrow.
The manager appeared from nowhere (2am by now) asking if there was a
problem.
The banging noises were a bunch of youngsters staying
upstairs. Not them but their “carers”
who were getting up every hour to check on them - waking people who then traipsed
to the loo every 5 minutes, activating the fan in the bathroom and
arrrrghhh!. He went to have a word. When he returned, I was still booking my
hotel so he assumed I was still dissatisfied and gave me the key to a dorm all
to myself. The only downside – the dash
across the carpark in the thick of the storm.
It was worth it. I slept through
the night in a single bunk, peaceful as anything. I had my next night’s accommodation booked
and despite intentions to get back on the road at 4am, the storm forecast 50mph
winds through the night until 8am. I
vowed to be up at 7.
When I returned to my room in the morning it still stank but
my stuff was bone dry thanks to the radiator.
I unpacked the milk and butter for the communal breakfasts
and helped myself to cereal and toast before most others were up then hit the
road as planned. This photo is a
remarkable reflection of the eye of the storm. At no time do I remember it being this sunny.
Day 8 – Connemara to
Galway.
The first thing I noticed this day was the plush-looking
alternate hostel 30 miles later. There
were things like 5 stars and “luxury budget accommodation” and it was stone
fronted with a view over a lake. I just
kept thinking of all the dry clothing I was carrying and my glee at finding
no-one else’s bike had left before mine.
Riding to my new plan, all I had to do with this day was
make it to Galway and I set that as a really decent target in my head. If anything, I wanted to make it beyond but I
had this decision to make about whether to cancel my room before 12 and get my
money back. The weather wasn’t great and
the wind was still vicious but a sizeable portion of it was at my back as I
headed inland for Galway. I remember
Patrick screaming past me, “Paaaayyyybaaack!”.
Then we stopped and got coffee.
By 11:45 I had consolidated my thoughts. A stay at Galway would be a luxury but one
that I wanted to take. The best thing
about Travelodges is they have no expectations of their customers. I could rock in any time, put my bike in my
room and leave whenever I wanted. I kept
the booking.
Patrick and I rolled in and out of company.
The final time we met that day was at the end
of the open road into Galway.
His friend
had advised him it was a shitty road to ride on at rush hour and as it was 5pm,
he had stopped for a couple of hours to charge his devices as without a dynamo
he had no other power supply.
I ate my
food then decided the traffic couldn’t be worse than Sheffield commuter traffic
so set off at 6pm to make my way into town.
Patrick was going to ride after rush hour then find somewhere on the
South side of Galway to stop.
As he sipped his coffee and plugged in his devices to
charge, I said, “Right, I’m going to ride on because if I sit here chatting all
day, I’m never going to finish this thing.”
“Ah fek off then”, he said, “You leave me on my own”.
I wasn’t sure if he was serious or joking but tried to smile
my way through the discomfort. I
actually felt some guilt as I left him behind and spent the next part of my
busy ride through traffic half hoping that he would suddenly appear from behind
me. When he did, he rocked past and
disappeared into the distance.
As predicted, the clerk at Galway Travelodge turned a blind
eye as I walked my bike up the stairs. I
went to a petrol station shop to replace my “curryrice” and porridge pot and to
buy supplies for the morning then the desk clerk recommended me a shoreside
restaurant which was impeccable. Hake
with asparagus risotto, soup, desert, tea.
I wobbled back to my room then dug out the pole from my
tent. Riding that day, two days after I
snapped the pole, I suddenly had a thought about splinted bones in first aid
emergencies and realised that I had the perfect implements in my bag to fix the
tent pole. Within 40 minutes, the pole
was taped and splinted using a camping knife and a channel-section tent peg
bound with a spare guy rope. It didn’t
just look strong, it looked stronger than before.
The last thing I did when I went to bed was check
trackleaders to see where TSK was and where Patrick had got to. Patrick was just ahead of me on the road,
bivvied (by the looks of it) in a bay outside Galway as he had planned. I noticed that Julie had also stopped in town
and I had caught up to Iona. As I got
into bed, I heard the familiar tick tick bang of someone else wheeling a bike
into the room across the hallway. My excitement
was short-lived as TSK texted me to say that had both ridden straight to Galway
in the morning and the next thing they both scratched. Though happy I was “beating” them, I was
sorry not to have a proper race on my hands any more – just Patrick left to go.
Clearly where I had been thinking, “Aha! Weather, this is
what I trained for…”, others were coming to the conclusion that they could not
go on if it was going to be like this.
Julie had confided in me that she enjoyed bike touring but was not
enjoying the push to get out and race every day. I was.
I enjoyed the need to keep travelling.
Sure, there were things I missed out on as I flew through the
countryside but there is no WAY I would have done that much riding on my own
without the drive of racing it.
I retired to my bed sleepy at 11pm and got up at 3am to
leave. A (different) happy desk clerk muttered something, I turned, to say,
“Pardon”, expecting some bullshit about bikes in rooms or, ”What the fuck are
you doing up at this hour?” and he repeated, “Have a nice ride.”
Day 9 – Galway to
Ballyduff
Finally, uncle Mike’s passing caught up with me. I’m not going to pretend like he was my
favourite uncle (I hardly had chance to find out) but he was an outdoorsy man
and although much older than many people who “die young”, he died suddenly and
it doesn’t seem fair. Death is never
nice right?
A pleasant 4am start seemed a fitting day to dedicate to
Uncle Mike and the general process of death and processing death. His spirit jumped out of the grass at me as I
took my jacket and waterproof trousers off in the 8am sun. It stayed with me all that day and the next
around to the Connemara loop up Connor pass and as I rode through the Cathedral
of mother nature and prayed to the beauty of the place and then I think I left
him behind on the descent down the other side.
I waved at Patrick as I passed whilst he was packing up his
overnight kit. He caught me up later in
Cliften and we ate brunch in the sunshine outside a café whilst a fleet of French
tourists jumped off a coach to quiz me on my titanium frame and Lauff
forks. The fascination with my bike by
strangers gave them the affectionate title of, “my fan club”. They continued to follow me around the route
wherever I was – never the same people, just a constant train of interested
persons. Some who had the confidence to
ask me about my ride, others who just gazed on it as I hid around a corner or
at a table with coffee, trying not to get dragged into a conversation.
I left Patrick to his device charging (it was starting to
dawn on me that this was the guy without gps) and I headed out across the coast
again towards places I was looking forwards to seeing Number 4 – the Burren.
As I rode the Burren I thought to myself, “If ever Purgatory
was based on a place, it is the Burren”.
Patrick continued with the stories: an army general once said of the
Burren, “Not enough wood to hang a man, not enough water to drown a man and not
enough earth to bury a man”. Oh bless
the British Army’s ambivalence for life.
It was indeed a place to consider death. Thousands of people died on the Burren during
the potato famine in a clusterfuck which involved “refugees” walking from one
town to another in search of food vouchers only to be told, you’ve come to the
wrong place, go back to where you came from.
After being fed they were dispatched to bury their own dead in mass
graves on the Burren. Like the Somme or
Auchwitz It is a place where you can feel the spirits.
There are also wonderful signs of life on the Burren. Species which don’t grow anywhere else on the
British Isles flourish in the tiny crevices between the limestone slabs. It’s like the Yorkshire Dales on acid and
maybe that’s why I found myself in awe of the place. It was 5 times bigger than I’d expected.
At the top, a bike lock sat on the wall and I thought, “I
bet that’s one of our lots’” but I wasn’t going to carry it around with me for
a week so I kept going to the summit.
