Ireland!

After a great Irish breakfast on the ship and  repacking the stuff – amazing how every time you pack after a day you find out that you need the things on top the least and the ones below most frequently – we finally arrived at Rosslare. Shortly after we left the city on the main road we turned left into the wild narrow countryside roads and the adventure began …

On the road

After a very busy Friday morning at work we saddled up the Africa Twins an headed towards France. As it is one week before Easter the roads were full of people rushing off for a holiday and it took us a while to get to Burgundry where we made a stop for the night.

On a perfect spring morning we continued our journey across France and in the afternoon reached Normandy’s Omaha beach and the neighbouring D-Day sites from WW2 where we made a short final stop before embarking the Irish Ferries ‚Oscar Wilde‘. As there was the opportunity we chose a five star suite – what a difference to our usual travels taking deck passage in sleeping bags but honestly after the 1200km ride on one and a half days we deserved it.

Final preps

Two days to go and fully stressed – not from the travel preps but more from a project I need to finish before I leave. The idea to be on the road soon is the light at the end of the tunnel. Collecting some GPS data I discovered my track from 1995 and was able to convert and extract some of the points I visited then. Also I packed things in the waterproof bag … amazing how little you need on such a trip. I am getting better from time to time and am really proud of. Had some 5mins to pack only … ok and about two hours to find one single item that I stored and forgot where. As usual – but better than on the title picture twenty years ago, hell that was a chaos every day.

Now we are ready to go, tires changed, bikes serviced, gear packed and soon we are on the road 🙂

Ireland … what else?

While GUK was actually planning to ride the qualification for the women world record ride in 2018 the idea to explore Ireland came out of a discussion on rarely visited locations. It’s true if I ask around my friends hardly anyone has been to the green island on a motorbike – I wonder why and yes Ireland has a great motorcyclists scene starting from the world famous Irish Road Races to the MCCS and MC’s all ovber the place. Good choice I think so enjoying the first warming sunbeams of the year on our balcony we checked distances against available time and found a good route that would match up the two weeks time we had.

Of course we need to see the natural beauties, meet people and see some of the history from megalithic cultures to today. But that is easy in Ireland .. it seems you can find that around every corner. Speaking of corners there are some interesting coastal routes in south and west and then there are some „mountain“ passes we want to see as well and as I have good memories of my first ever international motorcycle trip to Donegal’s Sleave League we need to drive up there and then see the Dunlops, the racing legends – quickly it was clear this might become a trip somewhere in between easy cruising and discovering and going offroad in some places. Cool stuff, the more we were investigating the more places to see landed on our bucket list. Of course once we start we usually drop our plans and follow the sun but honestly travel preparations are great fun and let you dream of the time there already. When can we finally get started?