And so to Ireland

Sunday 3rd July 2011
Day 19
The Pedal for Parkinson's Double End-to-End Cycle Challenge
Campbelltown to Balleycastle by boat

and then on to Malin Head by bike
60 miles cycling

As cycling fans everywhere will surely know, this weekend saw le Tour de France make its annual Grand départ; further north meanwhile another long distance cycle tour has reached its symbolic half way mark with a transition stage that has taken the Pedal for Parkinson's Challenge Team across the water, away from mainland Britain to Ireland.

Sunday 3rd July: the quartet of master pedallers still riding the Double End-to-End Cycle Challenge caught the lunchtime ferry from Campbelltown on the Mull of Kintyre and by 1.30pm had embarked onto Irish soil at Ballycastle having experienced a very speedy and exhilarating ride on the Kintyre Express. No ordinary ferry this, rather a giant speed boat that regularly reaches speeds of 60mph. Fortunately the water was by and large calm.

A new Support Crew were already waiting in Irleand to meet the Team. Anne and Stuart were at the quayside to greet the boys and help them get sorted. This was not a rest day! There were still 60 miles to ride to Malin and the afternoon was disappearing fast. Happily, the weather was perfect and the scenery beautiful. Beautiful countryside alone, however, can not sustain the hungry cyclist for long so before setting off there was still a small matter of lunch, which was also a chance to get up to speed with Anne and Stuart. The meal break over, it was well into the afternoon before the lads hit the road.

The route up to Malin includes a second, more conventional ferry ride across Lough Foyle into Eire. As the Team disembarked at Magilligan they became entangled in first real traffic jam of the whole, by now nearly 3 week trip as the vehicles coming off the ferry encountered the crowds attending a grave-blessing ceremony at a nearby cemetery: a piece of local culture the Challenge Team could have done without, just at that moment at least as the evening was drawing in. As it was, the Team arrived in Malin at around 9.30pm which, if Scotland was anything to go by, didn't augur well for their getting a proper meal any where. However, a call ahead to the digs and a further call from the landlady to a local hotel led to a sympathetic chef keeping his kitchen open to meet the demands of our weary and by now famished travellers. The Team's luck was in: the late night, after-hours catering was no mean affair - the chef turned out to be a former chef at the Houses of Parliament and sometime personal cook to Margaret Thatcher. What he served up has still to be determined – cabinet pudding, perhaps, or Eton mess? A question I shall be tabling to David when he next reports in via Skype with news of today's ride from Malin Head to Enniskillen.