First Trip of the year was a two parter. The first part was a club trip to Mount Falcon Estate in Ballina and the second part was a solo journey up to Donegal, the last part of the Country I had not yet explored on the bike.
Primarily a reconnaissance mission for a bigger Donegal trip later in the year, but I did want to see as much of Donegal County as I could in this trip. I spent weeks on google maps trying to ensure I covered as much of the coastal routes and the interior mountains of Donegal as I could, mapping routes for each day meticulously in preparation to upload to my Garmin Sat Nav.
I really didn’t want to miss out any of it, whilst simultaneously knowing I was being overly ambitious with the mileage given the fact it was winter and it gets dark by 6pm yet my routes were coming out at 10 hours according to google maps so I’d have to be on the road 8am every morning and that’s not even factoring in lunch or stopping for photo’s etc, and as I am not a morning person, this was definitely an ambitious set of routes.
Day 1: Part 1, Kilcock to Mount Falcon – I never like to drive straight to a destination, I’d rather take the opportunity to make a scenic trip of it, so my plan was to take the N4 and put some distance from home before starting to go off the beaten track, so first point of call was to pull off the N4 around Castlebaldwin and head up to Carrowkeel Passage Tombs, before heading back to the N4 and making way up to Easkey Lough and then across to Lough Talt up to Mount Falcon to check in to the Lodges. I hoped to be checked in by 2pm grab a quick sandwich before taking the remainder of the afternoon to shoot over to Achill Island before getting back to get dinner.
It didn’t work out quite as planned.
I got as far Longford and the pissing rain got into the power connector for my Sat Nav and blew the fuse out in a puff of smoke. I must point out my Garmin is a car Sat Nav mounted with a ram mount and really wasn’t weather proof. A piece of information I only realised as the puff of smoke rose in front of my visor.
With the loss of my Sat Nav I forgot Castlebaldwin would be further up the N4 from Longford, and I stupidly followed the sign for Ballina via Swinford up the N5 instead and totally balls’d up my route via Lough Easkey.
When I realised my mistake I tried to recover at least some of my plan by taking a back road off the N5 and tried to find my way up a network of tiny back roads and twin tracks towards lough Talt, I got lost for a while and ended up going past Mass Rock before I finally found lough Talt, which is like a smaller version of Doo Lough, really beautiful. On the plus side, I did find a signpost for a river with my name in it ! :)
I was disappointed in missing Easky Lough but the rain was getting worse so I pressed on. I stopped for a quick chicken baguette when I finally got to Ballina before heading down to Mount Falcon lodges.
I dropped in to the lodge the Club Secretary was staying in and grabbed my key. I was the 2nd member to turn up so I had my pick of the 4 bedrooms in the house I was allotted and took one of the two ensuite ones looking out over the main courtyard. The lodges are very well decked out and all the rooms are well sized and the bathroom was huge. Under floor heating, super comfy bed ! I was well impressed. I threw my bags onto the bed which is the international sign for “I Dibs this room”.
I jumped back on the bike and started heading for Achill, but it had taken longer to get food and check into my Lodge than I had planned, it was just after 3pm and I knew I’d be lucky to get 2.5 hours of Daylight more from the day but I thought I’d go as far as I could.
The rain hadn’t stopped. Again I had a lovely looping route taking me over the mountains, out to Achill to take in the Atlantic drive, then out to keem beach before heading back, but my planned route had gone up in smoke, it was pissing raining, I was over an hour behind schedule and I had underestimated the available daylight, so I threw routes to the wind and took the direct route heading out by Pontoon bridge.
I was shocked to see the Pontoon Bridge Hotel all locked up, I had stayed the with the club on a previous trip and it was a great spot but has fallen foul of the recession and is now closed down awaiting a new owner.
I took a quick snap of the old hotel and pushed on. As I drove I knew I would never get to Achill before Dark, so I adjusted my plan to get to Newport instead and from there take Lough Furnace drive up over the Nephin Mountains then cut back over to Pontoon.
I was introduced to the Lough Furnace & Nephin drive by club Member Pat Munnelly on a club trip 2 years previously and if you have never done it, I highly recommend it. A Truly epic road that’s like riding through the set of Jurassic Park.
The mighty Nephin Mountain rose ahead of me as I climbed the road. It was really lashing rain now, with odd showers of Hail and sleet, as beautiful as the Nephins are, I was happy to get back to the main road as it was covered in wet deep mud and the back wheel was slipping out on me regularly.
I put some spank on the throttle cutting over via Pontoon, making it back to the Hotel Lodges just after dark to see a now full courtyard of motorbikes.
The rest of the club had arrived and had already made tracks for the bar and restaurants.
I locked up the bike and got showered and changed. When I came down stairs I met one of the club members that I was sharing the house with, a chap called Liam. We introduced ourselves and started chatting, whilst we headed up to the main hotel, most of the club had headed in to town, but myself and Liam just grabbed some steaks in the hotel. A few drinks with some other members and then it was an early night for me.
The plan for the Saturday was not the usual ride out, a scavenger hunt with GPS Co Ordinates was the theme, but I met Sean, a member who had helped me get orientated in the club when I first joined 2 years earlier. Sean had a plan to skip the scavenger hunt and head out to Belmullet to the Black sod, an d old lighthouse that Sean use to be the Lighthouse Man for many moons ago. I thought that sounded like a nicer more relaxing spin than the scavenger so made plans to Join Sean.
To be continued..