There was a shop at the summit – thankfully. I had a list of things I should’ve bought in
Galway in my head. At the top of it was
Savlon as my saddle sores – though not bad – were now extensive and neither bum
butter nor Nivea cream were helping. I
also wanted to buy dried rice since last night’s replacement for “curryrice”
was uncle bens boil in the bag and since partially hydrated, that’s awfully
heavy. I also needed more porridge
pot.
Things changed dramatically when a coach full of French
tourists descended on a shop no bigger than an average English living
room. I grabbed biscuits and sweets, a
packet of crisps and ran. Thankfully the
French were all too occupied with hankering after the closed café and looking
for toilets to give me the fan club treatment.
From the Burren I dropped down to Doolin caves where,
mercifully, the café seemed open. I
locked up and stood with intent next to the café, waiting patiently whilst the
desk clerk sold tickets for the tour to more French tourists. Eventually she asked, “Did you want coffee?”
“Erm, well, I was hoping for food too”.
It was 10:30am but I was ready for
lunch.
I took great pleasure in sitting
in the industrial-sized conservatory on a comfy sofa reading a coffee table
book about ancient Ireland whilst I waited for Dawn the café lady to arrive for
her shift.
She was jolly and gorgeous and happy. I chatted with her colleague before she
started her shift. A girl who had moved
out of her flat and was now enjoying living alone on a campsite in her tent on
her own. “My boyfriend used to do the
tent and I used to leave him to it, I just got in the way”. She had checked her own guys on her second
hand army tent and had shored up her pitch with rocks in the middle of storm
Hector and was feeling very proud of herself.
She was just about to buy an electric bike for her 13 mile commute to
Doolin Caves every day. I gave her advice
to invest in decent cycling shorts instead of forking out for suspension on her
new bike. I felt that she would be just
fine. Otherwise skinny, blonde and a
little meek, she reminded me of a girl I was 23 years ago.
Past Doolin were the cliffs of Moher. Places I was looking forward to seeing number
5. I had a bivi spot planned here if I
needed it but instead I was rocking past at 11am with a semi-tail wind and
tourists were everywhere. The grossly
over-commercial carpark was heaving and I bolted to avoid getting stopped at the
pedestrian crossing half way down the roaring descent. All I saw of the cliffs of Moher were the
grassy slopes of the inland side. Things
I really need to come back and see number 1… but probably a bit more out of the
tourist rush season.
I rushed past Spanish Point beach – another potential skinny
dipping location.
By now, I was close to the ferry over the Shannon Estuary
and the boundary between County Clare and Limerick.
Unfortunately, beyond Moher, the plains were
relentless and the headwind / crosswind almost unbearable.
 |
Where Trep considers taking alternative
transport to the finish |
My average speed was 13km/hr for 2 hours
before I finally turned my back to it with 12 miles to go and I increased to
18km/hr.
I stopped at Kilee to eat and
checked trackleaders.
Patrick had gotten
past me somewhere and put substantial distance into me.
My heart sank a little and I kind of resigned
to spending the rest of the trip alone.
I don’t mind it but do admit that with another rider to chat to, I took
my mind off my legs and tried that little bit harder to stay in touch and wind
away the hours rather than mincing about on my own.
This is a big learning for me. As someone who is introverted in the positive
sense (I don’t need the company of others to motivate me), I didn’t realise
just how much faster I can go with someone else around. I was more surprised that I can maintain that
extra speed and effort at no detriment to my long-term performance. I was getting fitter than I realised and it
was my own sense of fatigue and fear of overstretching myself that was holding
me back.
Anyway, I ploughed on for the ferry alone. Head down in the cross wind, head up with the
tail wind, I grew closer to the population of Killimer. There’s a big power station near
Killimer. Not much else but it is,
nevertheless, a big employer and there’s a sudden increase in the number and
value of the homes along the road.
Big caravan parks face the Atlantic and the sun shone
through the blades of wind turbines as grumpy clouds on the other side of the
estuary gave a taste of things to come.
As I rode over one of the power station service roads on a bridge, a
lone roe deer trotted down the middle of the road underneath me. It seemed out of place but still a reminder
of the remoteness of the area.
I knew I would make the ferry in good time before sailings
stopped at 8pm but it was still a relief to get there at 5pm without mechanical
intervention. Any missed sailing would
put me substantially behind Patrick.
Two guys were outside the terminal chatting about farming
and passing on family businesses and it is something I talk about with a little
authority. They told me not to bother
about getting on this ferry as they go every half hour. I relaxed and enjoyed my tea and icecream and
watched another touring cyclist get on board the waiting ferry. After my icecream and half way through my
tea, I checked trackleaders. Patrick was
right on the other side of the ferry!
He’d obviously stopped for dinner which is exactly what I
was going to do. If I got on the ferry
it would see me within 45 minutes of him, even if he left the pub now. I downed my tea, said hurried goodbyes to my
farmer friends and sprinted on to the ferry.
I was the last customer to board.
Meanwhile, back in the office, my major contract was finally
signed and when I got on the ferry I found I had a text message indicating as
much. After a brief fist pump I realised
I was still more excited to be on the ferry and chasing down Patrick. New plans started to form. I was now going to ride through the night –
or at least as late as possible to get ahead of him. I won’t call him lazy but he did seem to be
sticking to reasonable hours (semi reasonable) and yet he rode so much faster
than me – hence why we kept exchanging positions.
First task – eating.
The pub was pleasant.
Having seen
sheep all day, I was really keen on lamb and that’s exactly what was on the
dinner menu.
The barmaid did all the leg
work, taking my order at the table and bringing me more drinks.
Absolute hero.
An important match of kick-ball seemed to
deflect any conversation/questions about where I was going / came from.
I checked my phone and TSK was asking if I
was going to make Tralee.
I wasn’t
planning on it but it was an interesting concept and one which I thought I’d
try to take on.
I got back on the road after a massive cake and custard
combo that would see me through till late at night.
At Ballybunion as the sun had just set, I went to look at
the beach to scope it for camping but it was a busy town and not yet late
enough for people to have gone to bed.
Clearly a bit of a party town on Friday night, I shared the beach with
twenteens wearing short skirts and drinking alcopops. I took a picture, went to the loo and decided
against Ballybunion as a place to stay.
It started to rain soon after and my ride through the night
approach started to wane when I realised that this was one part of Ireland that
did not have empty roads late at night.
The proximity of all that industry meant that there were a fair number
of drivers on wet 100kph roads, first going to the pub and then later – more
worryingly – coming back from the pub.
The passes got closer and closer, the speeds more terrifying, the rain
heavier. I got more scared and
cold. It was past the hour where it is
acceptable to turn up at a B&B soaking wet and demand someone open the
garage for your bike but eventually I had to concede that if I saw a B&B
with the light on I would do so for my own safety.
At one point I got off the bike at a river and scoped the
shore for a good pitch but it was exposed, rocky and there was a lot of noisy
passing traffic. I scoured the Garmin
for signs of valleys where I could get out of the wind but I was to ride along
the coast and it was all exposed. I was
gradually descending into the desperation that would see me camped in a
graveyard (not yet managed to find the courage) or banging down someone’s door.
Finally, like a mirage, some lights appeared in the distance
and, as I propped my bike up outside I was pleased to find that it wasn’t just
a pub but an Inn. Opening the door, 35
men welcomed me in, asked if I was “a bit wet” and waited patiently whilst I
distracted the barmaid from pouring Guinness to check if they had a room. A lot of checking ensued during which I got
colder but in the end I was handed the keys to room 2 with the warning, “I
don’t know how much it is”.
