Aah now that’s a real pint of the black stuff!
The intention of writing up this blog as a Day by Day sort-off thing went South pretty quickly. So now, 4 days after I started on my trip, I find myself ensconced in a pub with a Guinness in hand, that’s gorgeously creamy and just as perfect as I expected one to be here in Ireland, giving me the perfect setting to now catch-up on my diary with the past few days madness.
"I’m an introverted kind of chap but the following pages don’t seem to reflect this, in fact the act of travelling has inspired me to grow in confidence"
18/07/2014 – 19/07/2014 / Friday Night - Saturday / Norwich - Dún Laoghaire, Dublin - Marley Park, Dublin / 330 miles by Road plus 68 miles by Ferry plus 7.5 miles by road
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| Fig. 1 - This is Norwich at my good friends stag-do, that chap sat on the bike with his younger brother to far right and his father second from left, I'm on the left. |
Friday night finds me starting my adventure at 1am, whilst leaving my friend’s stag-do in Norwich that I just couldn’t miss, being as he's one of my oldest friends. I expected this first leg of the journey to be a complete mission and wasn’t to be disappointed, even having managing to catch an hours sleep just before setting off. Fighting both lack of sleep and mother-nature across the country, to catch the 8.30am Holyhead to Dublin ferry. With high winds, rain and lightning storms that caused motorway lights to blackout, leaving me being plunged in to total darkness at times.
I didn’t have the best of starts either, before departing, my friend points out that my tail light was out. With time pressing on I didn’t have time to sort this out and rode into the night, with the aim of be the fastest thing on the road, so as not to give anyone the chance to run into the back of me.
Before setting of I monitored the MET office weather forecast and was expecting to hit a weather front somewhere in the Midlands, but I didn’t expect it to of been as bad as it was. The road spray blinded me and therefore slowed me down, making me also more vulnerable, having no tail light to show drivers that I was there. I’ve always got a bunch of cable ties tied to one of my front forks, which gets a few funny remarks now and then. It was one of those tips I picked up from a motorcycle travel book that I’m glad I took note to use, as having them so easily to hand has saved me on more than one occasion. Having had time on the road to think of a solution to my tail light problems, I pulled off the motorway and quickly solved my impending rear collision, by simply using a few of these cable ties to strap the foot brake switch permanently on. I thought this the better of two evils, drivers might not know when I was breaking but at least they could now see me.
My headlights were also causing me issues as I was getting flashed a lot by passing lorries, even with them being dipped. This was simply due to the extra weight of my luggage bags strapped to the rear seat and compressing the rear shock therefore tilting my headlights up. I was getting fed up pissing people off and pulled of the motorway to try and adjust them. But in the dark and never having ever adjusted them before, I couldn’t figure it out. Later on in the trip, in a garage in Ireland I discover that they couldn’t be adjusted any further than they were already.
Riding along the motorway, I was soon wishing I had uploaded some music on to my phone to listen too, rather, than what the instead of my head was playing on constant repeat, with no way to shut it off! Soon it became so droning and repetitive, that I started to lose concentration. So I took myself off the road for a quick power nap, at a service station.
Whilst sitting propped up against the wall of the garage, after firstly topping the tank up and getting a chocolate bar to eat. I managed to get a quick 10 minute sleep, whilst the rain beat down on me. Conscious of time pressing on, I dragged myself back on the bike and after a few miles I started to feel a little more refreshed. I had a quick look at the Satnavs ETA to Holyhead which showed 08:30, the same time of my ferries departure! Right I thought, if I hammer it I can at least scrape a few minutes off that and so I psyched myself up and focused on the task.
I left the motorway and travelled through the A-roads of North Wales, to Holyhead, going as fast and as safely as I could, passing when I felt I had a clean opportunity. My riding confidence had grown over the length of the ride, as long trips tend to do for me. I usually start off keeping to a reasonable pace without over taking, being happy to sit behind traffic, until after an hour or so I pick up more confidence.
Day light finally arrives and my rear tail lights are now no longer a worry, just time that’s against me.
After my last fuel stop I decided to keep up the pace and keep going. The bike stutter’s on me, and I realise the problem and quickly flip the tank onto reserve. The next sign post that I pass reads only 15 miles to Holyhead, time to gamble as I’m still going at a fuel consuming pace and I’m not sure how far my reserve will get me. I pass by my last chance to fill up but choose to carry on and make it just on fumes I’m sure.
Entering Holyhead and at the last set of lights before you arrive at the ferry terminal, I just simply run threw and arrive exactly at 08:30, to find that I’d just missed the boat, bugger it, well I tried. One perk of being on a bike is that it’s not too much of a disaster, if you’re late and the lady at the counter, places me on the next boat out, which leaves in just half an hour, that’ll do nicely.
