IMC New Members Mournes meet

The June is the usual time for the IMC to bring its new members to a more adventurous, mountain setting. Mourns Mountains is the perfect setting for what we needed. Abundance of routes at all grades, easy enough access (less than 2h drive from Dublin) and famous walk ins.

As usual on these type of meets we paired up the more experienced team members with the newbies and set off to the crags.

 

 

Most of the new members wouldn’t have enough experience to lead routes yet, but that’s ok. The idea of the meetup is to learn from tons of experience present.

 

This time round most of the climbing would happen around Lower Cove.

Some of the groups however opted for Slieve Binnian.

All the photos can be seen here.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/15oGUTcopsZ7kybH7

WAW – Northern Edition

Last year during Easter I did the south/west part of the famous Wild Atlantic Way. This year we had a long weekend to spare to go and check out the Northern Coast.

This time we replaced Louis’ KTM 990 with… Peter’s KTM990! Since last trip Dave replaced his super cool first gen VFR, with equally good looking, but not very reliable Ducati.

Since Peter lives up North, Dave and I made our way towards Ballymena on Friday night, riding pretty much all the way in torrential rain. That was to be expected.

We met in the morning and followed the coastal road going through all the different villages, ending up in Magilligan point hoping to shorten our trip by taking a ferry to Greencastle. Unfortunately due to the fog the ferry wasn’t running that morning.

We turned around towards Derry, and then moved up north towards Malin Head – Ireland’s most northerly point.

Huge fog limited the visibility, so we didn’t stall and moved on.

We kept moving west and eventually settled to camp in Gweedore, co Donegal. At this point we’ve done around 350km on rural roads in poor weather, which is exactly what you’ll get when you travel to Northern Ireland. Pints were on the menu for sure.

Now, I’m not a big drinker these days so we didn’t stay up long. On top of that we had another long day ahead of us.

Quick breakfast and we were on the way. Plan was to ride to Donegal and part ways there – Dave & I would ride motorway back to Dub (via Sligo), and Peter would turn east towards Belfast.

 

Unfortunately Dave’s bike broke down shortly after we left… Worst possible place and time – Northern Donegal (somewhere around Dungloe) on a Sunday morning. There was nothing he could do, as the problem was of electrical nature. He called in for roadside assistance, and within 90mins a local recovery man showed up and collected the bike. It was going to be delivered on a back of a truck to Dub, while Dave would have to ride as my pillion.

At that point we decided to turn back, and head towards Letterkenny for lunch, and from there home. Few more hours and we were back in Dub, while it took Peter an hour and a bit to be home. All and all – good trip – pity we didn’t finish. Going to have to go again next year. Maybe start from Galway and go north this time?