Our Honeymoon Trip- Second Week

After our first Honeymoon Week in Connemara, the following Monday, with our heads full of nice landscapes, we left for about 380km – 6 hours.

In Ireland we were surprised by the difference between one “National” road and another, some are very wide, with enough space for 3 or 4 cars (and surprising when people start overtaking in front of you), and other also “National” much more narrow, but also limited at 100km/hour and I think you have to be mad to go at that speed on those roads 😀 , and with some spare sheeps in the middle from time to time. While travelling from one point to another, we tried to avoid the roads in “white” on our Michelin map and, took the “red” ones as much as we could!

Here we are, on nice roads, heading to Ulster, Armoy, where we had booked our second week. No problem on the road, and no rain. We arrived in Armoy in the afternoon and went to the village to buy something to survive the night, we would go to Ballymoney the following day to do some bigger shopping.

In the afternoon, we visited the Joey and Robert Dunlop Memorial Garden:

Wednesday we took the day to go to do some tourism, to The Giant’s Causeway. Beautiful.

At night, back in the village, there was a classic motorbikes show organised by the AMRRC, club organising the Road Races (fairly well). We had also a quick walk in the village garden:

We received there a very warm welcome, very nice people around, a great night in the pub.

On Thursday we went to Ballymoney Museum where there was a tribute to “The Dromara Destroyers” and followed with a visit to the Museum itself. And finished of course with a visit to Joey Dunlop’s pub.

And at last we got to Friday, practice day.

In the morning we first went to take some pictures to “The Dark Hedges”(that we had seen in Stephen Davison “Between the Hedges” which was kind of a start to us wanting to go to a Road Race).

After a long pics session, and lunch, we went to the circuit. We had planned to go to “Balaney Cross”. But as newcomers, we were walking around the paddock when they announced road closing in 5 minutes, and we did not have time to get there (we saw at the end of the day that some places were accessible from inside…).

So finally, we ended up in Kennedy’s corner, which was not so bad as there was a pub, fish&chips and nice neighbours who invited us to a beer 😉

Guy Martin

We were just impressed, amazed, whatever, by the speed of the riders, on THOSE roads… Just WOW, respect. We spent two days “Wowing”, and people asking “this is your first road race?” 😀

Unfortunately it started to rain heavily at the end of the afternoon, and the organisation decided to stop the practice and postpone it to next day. We went back to the paddock, where we were together with the racers and their motorbikes.

When the roads opened we went back to our place for dinner and get some rest for the big day. 😉

On Saturday we had woken up quite early, to avoid doing the same silly thing as the day before. We  got a good point in “Acheson’s Leap”, nice spot to take pictures of racers jumps…

We had nice chats with the guys next to us while waiting for the races to start.

It started with the practice they couldn’t do the day before. It was sunny with good temperature 23-25°C, with some cloud from time to time.

In this point they were also quite fast, and with nice jumps. It is amazing how close you are to the riders.

At last the races started, 10 in total.

The races are just amazing, crazy, the speed, the road conditions, to be so close to the action, and the atmosphere. It was so great. For me, way much exciting than MotoGP (which is quite boring anyway) or Superbikes, or any other kind of race I have seen in circuits. And also much easier to take cool pics without a professional camera 😉

Wow again.

Now the pics:

Doc John

Guy Martin

Davy Morgan

Andy Farrell

Jamie Hamilton

Rodney Patton & Jeremy Mc Williams

Michael Dunlop

Davy Morgan

Derek Mc Gee

William Dunlop

Michael Dunlop

We were quite impressed by everything, the races, the people, the racers, the speed. We will go for more for sure!

The races ended at 5pm, the roads opened and we went to the village for a pint or three… We talked to many nice people there, and just before going back home a few hours later, we met with Michael Dunlop in the other pub and had a little chat with him. That was funny, very nice lad.

At last, we had to go back “home”…

On Sunday it rained all day, so we just had some rest…

On Monday, we were on the road again, for our 3^rd week holiday, 547km and 6 hours according to Google…

To be continued…