Saturday July 15th - Belfast to Dublin - 220 miles - Total so far 1843 miles
So excited with the prospect of being on the open road and with the weather forecast predicting glorious weather I just couldn't wait to finish work and get on my way. In the end I decided to finish work early and headed over to what would be my last train journey of the trip up to Belfast. Consequently I arrived in Belfast at 17.30 and with a good few hours of daylight remaining I decided to take a slow amble along the coast and put a few miles behind me.
I followed my favourite road, the A2, up through Bangor which was really a pretty a little town and wound my way along the coast. Apart from the commuters heading home the roads were remarkably quiet, I guess most people were away on vacation, and after an hour or so the cars were gone leaving the road to me.
My destination for the evening was the pretty little port of Donaghadee. I had rang ahead earlier in the day trying ot find a B&B and the only one I could find had gone out of business. The very helpful lady explained that the area, though beautiful, was basically bypassed by tourists and hence most B&B's had given up. I didn't believe this but once leaving Bangor I hardly saw any where to stay so I was pleasantly surprised to find a B&B right by the harbour. At 60 quid though I wasn't prepared to pay the price so we haggled a bit and eventually got the room for 40 quid plus an early breakfast.
After very nice meal I retired to bed early very much looking forward to a great ride in the morning. I woke at 3.45am and had my breakfast (which was excellent), packed my bags and then sat on the end of my bed waiting for first light. This came at 4.30am so I let myself out of the front door and prepared to move off when all hell let loose. The owner of the B&B had forgotten that I was leaving early (though he had made such a fuss of making me breakfast) and had put the alarm on. As there was little I could do I cycled off into the pre-dawn light and pedalled a bit faster than I normally would as I guiltily put as much distance between the sound of the alarm and myself. I must admit that for the next hour or so I kept expecting a car to pull up behind me and an irate B&B owner in his pyjamas to leap out and attack for waking him up along with half the village.
The first destination was the ferry at Portaferry which lay at the mouth of Strangford Lough. First though I had to get there. The ride down the A2 was just delightful and for the first time in my trip I was able to witness the sun rise over the ocean. Having started the trip back in January I had seen no sunrises during my first few mornings because of cloud. To see the run rise, this huge golden ball ascending into the sky was just beautiful. No wonder our descendants used to throw themselves on the ground and worship this god.
I reached Portaferry by 0645 and found the town fast asleep, as well as the ferry crew; the first ferry wasn't due to leave until 0815. Of course I had known this before hand but had somehow lived in the hope that maybe they would run earlier during the summer or there would have been some other way of getting across such as a friendly fisherman. Dream on. So I restocked sports drinks from the bakery along with some soda bread and an iced bun to build up the carbohydrates.
Once across the ferry I found the A2 again and followed the coast south. The main thing I was aware at this stage of the day was that Dublin was my destination for the weekend but now that the ferry was behind me and I had over 13 hours of daylight left I could actually reach Dublin by nightfall if I really tried. It was very tempting and the prospect of stopping off in some B&B north of Dublin because of a lack of effort on my part was a red rag to a bull. I had to give it my best shot.
Now to reach Dublin I had to set myself a number of targets so first one was Newcastle that I reckoned if I could reach by 1100 would be a good start. In fact once I saw The Mourne Wall in the distance I knew I was getting close and soon I was there at 1045. A lovely lively town full of tourists and very busy but no time to stop so it was in one end and out the other.
The road from Newcastle to Newry was very pleasant as it followed the coast for the most part eventually turning inland, past Warrenpoint and to Newry. In fact earlier I had taken a little detour to another name that had leapt from the page and reminded me of my times in Ireland as a soldier. The camp at Ballykinler is the main training camp for the British Army and boy had it changed since I was there. I remember old nissen huts, wind swept barracks and dilapidated huts. Today it looked very fortified and boasted many new buildings and lots of refurbishment. As I climbed into the hills around the camp I tried to locate the "tin city" where I had done my training but with so many new buildings it wasn't possible to really make anything out. Still it was yet another blast from the past and interesting to see.
The road to Newry was fast and I rode with another cyclist for most of the way from Warrenpoint. As we barrelled along at 17mph chatting away I found myself talking about how I had cycled around Ireland and that this was my 17th day of cycling. The fact that this was spread out over the last 7 months somehow got left out :( What a fraud !! Also the pace was killing me but I kept the banter up and a fixed grin on my face, it was only after he turned off that I drastically reduced my speed and let out a long groan before pulling up and taking a quick break.
From Newry it got a lot harder. First of all the terrain was known to me so I knew what was ahead. The ride from Newry to Dublin is pretty dull with long stretches of "coast" road following the coast about 3 miles inland. Also the wind picked up and the as long as I was heading east progress was slow. However I reached Newry at 1300 an hour earlier than I thought and I was in Carlingford for 1400 so things were looking good.
Around to Dundalk and some very boring cycling to Drogheda where I suffered my first puncture on my trip todate. I had learnt a lot from my earlier days of having punctures so quickly swapped inner tubes and checked the tyre for what caused the puncture. I was soon back on the bike and reached Drogehda at 1800 which still left me 4 hours to get home. With Dublin buses on the road now and the DART going through the same towns I was going there was no way I was going to give up.
By now I was tired and running out of daylight. With 50 miles to cover in 4 hours I knew it was going to be tough. I really wanted to get to Dublin via Malahide and Howth because that at least followed the coast and was interesting, However once I got to Swords it just wasn’t an option as I had no time so I picked up the airport road and thundered home. When I think of all the times I have taken a taxi to the airport and just how easy it was to get there I could have kicked myself. It's so close to town that I should have cycled, would have saved myself a fortune in taxi fairs that’s for sure.
At 2220 I rolled into the garage beneath the apartment just as the last of the light disappeared.
An epic end to an epic journey.
