Rest day over and the legs felt slightly better, today is a long ride to Galway and the weather is damp to start with. Today turned out to be one of the best days riding yet, a nice cross tail wind warm and sunny. Once again the pace was fast for such a long day 138 miles.

Galway to Donegal Town via Sligo, where I finally lost patents with Noel who was continual going faster in heavy traffic, just too dangerous trying to keep up. All day we where on big roads with lots of traffic and at last the temperature was high. Some one punctured and I kept riding at my own pace much better than the brutal pace we had been riding at. Hostel was good with only one other couple staying there and I had a good nights sleep.Things where a bit uncomfortable with Noel after my outburst, but that’s life.

Philip Downey and Mathew joined us to for the ride to Portrush, with a slight diversion to Malin Head the back down to Moville, Greencastle and across on the ferry to Portrush. Cold and windy once again and loads of punctures, to many to count. The pace was slightly easer today although once we left Malin and picked up a tail wind the speed went up, Marty started to have issues with Noel over this. Needless to say we missed the ferry so arrived late into Portrush, another good Hostel if a little cramped. Marty, Flo and myself dined on our own in a nice pub.

The last day was finely here, hard to believe really, but the weather was not looking good. An 8:30 start got us away before the rain set in unfortunately Peter punctured and no one heard his shout, we all had to ride about 2 miles back down hill to find him, by this time he had all ready called Flo. Just as we arrived in Ballycastle the rain started quite heavy, a quick stop for tea and off we headed for the vanishing lakes, this time it was Marty s turn to puncture. Just before the top of the climb the rain came down in torrents and we where frozen on the decent. It was a long cold ride to the Londonderry Arms and Flo who had the good sense to pre order sandwiches and tea. I changed into dry warm clothes for the remainder of the ride. Marty had enough of Noel by this time and rode off on his own to the finish in Ards. For the rest of us it was a pretty uneventful ride home with me puncturing outside Larne, we meet Flo one last time in Kilroot and rode on to Ards and a warm shower.

In conclusion, was it worth doing? Yes. Would I do it again? No. The pace was just too much for 4 people with the strong head winds we had.

Noel only could see his target average speed and was not really interested in any one else, this became more apparent the closer we came to the finish, in fact once he passed the point where he had abandoned previously, this became more obvious. Marty was a great help but he to was worn down by Noel. Peter improved every day and became very strong but his inexperience meant he rode as hard as he could which was no help to me. The daily distance was no real problem if the speed had been more realistic. Without Flo’s support this ride would not have been possible all I had to do was ride my bike she took care of everything else.