This last weekend was quite an adventure, I got Friday and Monday off from work in order to ride over to South West Ireland with some friends. Some of the guys met up on Thursday to ride to Wales which is where the first drama occurred when a silly lady decided to turn right, from the left lane of a roundabout, knocking Mike off his bike! So, after separating his shoulder, he was in no condition to carry on the ride.
I met with Steve and Marie near Oxford at 8am on the Friday morning. From there we rode together to meet Lee and Mark at the Ferry in Fishguard. The weather was very pleasant and we were able to watch the cricket on the journey over too, which was going very well as England progressed towards an Ashes victory. On disembarking, at around 7pm, me, Steve and Marie headed to Waterford where we’d booked a B&B while Lee and Mark went straight over to Killarney.
In the morning we made our way to Killbritain, along some very odd roads (did some green laning!) where we would meet Uncle Brian and Auntie Joan for lunch. After an hour Lee and Mark arrived with Catherine and Miranda as pillions. We enjoyed a nice meal in the Pink Elephant before setting off for Killarney at around 3pm. Unfortunately, after our first stop for a break, Lee lost control of his bike pulling out of the parking area and came off, leaving him and the bike spinning down the road. This left us with a few problems. I set off with Catherine on my bike, with Marie to get back to Killarney. There was a bit of a routing problem though, Catherine directing us up a mountain side! It started raining, it was foggy, we were on a single track lane with traffic coming towards us from blind corners… it was possibly the scariest ride of my life!
We eventually made it home by around 8pm. Mark and Steve made it back some time after 9:30pm, having waited for the recovery vehicle. Catherine, Miranda and Lee (with his dislocated elbow in a sling) finally made it back to Killarney around 11pm to join us for much alcohol in a local pub.
On Sunday we headed out to a seaside holiday house and then set off round the Ring of Kerry. Once again, the weather was great, so we made many stops to enjoy the scenery. In the evening the ladies cooked us a fantastic meal, chicken, roasts etc and once again we cracked on with drinking lots of alcohol! After a fair amount of drink the dancing began…
The next day was already time to head back, so we set off around 12:30pm and made our way across Ireland to reach the ferry by 8pm. Mark wanted to enjoy more of the scenery so he went a logner route and met up with us at Waterford. The ferry docked by 1am and we rode to Mark’s fiance’s place for a few hours sleep. Up by 7am and on our way again, we stopped in Waitrose Abergaveny for breakfast and then blasted on to get home in to head off to work!
What a great weekend!