Dignity was shown to the smoking room where the barmaid
“promised to keep an eye on it”. I
locked Dignity to a leg of a substantial catering unit and left her to enjoy
the company of strangers whilst I took three soggy bags into my room. I chose the smaller of the two beds to sleep
in to minimise fuss for the manager and had a glorious shower in a room tiled
floor to ceiling. I dried myself of
bathsheet sized fluffy towels after I conditioned my hair. Abject luxury.
I nervously checked the published rate on line £123!!!! I
accepted it as emergency accommodation – potentially life saving.
In the morning, a fast-moving Irish lady was confused to be
faced by two single women – both athletes – until I explained I’d arrived late
and was not a part of the couple who had reserved their stay.
Erin Green and I got talking. She is entered for the Heaver Triathlon
(half-distance as her first tri!) and had come to Ireland to do the half marathon
taking place that day. I exclaimed that
she was brave to jump straight into a half Ironman distance instead of starting
with a standard or sprint. Her response
was, “I’m better at endurance and I’m just too stubborn to quit”. She sounds like someone I know.
By this point I could have jacked in the race to go and
watch Erin. Although my room was plush,
there was no heating so I was staring in the face of another day in wet shorts
on saddle sores (still no savlon) and trying to dry my kit in wavering
weather. I was saving the dry shorts for
another, more predictable day.
As I left, Erin appeared saying, “here she is, brave girl on
a bike”… “or stupid” I said.
“No, stubborn”, she said, “that’s the word”.
I stubbornly kicked off and started riding back into the
headwind and intermittent drizzle.
Day 10 – Ballyduff to
Inch
At Ballyheigue I stopped at the petrol station, resolute to
find savlon. I had started asking for
the toilets first, promising to be a customer to whoever could offer me
customer toilets. The lady behind the
counter said, “yes but they’re only for cyclists!” and showed me through the
door behind the counter.
The room was stacked floor to ceiling with bolts, washers
and nuts, rivets, screws, every type of hardware going and a big smiley faced
sign saying, “please keep this area tidy”.
I looked confused – I wasn’t to pee in here surely? “Up the stairs she urged”.
I went up the metal stairs and into the loft where I passed
more hardware and various bits of farm machinery to the small toilet cubicle at
the end.
On my return, I picked some food items then asked for
Savlon. She walked me over to the
toiletries counter, leading me by the arm then whispered whilst giggling,
“there was a man in here a few days ago doing a bike race, all the way from
Dublin to Derry and along the Wild Atlantic way!” Conspiratorially I told her that I was the
back end of the same race. She giggled
again. “He left this stuff, cream, well,
butter really, said if anyone else wanted it they could have it! Do you want that?” We both laughed out
loud. “problem is I said, it didn’t do
me any good and now I’ve got to deal with the consequences”.
She giggled again and she eventually produced
Sudocreme. I hold my hands up, this is
the only thing my ex-husband ever taught me. Somehow he found out that
Nicholas’s nappy rash cream was great for dealing with the kind of chaffing men
get from mountaineering and so I bought the whole goddamn hefty pot of the
stuff.
My small and measly custom came to a whole 6.80Euro. “So how is it going? The race?” she
said. “Well, OK,” I answered. “I mean, I’m right at the back but if I
finish, I’ll be 9th woman”.
“Well!!”, she shouted, In a high pitched voice, “You have to finish then! Oh MY! You HAVE
to!” and with that we parted company, very happy.
Next stop Tralee.
By
the time I reached Tralee the storm was well and truly gone.
The sun was shining and the menu in the café
had Burritos on it.
People who live in
Sheffield understand the draw of Burritos.
I set off back into fire engine and ambulance sirens and the hubbub of a
town for a short time before touting around to the Dingle Peninsula and the
impressive Connor Pass, inspiring thoughts of “If God is a DJ… except “If
Mother Nature is my Goddess then this is one of her cathedrals” and I
rededicated my day to Mike Rodgers and Mike Hall.
I stopped part way up the climb to shift my damp shorts into
the mesh bag on the front of my bars as the weather trended more towards drying
than wetting. I then rode the whole
goddamn climb. Booya!
The descent off the other side into Dingle was intensely
pleasurable as I got my arse off the saddle for a sizeable period of time and
the motorist behind me recognised what was afoot and sat patiently behind me at
a distance for 20 kms at speeds topping 48 km/hr.
After the pass, mile after mile of pristine coastline and
awesome but frightening climbs ensued where drivers needed to pull over to
allow me to pass. I pretty-much bolted
the whole thing out in one and then collapsed, pretty exhausted into the petrol
station back in Dingle to do dinner.
There were a whole host of beautiful restaurants I could have chosen but
I didn’t feel like socialising so more cheese and tomatoes complimented a bread
roll and yoghurt – after all, I’d had a three course lunch in Tralee.
I’d given up on Patrick-chasing for the day
although in the back of my mind, I hoped my simple dinner would see me make
some gains.
I enjoyed a sizeable tail
wind towards my planned stop for the night – the beach campsite at Inch.
I asked in Sammy’s bar for details of Sammy’s campsite and
was referred to the man sitting at the end of the bar, staring intently at his
i-pad. “It’s 5 Euro”, he said, “you can
pay me now.”
“Are you Sammy?” I asked.
“Yep”.
“Do you own all of Inch?”
He shrugged. “Yeah,
the good bits”.
We chatted for a while then I set off to pitch my tent. The lovely tail wind I’d had was blowing
straight onto the campsite from the Atlantic.
I pitched as close as was polite to a campervan to use it and the hedge
as a windbreak then filled my water bottle and went to the loo. Ivy grew under the tin roof and down the
walls and spiders scurried for cover. A
hose pipe snaked across the room from a tap (clearly the only means of cleaning
the bathrooms) and I didn’t dare consider a shower. It looked icy.
Inside my lovely tent I texted my mum and dad to wish my dad
happy fathers day. A man who taught me to
look after myself in the outdoors and find a place to camp in the lee of a
vehicle on a stormy night… and gave me the confidence to splint a broken pole.
I locked my bike to the barbed wire fence near to me but as
I settled down for the night I had the uncomfortable feeling that anyone with a
pair of wire cutters or tin snips could have it away in no time. It was a fleeting thought that didn’t take
root hard enough for me to not sleep although I awoke the next morning to a
dream that a policeman was handing me a notice informing me of a spate of
recent thefts in the area.
I lifted up the canvas at the edge of my tent and to my
relief my bike was still there – at least the bits I could see were still there.
The weather report said that the heavy rain was due to stop
in 30 minutes so I waited it out.
There’s something else dad taught me – there’s no point getting wet if
you don’t have to. I ate all of the
remaining rolos and jelly beans and checked all of the internet (that interests
me).
I texted a friend that I had run out of sweeties and it was
still raining. When he responded, “It’s
Ireland, what do you expect?” I replied,
“An old lady in a woolly jumper will bring me more sweeties”. He said I had a point but unfortunately he
could not get the trackleaders satellites to send me more sweeties.
I packed up and went to unlock my bike. Suspiciously, after all of my dreams and
nervous thoughts, my combination lock was set to 9999. Whilst it is just as likely to come up as any
other number and it was a really shit night for being a bike thief, I couldn’t
help think that someone had made a paltry effort to steal my bike and I felt
lucky that Inch did not have a hardware store.
I was on the road by 9:30am.
Day 11 – Inch to Glenbeigh –
Fathers’ day
I had breakfast at Castlemaine petrol station. An elderly gentleman sat next to me
scratching away at scratch cards. I
could hardly understand him but attempted to make enough conversation to stop
him gambling – at least for today. He
gave up after 10-or-so goes and went home, either persuaded by my charm or
bored of listening to me. I ordered an
Irish Breakfast. I’m not a great fan of
sausage and bacon but I asked for no bacon or egg and got extra sausage for my
trouble. 4 down.
