Malin 2 Mizen Day 1

 

Malin 2 Mizerable

Day 1 - Malin Head to Ballina

September 25, 2021

I'm about 3 years late with this post, so just assume that it's being told through rose tinted lenses and the true misery of it has somewhat faded from my memory......somewhat!!

Before we talk about how cycling the length of Ireland is an ordeal, let's just acknowledge, that driving the length of Ireland is an ordeal. It did serve as an eye opener though of what we had gotten ourselves into. By the time we reached our hotel in Malin Village, we would have been in New York. 

At dinner the night before, talk soon turned to everyones favourite topic, the weather. The forecast for the following day was for rain......... and wind. We resorted to thralling the web trying to find a site which would give us some glimmer of a nice forecast. This didn't work so we moved on to the most logical follow on conversation, what was everyone's choice of gear for the cycle. As usual we had the usual range of choices, from shorts to full on December Monsoon gear. 

We all retired for the night in blind ignorance of the misery that awaited us the next day.

The day got off to the perfect start, the hotel didn't expect us to be up so early for breakfast so there was no food for us when we got down in the morning. Subsequently, by the time they had rustled up breakfast for us, the mini bus which was intended to bring us to Malin Head, had left to do the local school run. So....... with 260kms to do, into the the wind and pissing rain, we were sat, 20km from the start line and our bikes, eating a fry.... At this stage the Blank Cheque was a nervous wreck, realising that this delayed start would inevitably result in the Hammer Merchant spending the first 2 hrs above threshold in an attempt to make up the time. 

Luckily, the Wiley Operator knows everybody, so he made a quick call and 5 minutes later, a man in a van was sitting outside the door waiting for us. 

Eventually, an hour late, we made it to Malin Head, hastily set up the gear, took the obligatory pics and faced into what we had somehow forgotten, would be 260km of a block head wind. As a point of note, realising that he was way out of his depth, the Road Captain had stood down from navigational duties, leaving the position to be filled by the Tech Head. This, in hindsight, was a gross error in judgement. Obviously, he had uploaded a route onto his bike computer so he would always have the information in-front of him, so as to ensure we would never get lost. I'm not sure what route he uploaded, but it most certainly wasn't the Malin to Mizen route we intended on riding!! 1km into the ride and when faced with our first junction, things turned into a farce with the tech head frantically searching his phone to find the correct route, this set the tone for the next three days.

5 minutes later we were hit with a "summer shower", you know the kind, where a days worth of rain is dumped on you in five minutes. Except it didn't last 5 minutes, it lasted for 3 hours. Combined with the strong head wind, exposed and hilly terrain, things had not started well. The pace was slow, the pulls on the front were tough, the conversation was quiet, and the gear was soaked, absolutely soaked!! There was no enjoyment in this. The only glimmer of light relief came when the Blank Cheque took his first pull on the front, straight into a blowing gale up the first categorised climb of the day, with his rain jacket inflated like a bouncy castle, we crawled up the climb barely in double digits, counting down in unison as the speed gradually dipped into the single figures. This was a situation in which the Angry Man was thriving!

Things then went from bad to worse, 2 hours in, the actual foreign guy, whilst probably dreaming of his sunnier homeland, cycled off the road, into a pothole and over the handlebars and in the process destroying one half of his body along with his bike. Having regrouped after this mishap, the group faced into 30km of climbing into the wind and rain. The speed was low, the hammer merchant was breaking out in a rash, the group was at a low eb! We met the support van at the side of the road for a much needed break, we hadn't even reached the lunch stop on Day 1 and the group had felt like they were through the ringer. Michael in the support van proposed replacing the Actual Foreign Guys bike with his spare Look 795 superbike but having seen the look of horror on the rest of the groups face, decided against it and opted for running repairs on his own bike instead. 

We got back on the road, the wind hadn't abated. Soon after we punctured, when I say we, I mean the Farmer, a man, who places bike maintenance well down on the list of his priorities and whose tyres bore a close resemblance to Terry Savalas!! At this stage, the Wiley Operator had lost the plot and proposed we leave the Farmer at the side of the road, the Shark stepped in and assisted the Farmer with the tyre change thankfully, as if he hadn't, we may still be stuck on the side of the road outside Donegal town, although the Sharks good will was quickly dwindling as the Farmer handed him, an already patched tube to replace his punctured one!!

The group gathered itself again and put the head down for countless hours of hard pulling and after what felt like months, finally reached the lunch stop............in Bundoran.........we had get to Ballina this evening........

Im not sure the group even digested their lunch, it was more like Homer Simpson where the food wasnt even swallowed. After our 7th snickers of the day, a handful of haribo and another coke (yes things had already reached that stage) the group were back on the road. Soon after lunch and nearly 8 hours after departing Malin head, we finally left Donegal!! We dispatched Leitrims coastline with ease and hit Sligo.

At this point, there was another issue that was affecting the group. The Tech Head's foray into route navigation was not going well. When presented with a simple left right option at a junction, the Tech Head would invariably pick the boreen, 500m preceding the junction. I'll leave it to your imaginations, what the angry man's feeling on all this was. 

The motorists in Donegal have very little time or respect for cyclists, those in Sligo are not much better. The haul between Bundoran and Sligo is a tough, dangerous slog, broken only by intermittent views of the looming Benbulben. We were glad to have it over, in fact we felt as if the day was over upon reaching Sligo, maybe it should have been, but after a quick coke/snickers stop, we turned and headed into North Mayo and the final push home.

The Group was working well at this stage, the stronger legs taking the longer pulls in lieu of those more tired and suffering, but everyone was working and the enormity of what we had taken was beginning to dawn on us, as had the need to work hard together as a team. The group was gelling well in the face of the challenge.........until...........upon reaching Ballina, whereupon the Tech Head's navigational skills went into meltdown, our hearts sinking as we passed our hotel after being told not to take what we had assumed as the entrance into our hotel. Then the salt was rubbed in the wound as we rounded, what he insisted was in fact the correct entrance to the hotel, only to find a deserted boreen, with a thick wedge of grass running down the middle and two hens standing in the middle of the road. The angry man needed restraining at this point.

We slept that night.