This ride was planned around the fact that I was going to Southern Ireland the following weekend for a get together with fellow riders who ostensibly used to ride Honda Deauvilles!
Every year we have a Megameet at some location in the UK, or in this case Ireland, where we get together ride our bikes, eat food and have a beer or whatever!
I decided to go over the Monday prior to the meet and carry out the SS1000 in Ireland as part of the Four Nations challenge.
The first one was in Scotland at the start of May, the second, in England, was after the MCN Festival weekend and this one, well it was last week of May!
My chosen place to rest my head was in a really nice B&B in Royal Hillsborough, just south of Lisburn, which was a really nice quiet place with a walk of about a mile into Hillsborough itself.
The ride
Start point was a BP petrol station on the Hillsborough road in Lisburn, although the Sainsbury one would have been more convenient had I spotted it when doing my planning!
After filling up I headed off down the A1 heading for the M1 and the Dublin ring road, after this southwards on the M11 to a well placed fuel and food stop a Slieverue.
My first observation would be that the weather could not have been nicer for the entire ride, if a little cool overnight!
Traffic was a little busy around the M50 at Dublin but not M25 busy… just moderately so!
The one thing that came up when planning was how few petrol stations appeared to be available on a 24 hour basis… this turned out to be less inconvenient than I had thought as there were more than expected.
That may sound like I had not checked up on locations, I had, but I am sure there were more new ones that were not visible on Google maps…. that or I simply didn’t get to the right zoom level to see them…..
Anyway, after filling up and lunch at Slieverue I headed back towards Dublin up the M9.
The plan was to cut the corner at Athgarvan Cross by going through Kilcullen, bad idea…
Whilst approaching the area I passed a newish looking service area a few miles before my intended turn off but decided to pass on that as I hoped to get my receipt at a fuel station in Kilcullen. What I had not counted on and I guess this is down to doing most of my rides at weekends, was school go home time… The village or small town was rammed with traffic.
There was a queue to get in and out of the petrol station and there was nowhere to park…
I knew there was no ATM in the village as I had checked on Google.
Also I wrongly thought that when I turned left at the lights there would be somewhere to stop…. wrong again, it was a busy road with a queue of traffic on the offside and no parking area on the left.
A little further up the road were school buses and hundreds of wonderful children fleeing the confines of the classroom, with the associated stressed mommies and daddies and whoever else was picking those children up who couldn’t walk home as it may have been too far!
Well after a short slow ride through the area I got to the M7 for the westward leg of the ride.
At this point I will mention that the last time I was over here there was one motorway around Dublin and I don’t remember driving on any others when away from there!
This time, motorways, toll plazas and they are great and reasonably quiet!
Over then to Limerick and then northwards, with my next fuel stop at Bunratty…. I just love some of the unusual names of places in the south of Ireland!
A quick fill up and a cold drink, it was warm!
Off again and up the M18 to Athenry and the M6 back over to Dublin, a detour here off to Tesco for an ATM receipt, mainly because they are reasonably quick to get, or not.
As it turned out, this particular ATM would not yield a transaction receipt, or a balance slip… So into the store and I grabbed a multi-pack of crisps in order to get a receipt.
Duly obtained it was back out for a picture of same with the odometer.
Once again I set off, only to be held up at the store exit by a very hesitant driver who wouldn’t pull out into no traffic at the junction…. So when she hesitantly edged forward and out, I got past her as soon as I could before we got to the main road junction….
No issues on the road over to Dublin but once on the M50 and turning off for my attempted fuel stop on the Dublin side of the M50, it all went a bit pear shaped….
My satnav advised taking a particular exit and I obviously miscounted and took the wrong one…. no problem, the satnav would redirect me. Well it tried to direct me westwards and the fuel stop was the other way, so I went around the roundabout expecting it to get me to the right turn…. It still took me west.
Okay, west then up the N3.
No problem there will be a petrol stop or a toll booth, well the petrol station was at Drunshaughlin, a few miles up the road and the toll both was even further up the road!