I take the opportunity before booking in, to quickly nip to a local Tesco’s to fuel-up and grab some breakfast pastries and unleaded, the unleaded for the bike of course.
After booking in and being directed to lane 6, which seems to be the bike lane, as there’s already a few bikes lined up ahead of me with their owners off getting fleeced for their breakfast, in a Tesco café just to the one side of the boarding lanes. I’m soon joined by a small group consisting of three bikes. They’ve come from the Midlands and are two couples and a single rider, riding a mixture of Harley Davidsons and Yamahas and go by the names Stephen Degg, Toni-Ann Crzybowski and Sue Chamber, I didn’t manage to record the other couples names. They are members of a motorcycle club called ‘Get off your Butts MCC’.
I share some of my breakfast with them, as they have sensibly voted to skip getting fleeced at Tesco, to wait to get breakfast on board.
Soon after nattering to my new friends about bikes and being nosy, whilst walking up and down the expanding line of the newly arrived bikes. Greeting people and getting an interestingly mixed response. From people who were more than happy to stop and have a chat, too some who just gave me a funny look, which seemed to say “why are you talking to me, just go away you idiot”, but I get that a lot, even under normal circumstances.
We were soon called back, to our bikes to get ready to board. On the way from the boarding lane to a temporary holding area, one of the new group drops his gloves, which he’d forgot he left drying on his BMW GS’s hot cylinders. (The BMW GS’s engine is a flat twin, meaning the cylinders are horizontally opposed). Basically there flat and provide a good platform to dry your gloves out on, unless you ride off and forget about them. I managed to tell him and got one of the ferries loaders, who kindly who went back and collected them for him, then it was finally time to board.
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Fig. 2 - The high speed ferry from Holyhead
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This was only my second proper ferry crossing on the bike, others being on small car ferries. Another trick I picked up from reading my motorcycle travel books, was the versatile sheep skin. I used it in this instance to cover my seat for the strap to go over and then lash the bike to the deck. Its other
uses are as extra comfort, for my seat on long road trips, but it can also be used as a tent doormat to stand on, whilst pulling on your boots when the grounds wet or the reverse. This also gets some funny comments.
Being a little more efficient in my loading procedure, I finished my breakfast whilst waiting for the others, then stowed, to be disposed of later, the now empty plastic box, under my elastic cargo mesh, which I always have covering my travel bags, another useful multipurpose item I carry.
Once aboard we head straight for the restaurant, finding it a bit hard going, having to navigate our way through the bolted down chairs and tables. After a bowl of porridge and a coffee, we move ourselves to sit near the rear smoking deck, at the starboard side of the boat. Thankful for the breeze coming through the open door, helping to cool me down as I was sweating buckets The thermals I had on, to see me through the night were now cooking me, plus living in them for nigh on two days now, I reeked! Whilst chatting with the lads, the girls came back from enjoying the tester bottles of expensive duty free ‘smellies’ (perfume). This I thought was a good solution to help cover me, so I went off and did the same, coming back smelling like a footballer, only slightly better of course.
I only managed, to put my head down, for a quick half hour before we neared Dublin. Whilst chatting away with Stephen, we noticed this young lady walk out on to the smoking deck and both of us couldn’t continue with whatever we were talking about, for a minute. She sat herself down on the rear decking and I passed comment.
Trying to take sneaky looks, I soon got back into the flow of the conversation again. Later on I noticed her curled, up snoozing away on a bench, as I came back from getting a drink. Then, as we were waiting to dock, she came and sat down next to us and struck up a conversation. It turned out she was interested in taking up biking herself.
I, partly due to being tired which helped slacken my inhibitions, got chatting to her. Plus I’m always happy to promote biking and encouraging others to discover it. Her name was Bruce, but she preferred her nick name Maria. We swapped contact details, and at around this point the others had moved off to un-strap their bikes, somehow I hadn't notice!
Then out of the blue, she invite’s me to a music festival in Dublin she’s going to, called Latitude, as her friends had bailed on her and she’s travelling on her own. A few years ago, I decided to say yes to anything and everything, however recently I’ve been slacking, so I thought it a great opportunity to reignite this vow and besides, how could I leave someone, who I felt needed a bit of support. I’d also never been to a festival, and having shocked a recent friend with this revelation, earlier in the year, I’d since added this to my bucket list. I did already have plans to attend a Motorcycle Adventure meeting in Enniskillen, as I’d volunteered some of my time to help out there, but decided to bale on the HU meet. Surely this was what Adventure’s where about, to go with the flow and be flexible with your plans, in the face of developments. Not that I didn’t and don’t feel guilty, as I’ll make it up next year. Plus Yes, I’m also a single man, and having been single for a while now, there was of course the ‘obvious’ running through my mind.