My Garmin took me on a cruel diversion around some country
lanes and I took on a diversion of my own to avoid, what looked like, 2km of
gravel surface and actually turned out to be a pristine section of new road
through some road works.
As I grovelled towards a lunch stop, I noticed a pristine 5
Euro note lying in the road and I took it as a Karma thanks for stopping the
old chap gambling – or maybe it was for helping a teenager with flat tyres.
By 1pm I was at Dunloe Gap’s Kate Kearney’s cottage choosing
salmon fish cakes and salad and ice cream.
Horses and traps take up the majority of the traffic on the
Gap of Dunloe as well as cyclists and walkers.
Cars are not advised and are likely to lose paintwork as horse traps
tear up and down the narrow lane that wobbles over the hill.
After a delightful meal and an icecream in
the sun and coffee I was determined to ride the whole thing and did so too,
much to the intrigue of many hikers and, I suspect, the annoyance of a few trap
drivers who insisted on driving on the wrong side of the road, hollering across
the valley at their fellow drivers whilst trying to give tourists some kind of
“genuine hair raising experiences”.
I
was confused, a little pissed off and thankful to be alive when I passed over
the top.
I’d pretty much run out of
patience on the descent and picked my line, stuck to it and braked as little as
possible.
Note for next time: this is
better done at night.
On the downhill side I found a plethora of wonderful bivi
spots by the river in the Black Valley then it was back to the coast around
Kenmare and Sneem. My objective for the
day became to chase down Patrick and try, at some point, to overtake him. Whilst I was unlikely to catch him, I hoped I
might pass him if I rode through to late night.
It became feasible for me to reach a rather posh campsite from my list
of potential spots to stop. That in
itself was a bit of a gamble, given the poshness and anticipated propensity for
grumpy owners and big gates with locks on.
I ate my dinner at Caherdaniel in a pub. I spotted one with excellent outdoors seating
– somewhere to lock my bike and where I could sit with it under shelter. Unfortunately, a local advised me that they
only did toasties and recommended an alternative down the road. The family just leaving said the food was
excellent and hearty – it sounded perfect and I locked up. Before I remembered
my bangers-based breakfast I’d already ordered sausages and mash for tea making
a total of 7 sausages consumed that day.
I rode on.
At Waterville I was reminded of a German couple Patrick said
he had met at Malin Head. They said, “we
never go to the South, it is too polished”.
As I approached a 7-bedroom (approx.) golden yellow mansion in a plot of
pristine grass, I thought, “This is what they mean” but even I had to do a
double-take when I noticed the helicopter parked on the lawn.
I nearly rode through Waterville. It didn’t look like my kind of place either
but as I pedalled out of town past the swanky hotel, I noticed a little path
down to a smoking area / outdoor table and a handrail that was perfect to lock
a bike to. I took the liberty and
reminded myself that if this was an audax, at 9pm I would be treating myself to
a hot chocolate before carrying on.
I sat at a quiet table alone and stinky whilst men in rugby
shirts with blow-dried hair talked loudly and watched tv. One fella caught my eye as I marvelled out of
the picture windows beyond the bar at the ocean view outside and thought it
would be a marvellous place to watch dolphins and drink gin if I were on a
normal holiday. The last of the sun
glinted silver off the sea and cloud layer.
The man and I nodded to eachother but no actual words were spoken which
was a relief as I realised I wouldn’t be able to recall where I had started the
day in answer to the usual question of “where did you ride from?”
Outside, I briefly had the chills before the ups and down of
the coastline started to bite. I was
glad for my hot chocolate milk for its energy and cramp-reducing rather than
its warming glow. As I hit the hills,
still in shorts and a thin wind-proof top, I started to wonder when the
temperatures would drop to evening levels and then I realised that I was as far
south as Bristol City and felt rather proud of myself for the distance I had
ridden my bike. Still, the point was to
get somewhere useful to sleep. As I
slowly caught up to a club cyclist out for an evening ride, I held back from
passing him with all my bags on for a bit.
It was fathers’ day and he definitely looked like someone’s father. I was clearly in an excellent mood.
The ups and downs kept coming AND it seemed and the road was
pretty major. I wasn’t missing anything
as time went by. The light stayed for
what seemed like an eternity so I continued to gaze upon the craggy rock
formations of the Skelligs out at sea and cliffs plunging down into ocean depths
from the mainland. Places I’d been
looking forward to seeing in Ireland number 6. There was next to no traffic and
what did come had all of the space in the world to pass. I did eventually head over to a “truckstop”
area to see if there was any open grass to camp on but it was little more than
a hardstanding area so I had a pee in the bushes and continued on my way.
Eventually I started to ride through North-facing coastal
towns. I had been considering crossing
the bridge at Portmagee on to Valentino Island for a bivi at the tower but as I
arrived about 10pm, I had plenty of miles still in my legs. A little further on Cathersiveen and Dooks
each had a spattering of people heading home from the pub to greet me good
evening as they drunkenly wobbled down the highstreets.
I briefly considered a town centre snooze bivi but there
were too many lights on the park benches and a trucker parked nearby that I
decided would make for an inquisitive or noisy neighbour.
Finally I was in GlenBeigh and I was welcomed by a few more
drunk people in town before finally stumbling across the campsite. It was dressed up as a mansion house with a
sweeping stone wall gateway leading to a closed gate. I swore a bit. It was 2am.
I leant my bike up, got on my knees and tried to quietly
lift the bolt on the gate. I tried to
turn the latch but it was locked firm.
Bollocks. After a brief pause, I
considered throwing my bags over the wall, pitching the tent right there and
then lifting my bike over behind it. I
peered over the wall to see if the grass was flat. It was! And so was the paving slab path that
led around the gate. Doh!
I got my bike and pushed it quietly across the tarmac, found
the campers field away from the caravans and pitched in the corner with some touring
cyclists. I then embarked on one of the
quietest tent pitches I have ever attempted so as not to wake anyone. It took such levels of concentration that I
hardly remembered that I’d packed my tent away wet that morning. I was quite impressed that something that had
bothered me so much, meant so little in the face of abject fatigue.
The final test was the toilet trip (no key codes or swipe
cards, allehuljiah!). Still, I wasn’t
going to bother with a shower. The light
went out and so did I, all except for checking track leaders and rejoicing just
a little bit as it seemed I was well ahead of Patrick. He seemed to be in Waterville – at least 5
hours behind me then.
Day 12 – GlenBeigh to
Droum Cross
The extent of the palatial campsite hit when I read those
two beautiful words “Campers’ kitchen” on the wall of the building opposite my
pitch.
I boiled water with a kettle for porridge and coffee and
packed up to go whilst my battery was charging (the battery was not working off
the dynamo, to my disgust). As Norwegian
children played and complained in turn, I went out to pay the campsite lady who
far from being disgusted at my late arrival just thought it was quite a shame I
hadn’t seen the view. I set out my case
for night riding and she agreed it had been a clear, bright night and the
traffic free option was the best. In
fact, she suggested I could have just thrown my sleeping bag down on the sofa
in the camp kitchen – another to note for next year.
10 Euro lighter but still happier, I hit the road again –
this time for the climb back over the Kerry Ring through Moll’s Gap… and the
Ballaghbeama Gap which was soulless and cloudful.
Miles and miles of empty roads ensued and I
was glad I hadn’t continued out there since it was the kind of land where you’d
not be sure if you were trespassing or not.
I’m sure in daylight there’s loads of good bivi spots but they might not
have seemed that way at night.