In theory and in planning, I always go for receipts at turns or corners in my routes, this however is not always possible, which is why I run a Spot Gen3 like many others who do these rides. Some run bubbler or another version of Spot, which all helps when planning falls on its face.
Onward, ever onward… as I crossed the border into Northern Ireland I tagged my “I’m Okay” button the Spot, this sends an email to those folk I want to inform that I am, well, okay.
Unfortunately, this part of the border has a lot of trees and that ping wasn’t picked up until after my next regular 5 minute ping and makes it look like I turned back then turned around again… a little odd unless you know that trees cause this little glitch.
The normal pings can also be missed when riding through heavily wooded areas, but again as long as you know this it is easier to understand some of the odd zig zag lines that can occur on the Spowalla map report.
Spotwalla, for the uninitiated, is the app which allows you to render a track of your journey with pings from your Spot tracker as often as every 2 minutes if you want to pay extra, 5 minutes or longer, if you want to stay more standard.
I stopped shortly after this to don my Gerbing heated jacket liner and set up my controller as it was getting quite cool. This turned out to be a good move as the overnight temperature dropped to 7 degrees. Normally okay in daytime but during the night it can feel quite cold.
Not with the Gerbing jacket liner though, I was toasty warm from here on in. I did have my heated gloves as well, but with the jacket and the heated grips I was warm enough so didn’t put them on.
I did try out my new controller for the jacket and turned it up to see how well it worked at all settings, I needed to turn it back off for a while then on again at minimum setting, otherwise I was going to cook!
Enniskillen was the next port of call with a receipt at the Spar on the route into that location.
After that it was an eastward leg to Ballygawley for a corner receipt, which I couldn’t get…
I don’t waste time, if the receipt isn’t available there is not much you can do, I had a couple of toll booths where there was no receipt, one of which I had no change for and wouldn’t take either of my cards…. Or a ten Euro note.. fortunately I had one five Euro note which it grudgingly accepted…. but no receipt…. Aaargh!
Off I went north out of Ballygawley and up to LondonDerry via Strabane and a fill up at Asda 24hr PFS. Thence off to Coleraine where a PFS come café was still open after midnight!
A cup of tea and a caramel slice was the chosen repast, well half a caramel slice as it was HUGE.
Once again, off I went and it was down to Belfast on the A26 and M2… always found it strange that the M2 comes off down a slip road in Belfast to a set of traffic lights… then a right turn and squeezes three lanes in to two….. not the greatest traffic planning job and decidedly dodgy if there is a truck in the outside lane alongside a truck in the inside lane….
Word of caution, don’t get stuck on the outside of a large arctic turning right here as it can get tight if they haven’t been through here before, especially if they are showing a foreign plate!
A fuel stop on the M1 south at the Applegreen and again off heading back over to Enniskillen again! This time I got my corner receipt and took a slightly different route north rather than going back toward Ballygawley.
Same route round the west of Omagh up past Strabane and LomdonDerry to Coleraine, where I find my hoped for cup of tea was a washout as Morans PFS/Café was now shut…
Oh well, on down to Ballymena for a quick splash and dash to get a receipt and off to the finish, which was the Applegreen service area again, this time at 06:30.
On my last leg down the M2 as I had got up to speed off a roundabout, I looked in the mirror to see a friendly V90 in PSNI colours…. So I eased off a little as I was doing around 75 and didn’t want to upset them…. Well the came past, pulled in front, then slowed down to 68 (satnav speed)… so I dutifully did likewise, whereupon the sped up… so I followed them to the turn off which would take them to Carrick Fergus, there’s a PSNI maintenance garage up there, but maybe they were just going somewhere else!
So, finished the ride, back to the B&B in time for breakfast, a shower and a few hours sleep!
Edit: In the post today, in the same buff envelope as two other ride certificates, was the certificate for this ride, result!
