Stats for the day: Miles: 125 (!), Ft Climbed:2900ish Calories: TBC Group Punctures: 1, Beard Status: Stroke-able in places. Undercarriage: Surprisingly Good
(The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that is actually posted the morning after it was written, as we couldn’t connect last night, but let’s not let that come between friends.)
SBs, another late post, and another one short of pics, this time mainly as we’re in Ireland and it will cost a small fortune to upload them. I think the stats tell the story though! It was a long day.
After a little over 5 hours kip we had to get up to get on the early ferry to Larne, and it’s fair to say we were all in a mess. Personally I had gone mega stiff in the joints I gave a beating yesterday, but all of us had some niggles and the complete lack of kip did make us wonder how we were going to cope with the day ahead.
A quick status check to my bike in the daylight revealed a few more problems than we originally thought, but nothing terminal and other than the chain breaking it was fine today. Yesterday was a lucky escape for sure.
Thankfully we were blessed with a very smooth crossing allowing a couple of us to sneak 40 winks in the couple of hours we had on the boat. We all got kitted up before we left in an attempt to get away quickly but by the time we drove to our start point (a Tesco car park) and got everything sorted we knew we were in for a late finish, but that was tempered a little by the excitement of being in a new country; a country which definitely surprised us for the best. The people we met in Northern Ireland were incredibly friendly; the armed coppers who came over to say hello when we were setting up, the Tesco security guard who got his manager to come and say hello, do some picture and make a collection for our charities, a fellow biker we met at a sarnie stop who directed us down a great cycle route, even a bike shop owner who couldn’t help us for the spares we were after but let us use his loo and offered to sell us some guns. It made us feel good- and we put it to use by hooning. (hooning is another way of saying we got a move on by the way.
We had been riding a decent pace in the morning as we knew we were up against it on our longest day, but after our first stop it quite literally went up a few gears. The Train was working well and we found ourselves really eating the miles, which is a great feeling, and a total contrast to yesterdays slog. I almost felt like a cyclist, not a Brummie fish somewhat out of water. Our speed meant that as soon as we got into it, NI was gone. Thanks to everyone we met, we really enjoyed it, so we did.
2 big things happened in about 30mins about 4pm. We crossed the border (without any knowledge) and then we passed a magic lamp post. To most people is was just an ordinary post, on a ordinary Irish costal road, but to us it was something pretty cool.
It was Halfway. Get in.
Buoyed by the knowledge that we are technically in the home straight (all be it a bloody long one) we really kept up the pace, and despite a fairly major inadvertent de-tour we found ourselves about 20 miles from Malahyde at about 9pm. That was 105 miles in, and yesterday if we’d have been in the same situation we would almost certainly have bailed and called up the bus but despite being up from 530 today we all felt strong and powered through the last miles. I personally felt as good as I had done all trip. The body is a crazy Mo Fo.
So there we are! One more day down. Tomorrow is another 100 miler, but with a very solid deadline, an 8 pm ferry check in, so it will be another day to turn and burn for sure. Lets see what the legs have to say about that in the morning.
Rolling reporter over and out.
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