We agreed, after getting directions from a Steward, to meet out the front of the terminal and decide where to go from there. It was funny, departing from her, I could tell there was the mutual feeling, that if I kissed her on the cheek, that would be OK, but I refrained just in case I was wrong. Feeling both nervous and exited I rushed down to release the bike, bumping into the others and filling them in on developments and they wished me luck, with cheeky winks. Well I might as well jump into this adventure with both feet first, even though it turned out to be without looking.
I rolled off the boat and fought my way through the disembarking hoard, parking up on the curb next to the pay and display car park, and walked in to the terminal to look for her. spotting her walking down the stairs. We went and sat out the front for a while, to get to know each other better, over a can of cider she’d brought.
She was 24, Irish born, Red Head and living in South London, with her parents and two younger sisters. Working for the NHS, as well as being in the Army Reserves, though she described herself as growing a conscience and was questioning whether being in the Army was for her. Her family moved to London, when she was young and she felt she had had to lose her Irish accent, to fit in at her school.
She was only visiting the festival for the day, leaving in the morning and having to travel by herself, as her friends, for one reason or another had decided not to go after she’d bought the tickets, but she was undeterred.
We discussed ways of getting to the festival, at which point I discovered annoyingly, that I couldn’t get a phone signal, being in Ireland without roaming switched on, my phone was now useless to me.
Having read a few motorcycle travel books, I remembered another tip for if you’re lost in a city, this being to use the local taxis for guidance. Therefore, I enlisted the help of a nearby taxi, to take Maria, which I followed to the festival.
(By the way beer No. 2 is going down nicely, if you remember from the start.)
After half hour or so, and with the occasional waving between us, we pulled into a petrol station near the festival. On the way, and as a payment for giving me the tickets, I had decided to pay the taxi fare, but I ended up not being quick enough. Though as I was thanking him for his help, he leaned in and quietly suggested, that I look out for her, as she’s imparted to him, that she recently lost a close friend, who was one of the three who were going to go with her, to the festival. So my instincts where right and I had felt correct in she needed someone to be there for her.
Looking for a safe place to park the bike, the best I could come up with was the back of the petrol station. After securing the bike and notifying the stations staff I went to collect Maria from the front of the station. Whilst I was away she’d got chatting, and had picked up a few new friends, who were also going to the festival. Maria I noted by this point seemed a little drunk, she sobered up somewhat once we got walking.
We lost the others in the line, waiting to collect our tickets. I was sweating rivers in all my riding gear and having never been to a festival before I didn’t realised that there wouldn’t be any secure lockers to store your belongings in, and wasn’t looking forward to having to carry it around with me.
Whilst we waited in the queue, I took the opportunity to thank her by giving her a kiss on the cheek, gauging her reaction from that I could tell she kind of liked me, but what confirmed it was her linking arms with me as we walked into the festival, it felt like it was going to be a good evening.
I wasn’t sure of the line-up, but I didn’t mind as I’d throw myself into it anyway. Maria was looking forward to seeing Disclosure, an Electronic duo. I did at one point hear the 1975’s playing somewhere, but at the time, Maria was flaking out so I was looking out for her. She opened up a little to me about her friend’s passing, but was too upset about it and all she wanted to do was drink and forget. I knew there wasn’t much I could do, for someone who’s in that frame of mind apart from look out for them. So I chose to be patent, as I wasn’t there for me at the end of the day. I’d chosen to be there for her.
Maria managed to find a place to secure our stuff, under the desk at the Heineken bar tent, which freed me up, not only from my bulky gear but I also finally got rid of the damn thermals.
The evening progressed and at some point along the time line, to be honest it was a little hazy, I looked into her eyes and kissed her, but I wish I’d wrote these details in my diary immediately, as I would of liked too of remember the steps leading there.
I think I get festivals now, especially after being dragged to the front by a tough, don’t give a crap woman, feeling like I have to apologies every time someone gives her a filthy look, as she stamps on their feet, to get by and then standing pressed tightly in the crowd, that’s heaving like one massive organism, whilst being bombarded by deep bass sounds and vibrations, it’s a completely unique experience and then making out with her in the middle of it all, was yet another.
In the late evening, Maria started falling asleep. This I found out was due to her having ruined her kidneys, due to drinking excessively which is terrible. Also and importantly it turns out, has a 4 year old daughter. She tested my reaction by mentioning this fact! But I chose to accept it. But I still felt a little gutted, as a readymade family isn’t something I’m seeking, but is something I can learn to accept with the right person. But I thought for her, that I could see how her daughter, could hopefully bring a positive change into her life as she could learn to take care of herself better, if not at least, for her daughter’s sake. Though what struck me, as a little odd was that she apologised for lying. I think she liked me from the start, but didn’t want to frighten me off. I surprised her with my attitude and being accepting.