The road
rambled on and on and I was feeling bad.
The porridge pot didn’t quite cut it and I knew I should have picked
something up when I left GlenBeigh.
Unfortunately I didn’t and I was massively suffering the
consequences of Bonk without the early exercise. At least I knew that food was coming at the
climbers’ inn. Another potential
sleepover option for me but also I assumed would be a big centre with a
café. No such luck. One old lady doing toasties. It never occurred to me to order two and with
a large clientele to serve, I didn’t want to get in the long line a second time. I ate my one toastie.
A friend texted me. “It looks funny, the way you’re going around
this loop”. I knew it was the right way
because I had purposefully split the route for me in the middle to prevent me
from making any navigational mistakes.
My route guided me one half of the way around and then the return part
of the loop the next day. Still, it made
me check trackleaders and to my astonishment, I realised that Patrick was
travelling in the wrong direction.
Whilst not against any race rules, I thought of the climbs and descents
I had done and man, I would not have wanted to be in his shoes. I later found out that he had been aiming for
Sneem for dinner and instead found himself in this food-deprived landscape in
the evening, desperately hungry.
After the climber’s inn, I faced Moll’s gap and then some
beautiful forested country lanes. They
continued on and on and my stomach got more and more empty. Finally a sign presented for The Strawberry
Fields pancakes & crafts. Many
thoughts went through my head of savoury crepes but also crafts made from
pancakes or crafts made about pancakes.
It was a silly idea but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I rode to Strawberry Fields in the rain.
All hopes of a cosy café were dashed as I was shown a seat
in a corner away from all the proper guests.
The seat had plastic covered cushions. But the girls were lovely and
served me soup, gourmet pancake and a hot chocolate for desert. The fire was on and other people were talking. I basked in it. As a builder went to pay and was told, “Ah
it’s a loverly day for working inside” I could feel my feet and my life choices
melding into a puddle at my feet.
It was tough to leave but I did, back into the rain but it
was easing and gradually I started to remove layers and settle down. Sadly the legs didn’t. They were TIRED and didn’t want to be any
part of this adventure any more. The backside
was bruised and broken too. I hardly
registered the climb mentally, it seemed like one long succession of short
things I didn’t want to ride up. That
was Moll’s Gap. I’d thought it was
yesterday but no, it was killing me today.
I thought about Patrick doing this in reverse without the Strawberry
Fields café and really felt for him.
After Kenmare, quite a lot of the road was monotonous,
cocooned in tree and bush cover with nothing to look at but wet trees. A chap hiking the other way carrying his life
on his backpack nodded to me. I was
moving so slowly we had time for a conversation. “How you doing?” he asked.
“A bit tired and knackered” I said. “Me too”, he responded. “I think I’ll get a pint, I’m looking forward
to that”.
It sounded like a great idea. I started looking at the map for places to
stop already. I cycled through Lauragh
which had been on my list as a potential stop but no, definitely too early. The next one on the list was a campsite at
Formanes. Suddenly it had become dinner
time. I had slipped, during my time on
the ring of Kerry, into that never-never-land where time passes on the saddle
and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
You get on your bike and ride and suddenly 4 hours later your’re 90km
further on and a little peckish. Meals
come when they come and you’re not really sure what to call them unless a
person in a café tells you they’re breakfasts, lunch or dinner.
Ardgroom wasn’t on my list of places but it was 7pm and it
did have 2 pubs. I fell into the first
one I came to. It had a pretty lilac
bench outside so I set my bike aside, said hello to the little Jack Russell dog
outside, locked the bike and walked into the bar. It was a friendly place. Families were in. Football was on. I ordered my meal, chatted to the barman and
told him it was time for my Guinness. He
was busy so no questions about where I had been / was going.
I sat down to wait for my food and checked
trackleaders. Patrick was in the same
village. I stuck my head out, almost
expecting to see him ride by but when I couldn’t see his bike at the other pub I sat back down and enjoyed my
meal and my milky pint and got the blogger out to moan.
It was cathartic putting my moans down and I had a few texts
back telling me to get on, that it would all be fine tomorrow. I had to believe that.
My food was delicious and the pint seemed to have magical properties. The little dog came in with its owner. It bounced like my old dog used to (before he
got spoiled and fat) and I chatted to his owner who introduced himself as Gary
and did ask where I had been and where I was going. Clearly he took my friendliness in totally
the wrong way and offered me both sex (not so tempting) and a bed (no charge
except, I assume, the sex). “I don’t
think so, I’m married”, I said with disdain.
Poor fella. He was quite pretty
in an 80’s farm boy kind of way but clearly had 30 years on a farm boy and
should have had his hair cut a long time ago.
As a shy 19 year old, I might have fallen for that line.
As I reached into my jersey pocket to seek my wallet, odour
of my body must have wafted in his direction (almost three days and 441 miles
since my last shower). He picked up his
meal and went to sit in the window seat, the pub doorway and porch separating
me from his table.
I chatted with the barmaid for a while, letting Gary get
engrossed in his meal and the football then thanked the staff and headed out
into the evening, prepared to ride to Solas Mor camp in Formaines, hoping a
pretty middle aged farm worker with floppy hair and a Jack Russell was not
about to start cruising the lanes looking for a bedraggled cyclist to take home
and put to bed.
Patrick was standing in the doorway. Whilst I wasn’t really particularly concerned
for my safety (I think my body odour brought Gary to his senses), I was still
really happy to see Patrick. We set off
into the sunset together like bedraggled, gangly Winnie the Pooh and
Christopher Robin (let’s not talk about which is which) and started to debate
where we were going to sleep together for the night… a complete cosmopolitan counter-culture
to Gary.
As the first real (non-gourmet and therefore more
substantial) meal of the day soaked into my legs, I started to feel much
better. Brilliant. My force was kicking in at 8pm. Bloody marvellous.
Whilst I was extremely happy to have someone to ride with, I
was a little unsure.
The ride is
supposed to be solo and unsupported and I always wanted to do it as an individual ride,
not holding onto the coat tails of some guy… any guy, even my husband kind of a
guy.
Patrick and I were strict not to
draft eachother.
We rode side by side - or the crosswind equivalent - and took it in turns to cycle in front when a car was passing.
I inevitably dropped off the back on the hill
climbs cos I am shit at them and he dropped back on the descents where I throw
my bike about like a loon.
We talked, we
didn’t talk.
He left me behind from time
to time then I caught him up whilst he was faffing with his GPS or taking
pictures.
I tried not to let him give me emotional support in the way
that chatting to a random stranger does make you move faster – especially when
you have been riding alone for 2-3 days.
I can’t say that didn’t happen.
Maybe it was the food, maybe it was the conversation.
We whooped our way down the hill into Ahillies and past the
hostel, now 10 miles since my original plan for an early stop.
As we rode out of Ahillies, Patrick told me about an
adventurous trip he had taken out here with his wife to cross over to Dursey
Island in the cablecar only to find that the cablecar operator had gone for
lunch and never came back. This was my
places to look forward to number 7 and we were going to be there in the dark.
Riding together was more fun around cars.
We could look big enough and ugly enough to
get drivers to full-on pull in and let us past.
We wobbled separately around the cablecar station.
Patrick staring at the water for a while and
me doing the engineers’ tour of the cablecar station, including an wee in the
long grass.
Clearly the Guinness was not
welcome in my body as it realised we had other things to do.
We stood together by the sea, watching it crash onto the
dark grey rocks below. We considered
staying there but it was windy and loud and exposed so we decided to continue
on and see what we found. It was around
10pm.
Three more hours of chatting ensued with intervals of hill
climbs. Was it the chatting that was
helping or the roaring tailwind.