This leaves Wales to be done in a couple of weeks time to complete the BISSI..... or Four Nations ride!
Every year we have a Megameet at some location in the UK, or in this case Ireland, where we get together ride our bikes, eat food and have a beer or whatever!
I decided to go over the Monday prior to the meet and carry out the SS1000 in Ireland as part of the Four Nations challenge.
The first one was in Scotland at the start of May, the second, in England, was after the MCN Festival weekend and this one, well it was last week of May!
My chosen place to rest my head was in a really nice B&B in Royal Hillsborough, just south of Lisburn, which was a really nice quiet place with a walk of about a mile into Hillsborough itself.
The ride
Start point was a BP petrol station on the Hillsborough road in Lisburn, although the Sainsbury one would have been more convenient had I spotted it when doing my planning!
After filling up I headed off down the A1 heading for the M1 and the Dublin ring road, after this southwards on the M11 to a well placed fuel and food stop a Slieverue.
My first observation would be that the weather could not have been nicer for the entire ride, if a little cool overnight!
Traffic was a little busy around the M50 at Dublin but not M25 busy… just moderately so!
The one thing that came up when planning was how few petrol stations appeared to be available on a 24 hour basis… this turned out to be less inconvenient than I had thought as there were more than expected.
That may sound like I had not checked up on locations, I had, but I am sure there were more new ones that were not visible on Google maps…. that or I simply didn’t get to the right zoom level to see them…..
Anyway, after filling up and lunch at Slieverue I headed back towards Dublin up the M9.
The plan was to cut the corner at Athgarvan Cross by going through Kilcullen, bad idea…
Whilst approaching the area I passed a newish looking service area a few miles before my intended turn off but decided to pass on that as I hoped to get my receipt at a fuel station in Kilcullen. What I had not counted on and I guess this is down to doing most of my rides at weekends, was school go home time… The village or small town was rammed with traffic.
There was a queue to get in and out of the petrol station and there was nowhere to park…
I knew there was no ATM in the village as I had checked on Google.
Also I wrongly thought that when I turned left at the lights there would be somewhere to stop…. wrong again, it was a busy road with a queue of traffic on the offside and no parking area on the left.
A little further up the road were school buses and hundreds of wonderful children fleeing the confines of the classroom, with the associated stressed mommies and daddies and whoever else was picking those children up who couldn’t walk home as it may have been too far!
Well after a short slow ride through the area I got to the M7 for the westward leg of the ride.
At this point I will mention that the last time I was over here there was one motorway around Dublin and I don’t remember driving on any others when away from there!
This time, motorways, toll plazas and they are great and reasonably quiet!
Over then to Limerick and then northwards, with my next fuel stop at Bunratty…. I just love some of the unusual names of places in the south of Ireland!
A quick fill up and a cold drink, it was warm!
Off again and up the M18 to Athenry and the M6 back over to Dublin, a detour here off to Tesco for an ATM receipt, mainly because they are reasonably quick to get, or not.
As it turned out, this particular ATM would not yield a transaction receipt, or a balance slip… So into the store and I grabbed a multi-pack of crisps in order to get a receipt.
Duly obtained it was back out for a picture of same with the odometer.
Once again I set off, only to be held up at the store exit by a very hesitant driver who wouldn’t pull out into no traffic at the junction…. So when she hesitantly edged forward and out, I got past her as soon as I could before we got to the main road junction….
No issues on the road over to Dublin but once on the M50 and turning off for my attempted fuel stop on the Dublin side of the M50, it all went a bit pear shaped….
My satnav advised taking a particular exit and I obviously miscounted and took the wrong one…. no problem, the satnav would redirect me. Well it tried to direct me westwards and the fuel stop was the other way, so I went around the roundabout expecting it to get me to the right turn…. It still took me west.
Okay, west then up the N3.
No problem there will be a petrol stop or a toll booth, well the petrol station was at Drunshaughlin, a few miles up the road and the toll both was even further up the road!