I must admit I did find her a little of a handful, as she’s very quick to confrontation and I’d soon found myself being a referee. Not something to be honest, I need in my life, even though I’ve the skills to handle this type of social situation. My mother for instance, back when she was more herself, used to fly of the handle and I’d calm her down to be able to think rationally. Nowadays she’s the sweetest person due to all the medication she has to take for her heart, angina and diabetes.
(I restart this diary as I’m now sat at the campsite where I will be staying Saturday night with my friends. I have arrived a little early, Thursday evening early, not that I was eager to leave the North either. If I’d of known I’d of liked to of stayed around Balentoy and got to know Tori, though she’s 8 years younger than me, sigh! Still not found my perfect Celtic Red Headed woman. But I did see a Red Headed sight as I passed by a café, made the more outstanding by being dressed all in black. I didn’t get to see her face though, poignantly. Anyway let’s continue…)
On an observational note, I found going to the loo at a festival most entertaining. Maria had a very cheeky, but novel way off queue jumping. Saying she was pregnant and skipping to the front. I opted to nip behind any available tree or bush and since people were walking right past you, I’d have to close my eyes and make my mind go blank.
I was tired, but surprised I was still on my feet after a near 36 hours or so without sleep. The electro-duo ‘Discloser’ that Maria was most looking forward to seeing, where the last band of the night. We dived into the crowed again but this time it was more packed than a sardine can and having picked up my stuff, as I was requested to do so at 9pm from the Heineken tent, it was a battle. Finally, after battling up to the front, the heat from everyone, being so packed in together, had me in a running sweat again.
Half-way through the set, Maria decided she’s had enough, so holding hands tightly to stay together, we elbowed our way through the crowd. Some people were really angry at us for getting in their
view line, even if it was only temporarily. The sea of people seemed never ending, I swear it felt like after a week, of going in one direction, we were no nearer the edge, and as all the other bands had now finished, everyone had converge on the main stadium.
Finally we popped out, like a couple of corks and resurfaced, to then try and navigate our way to find the loos, getting completely lost and finally finding them, though I still swear they were on the other side!
By now both of us, where properly flagging and also hungry so we wondered over to look over the food stalls. Maria found she didn’t have any money left and in despondency flopped on the ground. I remembered I still had some left on me, so getting her up, we got a box of noodles each and found somewhere to flop down and eat. I had only a few mouthfuls, as I was just too tired by now to eat, even though I knew I needed, it I just couldn’t force any down, even though Maria tried being persuasive, I just couldn’t, so I boxed it back up for the next day.
Our minds were now on finding somewhere to sleep. Maria was just keen to sleep on the ground. I suppose the Army does that to you, but I wasn’t having that. So I suggested finding a Hostel, then I realized that I didn’t know if I would be able to find one open at 11pm.
We sat and watched the end of the show and soon followed the crowds out, at which point Maria started having a panic attack, it turned out she hates being in crowds in open streets. Ironic as she likes festivals. I tried my best to keep her mind distracted, till the crowds started to thin out a little, at which point I found an open park. I had her lay down in the middle of it to escape the crowds and calm her down, after a little while she felt a lot better.
I decided the best thing to do would be to tent up where we were for the night, as I couldn’t guarantee finding a hostel, and I had a large enough tent for the both of us. Making sure Maria was safe I went and retrieve the bike from the garage which luckily was just around the corner. Though, by the time I’d gotten back to her, she was asleep and dead to the world. I tried to waking her, but nothing short of a cattle prod would have got her moving. Eventually I managed to get her into a sitting position, which seemed to wake her up a little, then carefully lifted her to her feet and help her move forward. In this way we staggered the 40 metres or so to the tent, which I’d pitched up right in the far corner of the park. Luckily, she’d woken up enough to navigate her way through the door flap and into the tent. I helped her take her shoes off and get into my sleeping bag. After going back to the middle of the park and retrieving our belongings, and ignoring the police who had come around in their car, to check me out I got into the tent.
Kissing her goodnight, even though she was asleep, I zipped up the tent, but it was such a muggy night, I had to strip down to boxers and eventually fell asleep. I awoke at 3 or 4 am with severe cramp, managing not to scream, whilst crawled out of the tent to stand up and unknot my legs. For some reason, almost every time that I have a drink and then sleep on the floor, either at a friend’s house or whilst out camping, I always end up with sever cramp in my legs. Once the pain had gone, it was only then that I noticed, just how cold I had become and the fact I was shivering badly. I eventually, after moving around for a bit, shivered myself warm again and being careful not to trigger of any further cramps I put all my riding gear back on. Checking I’d not woken Maria up, though that would have been a miracle, I got back in the tent and soon fell back asleep again.
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