Definitely the latter.
At 1am we rolled into Droum and spotted the local sports GAA
pitch. Whilst Patrick had wanted to get off the peninsula, I have certain rules
around not looking a gift horse in the mouth so we went to check out the grassy
grounds.
At the back of the buildings, underneath the trees and away
from the floodlighting was perfectly flat grass, already mowed. A door of the building that was open led to
a toilet. It wasn’t wild camping heaven but it was a little potted version of
it for tired cyclists (it doesn’t taste quite the same but it’s quick and will
do, given the circumstances).
We pitched about 10m apart on our own carefully selected
plots and whilst he left his bike against a wall, I locked mine to the tree and
then laid it down in the grass so it would not draw attention to us. I
slumbered heavily. Not even the occasional
boy racer was going to wake me up.
Day 13 – Droum Cross to Schull
I had a vague temptation to get up early and try a stealthy
start to get ahead but it would’ve been futile.
My muscles were leaving me too clumsy and I enjoyed my sleep till about
7.
We were both on the road by 7:45 and hunting for somewhere
to eat. Most cafs were still closed but
a petrol station in Castletown-Bearhaven came to the rescue. It was my first actual petrol station coffee
since the shitty one on day 2 and this time I got the mark of the machine as I
let most of the second batch of hot water on my large Americano drain away,
giving me a double-shot Americano. I
smiled at Patrick conspiratorially as he shook his head at me… at least I might
give his legs a run for their money today.
Unfortunately for me, he’d been into the bike shop next door
to borrow their track pump. When he’d
stopped in Tralee a few days earlier they had let more air out of his front
tyre than they’d put in. Then, when they offered the use of the
compressor, found that the compressor only went up to 60 psi. He was now rocking solid tyres again. So there would be no stopping him.
As he plugged in his phone battery I said, “Right, I’m off,
I *will* see you later”. I couldn’t deal
with the guilt trip. He said he’d see me
in Glengarriff.
I used the toilets upstairs from the petrol station. Dedicated to the whole block of businesses, I
peered through the doors of a dance studio with full picture window staring out
onto the sea, its wall-length dance mirror reflecting the scenery. One corner was full of motorcycle parts, the
other, crayons, glitter, coloured papers and rolls of fabric, doubling up as
the local playgroup. Clearly a multi-use
facility.
When I came down to get on my bike Patrick was laughing at me. "WHat's that I see on the road ahead, is it Andrea?". I laughed at him riding off into the distance... so easily. Fekker!
Problem was, I didn’t really feel like stopping in
Glengarriff either but I kept one eye open for his bike, thinking that if I saw
it I would at least stop and figure out what my next overnight stop was going to be.
I didn’t see the bike but I did spot a young guy serving
coffee from a caravan. I’m a sucker for
a young guy in a caravan serving coffee so I stopped for a coffee and a cup
cake and a chat with a Canadian lady who was “stoked” to find iced coffee so
that she could escape her family for 30 minutes every morning of her holiday. I popped in to a petrol station and collected
some supplies, including “Goldenrice” to finally replace my “Curryrice” I’d
eaten at Connemara Hostel. I left the boil in the bag Uncle Bens rice on the
panier bag of a touring cyclist as a special gift for them on their
journey. Hopefully it didn’t fall off
and under their wheel when they least expected it.
I made it a further 12 miles down the road before reaching
an actual lunch stop at Bantry where foodie places seemed to naturally ooze
from the roadside. The pi shop seemed to
literally sell pie so I parked outside the next and ordered organic salad, soup
and a coffee. I’d finished my lunch when
Patrick arrived so I ordered a cake and caught up on the morning’s
adventures. I had finally found someone
who suffered the cold more than me and he’d struggled to get going.
We rode together over to Kilcrohane and when I say together,
usual rules applied in that he led away over the hills ahead then paused to
photograph and do man things whilst I whooped ahead down the other side.
After a particularly long hill climb upto the top of the
peninsula, Patrick stopped to take photos and I went for a lonely wander over
the other side of the hill with my bike to sit in the heather (my shorts were
round my ankles and I was squatting, if that helps). I looked out at the scenery, little houses
dotting the coastline below, the sea, the peninsulas of the next two days
ahead, the brooding grey sky. My bike
and I staggered back to the road and rejoined Patrick on his descent.
“Where did you go?”
“Not quite a poo with a view”, I said, “but similar”.
Patrick said something moderately intelligent about the number of
houses for sale or the holiday homes market.
I said, “I’m glad you’re in that place because my brain has just come up
with, ‘a wee by the sea’”.
Whilst Patrick suggested my coat wearing was slowing me down
on the hills, I said it was very kind but I thought it was my legs.
At Sheeps Head Peninsula we were over the moon to find a
café which was open and serving. We
devoured food, Patrick did his duty and flirted with the old lady on the
counter and we attempted to avoid insinuations about us being married to
eachother or about us somehow developing a deep bond over this whole cycling
together malarkey.
All I knew is we were
both looking forwards immensely to the tail wind home. Sheeps head: Places I was looking forward to
number 7.
It did not disappoint and after a number of whoops, we found
ourselves on the way back out to Mizen Head, our last peninsula of the
trip.
The build-up was immeasurable.
The head winds, the cliff tops, the
diversions to iconic beach bays, all of which tempted us in to a bivi but we
had plans to get off the peninsula again before we stopped.
Patrick led off
Mizen Head by some distance and I started to doubt my eyes so late at night as
I couldn’t figure out the lie of the beach at Barley Cove.
A pontoon bridge lay across the sand with the
tide out and I couldn’t figure it out at all.
I slowed down to get control of my faculties.
We kind of promised ourselves we’d have a meal in a nice pub
offering humus but by the time we came back to Barleycove it was shut. 9pm apparently. We ended up in the chippie chatting to an
ex-olympic 200m runner from Portsmouth about the state of holiday homes in
Ireland. Ireland was way more chatty
with the bloody chatty man in tow. I
made a resolution there and then to be more Irish in my life going
forward. If only I could remember
through the fatigue. At 9pm though, my
fatigue was not an issue. After chips
and curry sauce I was ready to get going.
I may have whooped substantially as we rolled around
switchbacks. Any other non-race and I’d
ride that road again just for the hell of it.
Finally it straightened out into something more conducive to
enjoying a tail wind and we slipped in and out of conversation through the late
evening. As we spotted a public park in
a little village, my bivi radar went off.
When we discovered it had a shelter and a table I was sold. I even persuaded the man who wanted to get off
the peninsula that it was a good place to stop.
It didn’t take much effort, particularly when he decided that the little
grassy hillocks reminded him of tellytubby land. To be fair I couldn’t argue.
Whilst he wandered off to talk to his wife I got undressed
under the shelter then settled down to sleep in just my sleeping bag. It was such a wonderful evening. Unfortunately, the temperature did drop just
enough for the breeze to gently pick up a sea mist so I decided to pitch my
tent after all instead of following any romantic notion of starsleeping that
turned into a mass of soggy down sleeping bag. I pitched between two tellytubby hillocks
and left him to the wooden shelter with his self-standing tent.
As I’d paid for a last night’s accommodation when I
registered, I had a text from Adrian indicating that a room was booked in
Kinsale.
The last thing I did was check trackleaders, out of interest
to see what accuracy was on the gps. Did
it show us 100m appart – though our bikes were 3m appart so this was
irrelevant? As I clicked on PM’s dot, I
realised he was actually 20 minutes ahead of me in the race anyway. The bastard was winning! Well, at least that answered any questions
over sprint finishes for the line. There
wasn’t going to be one. If we finished
together, he would be ahead of me by 20 minutes on account of him starting the
ride in a different group, 20 minutes behind me on day 1. I slept a little more soundly, my day 14 plan
set in stone.
