Ireland Day 11 – Joeys Bar

A pilgrimage is blessed with suffering, self flagellation savoured in the service of devotion. Mine started with the saga of the missing post, my departure delayed I pressed on. Increased velocity improved my face’s effectiveness as a fly swatter and standing up on the pegs from time to time, off road style, relieved my hip pain. The bike is hip apparently, drawing attention in motion and stationary. More attention than I gave to the border not noticing immediately that the road signs had all changed and 40 meant mph now not kph.

Joey Dunlop was a hero and is now legend. I saw him race once at the Isle of Man TT, where he made the 38 miles circuit his own with 26 victories. I headed to Ballymoney to pay my respects and marvel at the memorabilia in his families pub by the station. Down to earth, like the man.

I headed south to a campsite near a pub, go figure, through roads and streets that now looked so familiar, strange that the same land can have these two characters. Characters there were at the campsite, Ann gave me the gate code over the phone, Trevor, Jim and Susan were enjoying supper around the back. I graciously, hopefully, declined an offer to join them as a cold Guinness was on the cards. Lurking in the barn was a 1950’s Alvis Stalwart, a menacing and magnificent relic of the Cold War still seeing occasional service in the nearby lough.

The Bridge Inn backed onto the lough. It appeared to be the headquarters for the mystery motorists who doodle on the roads with tyre rubber, doughnuts and burnouts their release. A fun crowd, they’d drunk all the Guinness so I moved on, to Tennent’s and Jameson’s. Some confusion on leaving when I thought that I was ordering a large bottle of Budvar and left with Bukfast Tonic wine. They laughed back at the campsite. We drank and talked and I met ‘bird’ a five week old crow rescued after falling from its nest. It sat on my hand and blessed my trousers, I headed to my nest.