In theory and in planning, I always go for receipts at turns or corners in my routes, this however is not always possible, which is why I run a Spot Gen3 like many others who do these rides. Some run bubbler or another version of Spot, which all helps when planning falls on its face.
Onward, ever onward… as I crossed the border into Northern Ireland I tagged my “I’m Okay” button the Spot, this sends an email to those folk I want to inform that I am, well, okay.
Unfortunately, this part of the border has a lot of trees and that ping wasn’t picked up until after my next regular 5 minute ping and makes it look like I turned back then turned around again… a little odd unless you know that trees cause this little glitch.
The normal pings can also be missed when riding through heavily wooded areas, but again as long as you know this it is easier to understand some of the odd zig zag lines that can occur on the Spowalla map report.
Spotwalla, for the uninitiated, is the app which allows you to render a track of your journey with pings from your Spot tracker as often as every 2 minutes if you want to pay extra, 5 minutes or longer, if you want to stay more standard.
I stopped shortly after this to don my Gerbing heated jacket liner and set up my controller as it was getting quite cool. This turned out to be a good move as the overnight temperature dropped to 7 degrees. Normally okay in daytime but during the night it can feel quite cold.
Not with the Gerbing jacket liner though, I was toasty warm from here on in. I did have my heated gloves as well, but with the jacket and the heated grips I was warm enough so didn’t put them on.
I did try out my new controller for the jacket and turned it up to see how well it worked at all settings, I needed to turn it back off for a while then on again at minimum setting, otherwise I was going to cook!
Enniskillen was the next port of call with a receipt at the Spar on the route into that location.
After that it was an eastward leg to Ballygawley for a corner receipt, which I couldn’t get…
I don’t waste time, if the receipt isn’t available there is not much you can do, I had a couple of toll booths where there was no receipt, one of which I had no change for and wouldn’t take either of my cards…. Or a ten Euro note.. fortunately I had one five Euro note which it grudgingly accepted…. but no receipt…. Aaargh!
Off I went north out of Ballygawley and up to LondonDerry via Strabane and a fill up at Asda 24hr PFS. Thence off to Coleraine where a PFS come café was still open after midnight!
A cup of tea and a caramel slice was the chosen repast, well half a caramel slice as it was HUGE.
Once again, off I went and it was down to Belfast on the A26 and M2… always found it strange that the M2 comes off down a slip road in Belfast to a set of traffic lights… then a right turn and squeezes three lanes in to two….. not the greatest traffic planning job and decidedly dodgy if there is a truck in the outside lane alongside a truck in the inside lane….
Word of caution, don’t get stuck on the outside of a large arctic turning right here as it can get tight if they haven’t been through here before, especially if they are showing a foreign plate!
A fuel stop on the M1 south at the Applegreen and again off heading back over to Enniskillen again! This time I got my corner receipt and took a slightly different route north rather than going back toward Ballygawley.
Same route round the west of Omagh up past Strabane and LomdonDerry to Coleraine, where I find my hoped for cup of tea was a washout as Morans PFS/Café was now shut…
Oh well, on down to Ballymena for a quick splash and dash to get a receipt and off to the finish, which was the Applegreen service area again, this time at 06:30.
On my last leg down the M2 as I had got up to speed off a roundabout, I looked in the mirror to see a friendly V90 in PSNI colours…. So I eased off a little as I was doing around 75 and didn’t want to upset them…. Well the came past, pulled in front, then slowed down to 68 (satnav speed)… so I dutifully did likewise, whereupon the sped up… so I followed them to the turn off which would take them to Carrick Fergus, there’s a PSNI maintenance garage up there, but maybe they were just going somewhere else!
So, finished the ride, back to the B&B in time for breakfast, a shower and a few hours sleep!
Edit: In the post today, in the same buff envelope as two other ride certificates, was the certificate for this ride, result!
This leaves Wales to be done in a couple of weeks time to complete the BISSI..... or Four Nations ride!