Eat, ride, wobble over the line together.
Day 14 – Schull to
the finish
The sun was bright and woke me up. I tried to be quiet again in the shelter but
Patrick was already stirring. “Hey
sleepy-head, it’s beautiful out here”, I said as I brewed up hot coffee and
poured the porridge out of the bowels of my saddlebag into a pot.
He sprung out of his tent wearing shorts and a tee and
screamed, “Fek! It’s freezing!”, looked at me in leggings and a Patagonia
jacket and swore again. “I only said it
was beautiful! I didn’t say it was warm”.
As this beautiful new friend finished getting dressed in the shelter next
to me, I exclaimed, “Fucking hell those socks are white! Have you been saving
them?” It wasn’t just the track pump he
used in the bike shop but his credit card too, the old socks consigned to the
bin.
We hit the road at 8:12 and Ballydehob brought us breakfast
in the form of a petrol station and a windowsill. A passing campervan converter with a passion
for travel stopped to chat to us for a while and entertained the extrovert
Patrick with stories of motorbiking through India whilst I pottered about my
business and allowed the guy to bounce my suspension forks up and down a
little.
Real food happened at Skibbereen where the chatty man asked
a “local” if she was local and she responded in a beautiful French accent, proceeded
to recommend the best coffee shop in town before following us in there and
explaining that she had lived in the area for 40 years.
The coffee, the pancakes and the service were indeed
excellent. Patrick and I stared at eachother
in disbelief that we were nearly there.
I explained our 20 minute situation with full intention that we’d be
riding into the finish together. There
were still riders behind us on the course so neither of us were going to be
last. We talked of many things. Some of them started to slip into
irrelevance. I was mindful, as ever that
I was supposed to be racing.
Patrick was, as ever, relaxed about the whole thing. In retrospect I find it incredible to believe
that he is the one who had to get back to work the next day and I was the one
who still had two days travel in the bag.
Whilst I didn’t want it to end, I was, by now, very conscious that the
organiser had booked me the room for that night and I needed to get back to
secure it. I also had no idea how I was
going to get back to Dublin (though I assumed a train would do it) and I
thought I might need time to do that.
When I’d had so little expectation of finishing in any time,
never mind a faster time than I needed, I fully expected myself to be
absolutely fooked by the time I got here.
Instead, both Patrick and I agreed that we had really ridden into the
kind of shape we would have liked to be in at the start of the race. I guess that is the problem with real life,
real jobs, real people.
As he stood up to ask the waitress to charge his battery I
took my leave, “right, if I don’t go I’ll never finish this thing, I’ll see you
on the road”. He was getting used to it
now. He came and moved his bike into
view and I rode away, ready to spend the next few hours expecting him to
materialise. I always had one half of my
mind on him and one half of my mind on the race and the organiser, watching
from afar, seeing us travelling together.
I hoped there was enough on-and-off there to keep us race
legal. I reassured myself with the
knowledge that I kept riding alone and Patrick chose to ride with me. Not that it mattered, not that anyone really
was counting (I was totally counting).
I absolutely appreciated his company and yet I could
honestly say with my hand on my heart I would have been fine on my own. I will also admit that I probably would have
taken 16 days on my own, not had such a nice time and probably stressed myself
stupid getting back to Dublin.
I started to distance myself mentally from the race, from my
lovely new friend and from the fact that it was drawing to a close. I didn’t want it to end. The sun was glorious. The route was distractingly easier. I looked at the clock. It was 11am when I left Skibbereen. I couldn’t stop for lunch too surely?
Patrick would.
Patrick would stop for a long lunch. I kept hoping he’d show up but I also kept
hoping he wouldn’t because then I’d probably stop and I’d just be thinking
about finishing the whole time.
If he stopped, and I didn’t, then I could beat him. Did I want to beat him? Hell yeah.
Did he want to beat me?
Not really. He already admitted
he wasn’t at all competitive and yet he’d been vaguely amused that he was
beating me by 20 minutes when I told him.
I looked at my bags – on the front of my bike was a bag full
of nuts, goji berries and carob seeds.
They’d been there for 4 days and I genuinely thought I’d lost them until
I rediscovered them hiding at the bottom of the bag this morning. At this point though, it was going to be just
the nutrition I needed to get me to the finish.
At 12:30, in a beautiful village called Glendore as I ran
out of legs on the hill climb I stopped at a wall overlooking the harbour, sat
on the warm stone and ate my “lunch”. I
faced the descent into the village so I had a full view of Patrick approaching
so that I could go with him if he passed.
I enjoyed the sun and the passers-by and the lapping of waves on the
harbour wall and the coming and going of village business and Patrick never
passed.
I popped into the public facilities when he could have
slipped by but he didn’t. Trackleaders
still showed him behind me.
As I left the village, beautiful people sat at street-side
tables and chairs eating lunch and enjoying the sunshine. I found it hard to believe this place is wild
and wet. I also mildly regretted not
stopping for better lunch but the quiet mindfulness I found from eating on my
wall was satisfying too. I made a
decision to race Patrick to the finish.
With 40 miles to go, I started to race again.
I hit the tt bars on every flat, I stood for
every climb and where it got so steep that I had to walk, I jogged – or at
least walked with purpose.
The sun
blazed and I trawled my way through ALL of my water.
Thankfully the South coast is a beach
paradise and so every beach has a public toilet.
By this point it didn’t matter whether it was
drinkable water in the sinks.
I took it
in my bottle and gulped it down to offset the sweating from all the effort. I took the chance for one quick photo of all the beautiful swimming beaches passing me by. Damn it felt cruel to be racing today but if I'd stopped for a swim I'd definitely have been last.
Dear god there’s a lot of climbs in the last 40 miles. No more than 100m each but by that point
every climb is a mountain and every grade is steep. I didn’t know if it was worth it or not. Patrick could come past me at any moment and
at that point I would have blown up with the futility of it all but so long as
he didn’t I was going to keep riding. No
time to check trackleaders now.
To keep me going I imagined my friends back home watching me
ride. I knew Dan and Becky had been
avidly dot watching, as had Jo Jebb and Ruth Marsden. I imagined my speed had gone up by 2 miles
per hour and Becky would know what I was doing.
I imagined Ian Fitz watching, wondering at why I carry all the gear that
I do but proud that I was racing it to the end.
To keep me going on the climbs, I counted them down. They didn’t seem to pass very quickly, in
fact, they seemed to multiply so I stopped.
And then it was there, a village, a town, it was Kinsale. The sickening sinking feeling in my stomach
that it was all over but now the question was, how far ahead of Patrick was I?
The traffic in Kinsale drove me mad. It was all I could do to avoid screaming,
“GET OUT OF MY WAY!” as tourists dithered about the turns and coaches stopped
to let people off. The kaleidoscope of
colours was lost on me as I raced through the streets and then was faced with a
wall from the harbour to the top of the cliffs above Kinsale. I was off my bike and walking for one last
time.
I rounded the corner of the Kinsale holiday village. None of the cheers and fanfare I had hoped
for when I entered this ride but then I didn’t mind. It was sunny.
A dad and his son sat on the grass.
I pushed my bike through the carpark and up to some benches to lean it
up. I sat on the grass with my phone and
started my stop watch then checked track leaders. Patrick was still some way behind me.
My phone contained words of encouragement from Becky and Dan
and Ian. “So, must feel good to have all
the western peninsulas behind you and finally turned for the home stretch. Keep powering the pedals”. “Woo hoo done it! Just brilliant”. “Go On
Trep, not far to go now. Hang in there”
Next a text from the Organiser. “Picture at the finish
please. We’re watching and cheering you
on.”
I sent the photo then my phone buzzed to life, it was
Adrian, the race organiser.
“Well done!
Congratulations” he said.
“And, you can
give Patrick the good news.
He has the
lantern rouge!” (literally, “the red light”, this is the cyclist’s
award for last place on the ride).
The only other rider, Helmut Wagner had to
cut off the ride around the ring of Kerry (or mislaid it), giving him a “ride
to the finish” status for not completing the whole route.
20 minutes passed. 29
to be fair. I went to sit on the wall by
the drive to capture Patrick’s final moments.
I expected him any second so got the phone out to check
trackleaders. His dot sat right on top
of mine… but where was he?
I put the phone down and walked down the driveway, hearing
the faint Irish accent nearby chattering away.
Ever the non-competitive, he was standing at the bottom of the driveway,
talking to his brother on the phone.
Ever rude, I interrupted with, “Oi! Your dot isn’t bouncing yet! Get yer arse up here!”
Slightly more politely, he made his excuses with his
brother, remounted his bike and posed for a finisher pic crossing the “line”. Once he’d stopped I held out my hand and he
took it. “I have great news”, I
said. “You have the lantern rouge”.
Well, I’ve never seen a man so happy to be last. A true, value for money friend.
We lay in the sun and shared the coconut macaroons I’d been
carrying for the last 24 hours whilst Patrick phoned the rest of his relatives
and I rang Andrew.
90 minutes passed. 90
fucking minutes. What the hell did we do
for 90 minutes? We swapped stories. I gave him a run down on my Patrick-beating
afternoon and heard the stories of the wonderful lunch he’d eaten.
We discussed where to stay – he decided to get a room in my
B&B and I indicated that there was enough porridge to go around for his
early start in the morning. “No, Andrea”,
he said, “we shall dine properly!”
I was looking forward to Breakfast. I was looking forwards to Dinner. Damn it was 6:30pm. Damn I was looking forwards to the rest of my
life!
When we eventually found the B&B, I checked in, Patrick
checked in. When we asked for a place to
keep bikes, the Polish builder landlord shrugged, said, “In your room?” and as
Patrick’s room was upstairs, he put his bike in my room rather than in the
hallway where it ”would be safe” – save for the wide open front door.
We went out for a meal where we ate three main meals and
drank artisan beer before a customary pint of Murphys (for Cork) where we sat
and talked and talked. We established
that the lock I’d found on the Burren was his and whilst it would have been
great for me to reunite it with its owner, I wasn’t keen on carrying it *all*
the way back to Kinsale, except if I’d only known it was his and could have
carried it for half a day.
We swapped numbers so we could swap some of the photos we’d
taken together during the trip. We ended
the evening wobbling back up the hill, slightly drunk and with no core muscles
left, under a starry sky to talk of more shite and literally I have no idea
what we had left to talk about.
We did talk about which way I was going to cycle home. I did look at it on the Garmin but then I did
decide that I couldn’t work the Garmin at that point and gave up.
I fell soundly asleep on my mediocre mattress only to be
woken at 7:30am, having slept through the alarm, by Patrick knocking on the
door. He had to get back to work and
needed his bike. I threw on a teeshirt, gave this practical
stranger and yet new best friend a bra-less hug as I sent him on his way and
sat on my bed to cry tears of joy and sadness for the end into my brand new
favourite tee.
Closure
Some self-ass-kicking was required.
I needed food and coffee and I needed it
fast.
Damn I needed a bra on.
I loaded everything up and headed straight
out to find a café.
Thankfully stuff was
open.
The coffee shop was perfect.
After more pancakes, a full breakfast and two
cups of coffee I set off on my way to Cork to get the train… I never got the
train.
I stopped in a petrol station to get some more food. It was starting to become customary. I couldn’t ride anywhere without a friendly
conversation and whilst the only words I took away from one conversation with a
very happy and convivial gardener were a million “feks”, this didn’t have to
stop. I had two more days holiday. Shit, if I got home early, what was I going
to do? Go to work on Friday? Sit in the garden in Sheffield on Saturday
and wish I was back in Ireland? Fuck
that shit, I was riding home.
I texted the boss, lifted my new rucsac on my back, stuck
Dublin in the satnav and started riding.
The rolling hills just kept on giving. I was tired and yet there were no real steeps
here, just miles and miles of one hill after the next. I’m not going to recount the whole route here
as it wasn’t part of the race. It was
like watching the credits roll by at the end of a movie. Villages came and went.
I rode through till lunch then dinner and still I rode
on. Looking for somewhere to stop but
not really tired. As the sun set a half
moon rose yellow on the horizon, whitening as it climbed and around midnight I
finally felt the need to put all my lights on.
I cycled until I felt hungry – which disturbingly came before me needing
to sleep. I stopped in a farmers’ field
as far away as I could from houses and set about carefully unpackaging my
stove. The nearest house was about half
a mile away and yet still a dog barked whenever I made more than the slightest
move and I sat stock still until it was convinced it was hearing things before
I continued to light the stove then cook my Goldenrice by the blue-orange tinge
of the meths flame.
Despite the warm evening, I huddled round the flame like a
moth and enjoyed its warmth. When the rice was cooked using all my water, I
heated a cup of rehydration drink with the remaining meths and drank that luke
warm then pulled out my sleeping bag and lay out in the dirt with my head on my
shoes and slept hard.
About an hour later I woke up cold and rubbed my legs for a
while to rekindle the bloodflow before rolling onto one side and going back to
sleep. It was 4:30 am when I woke up
again and packed up to go. Three hours
later, the dozies set in and I stopped in another farmers’ gate way for a
snooze. I’d had no more food yet so I
lay on my back, cheese on my chest and flitted between eating slices of cheese
and sleeping in the ever-warming sun. At
8am the farmer arrived and I moved on, trying not to take his flock of sheep with
me as I neither wanted to shut the gate on him, nor get in his way. I ended up forming one corner of a triangle
of shepherds, directing the stupid sheep who followed me, back into their
field.
Finally at 9am I arrived in Athy, an industrial town with a
full scale factory, busy with kids going to school, men already at work and
cafes open at 9am. Another full
breakfast and a coffee saw me fit for a bit of effort to get myself into Dublin
that day.
My new best friend sent me a text to find out where I was
and I heard the sound of his jaw hitting the floor of his office from where I
was sat. No-one, including myself,
expected me to have fired off 200km ride the day after finishing the race,
never mind 250km by breakfast time.
Another stop in Kilcullen got me into a bijou gift shop café for quinoa
and salmon. I was definitely out of the
boonies now. By 5pm and 326km I was back in the
Dublin burbs, on a road that reminded me that Dublin is bigger than trinity
college and the city centre and there are places to remind one of Milton Keynes
in Dublin – Milton Keynes with better scenery and more lovely accents.
And so it was here I really did end my journey, at a Spar
shop on the edge of town, buying cheap disposable razors to remove the fur from
my armpits and legs before I faced the rest of the world.
The story does go on but in my head, the ride
ended here.
As I returned to my locked
bike, a grandad was parked in a wheelchair at the bottom of the steps whilst
his daughter sat on the stairs facing him at eye level so that they could enjoy
an icecream together, not apart.
It’s
the most positive image I will take away from Dublin because if I didn’t I’d
still be riding around the second lap.
I took away with me an overwhelming urge to return to
Ireland and a great mystery to solve for next year: Transatlantic Way II or
Highland Trail I?
Because that, my friends, is the great big fat question.
