Summers Past: Róisín Ingle’s 53-mile cycle through Donegal and Derry, 2005

Our Summers Past series mines the Irish Times archive to find the best articles from previous summers. In July 2005, nine of our writers wrote about a relay journey from Malin Head to Mizen Head, with each writer taking a different mode of transport. Róisín Ingle completed the first leg, cycling from Malin Head to Derry.

My flight from Dublin to Derry was cancelled due to technical difficulties, so I took up the airline’s kind offer of a night in the Holiday Inn in the grounds of Dublin airport, which is approximately 20 minutes away from my home. I reckoned a free night in a hotel, a bit of me-time, copious amounts of room service and a few glasses of wine was just the kind of preparation I needed to survive my impending ordeal.

I imagine Lance Armstrong prepares slightly differently for these things, but cycling from Malin Head to Derry was always going to take more than just training, which between one thing and another – laziness mostly – I hadn’t had time to do.

The journey, for an inexperienced long-distance cyclist like me, was always going to be a mental battle. It started when I almost missed the flight from Dublin the next morning and ended as I panted, drenched but happy, into Derry air- port two days later.

My planning was meticulous if a tad last-minute. When I mentioned to a friend that I would be going on a longish cycle he said two words: shammy shorts. Although it pained me more than I can describe here to go into Cycleways on Parnell Street the day of the trip and ask for padded, skin-tight shorts in extra large, I was advised that the pain would be far greater should I attempt the journey without them.

But my biggest saving grace was getting in touch with Charlie from the Foyle Cycling Club, who agreed to provide me with his daughter’s bike, pick me up from Derry airport and deposit me at Malin Head on the Inishowen peninsula in Co Donegal – the starting point of my journey. In fact Charlie did everything but get on the bike and cycle the 85km (53 miles) for me, despite me dropping huge hints in that direction.

At Malin Head, which was ominously overcast and miserable, Charlie took out an inner tube, two spanners and a pump and began to explain what I should do if I got a flat along the way, at which point I have to confess my eyes glazed over. I didn’t hear much beyond, “In the event of a puncture take the wheel off the bike.”

There was no way I was going to get a puncture so I didn’t see any point storing these technical details. It was all I could do to remember which gear I should be in while cycling up and down hills. There aren’t many hills in the centre of Dublin, my usual cycling terrain. Potholes? Plenty. Scary trucks? Yep. Hills? I don’t do hills. Well I didn’t used to anyway.

The view from Malin Head was obscured by cloud, which took some of the joy out of my first visit to Ireland’s most northerly tip. On a good day you can see Tory Island and Scotland from this, the last picnic stop before Greenland. On a drizzly day you can see only grey sea and grey sky and grey people in luminous waterproofs.

The Most Enthusiastic Photographer in Ireland wasn’t too happy with the dull weather either, and to make sure he got enough shots he suggested we visit a tourist attraction called the Wee House of Malin. “Where is it?” I said suspiciously. “Follow me,” he said, getting into his car.

So I did. All the way down the road and up the steepest hill I’ve ever had the dis- pleasure to encounter. It was so steep I couldn’t even cycle and got off, huffing and puffing, cursing the sweaty shorts that, for reasons of pure vanity, I had on under my trousers.

By the time I reached the Wee House by the shore, which comprises a cave and a ruin of a church that gave refuge to Catholics in penal times, I’d been on the road for two hours and had got exactly nowhere. After the photographer snapped me moodily pushing the bike up another hill he quite sensibly scarpered. From then on it was just the bike and me.

Alone, I started to appreciate the journey. I was cycling what is known locally as the Black Mountain Road and it wasn’t long before I was infused with a feeling of contentment. I realised that a Zen-like approach to the task at hand was essential for survival. I even took off my trousers and cycled on in my horrible shorts. The small country road was virtually deserted and surrounded by misty fields. I started to believe I could do this.

Bicycle tyres on tarmac make a musical hum that is almost meditative after a while. I was just contemplating this when I noticed my front tyre subtly change shape. The gentle hum of tyre on tarmac swiftly turned into the thud, thud, thud of wheel on tarmac. My bike ride was cancelled for technical reasons. In the middle of nowhere. In the rain.

I searched my memory bank for Charlie’s puncture advice but the only thing I could remember was that I had to pump up the new inner tube at the end. I called him at work and as patiently as a computer help-desk person he took me through the manoeuvre. I felt quite proud of my- self. I used the spanners to get the wheel off, I shimmied the tyre off with a plastic implement, even located and removed the culprit - which turned out to be a long shard of yellow glass. I then skillfully replaced the busted inner tube with an- other one.

Now I just needed to pump air into the tube. Easy. For you maybe. An hour later I was still sitting on a bank of brambles in my shorts trying to pump the thing up. It was 3pm. Almost 24 hours after leaving my home for the airport and three hours after leaving Malin Head I was still only a few kilometres into my journey. When a man called Brian pulled up in a small white truck and suggested sticking the bike in the back I wasn’t in a position to refuse.

Brian, a thatcher from Redcastle, cheered me up with a truly terrible joke about a garda and a bike owner. He also told me that Eddie Izzard owned a house in Greencastle - the village where I planned to spend that night. The thought of bumping into the comedian in the pub would keep me going later when my breathing was turned to a worrying rasp by the hills into Moville. When we arrived at nearby Malin town, Brian pumped up the bike and I was on my way. Sort of.

I stopped every couple of kilometres for a swig of Brian O’Driscoll’s favourite soft drink, red-faced and irritated. Just when I was considering hitching a lift I came to a bridge and suddenly it was all downhill, a gentle rolling descent that ended in pretty Moville on the banks of Lough Foyle. From there it was just four kilometres north to Greencastle, where even on a dull day such as this one the water and the harbour and the ferry all felt like a reward.

It was way past lunchtime. Soaked and demotivated, I popped into the Malin Ho- tel for a baked potato and sat near an American family who looked about as happy to be there as I was. On the televi- sion above them, scenes from the London bombings were being played out, instant- ly taking the edge off my own insignifi- cant worries. I mounted the bike with new resolve.

The only good thing about hills, of which there were too many for my liking on the way to Moville, is gliding down the other side. But as I grew increasingly hot and bothered it felt as though I was getting to the top of one hill only to be confronted with another.

I stopped every couple of kilometres for a swig of Brian O’Driscoll’s favourite soft drink, red-faced and irritated. Just when I was considering hitching a lift I came to a bridge and suddenly it was all downhill, a gentle rolling descent that ended in pretty Moville on the banks of Lough Foyle. From there it was just four kilometres north to Greencastle, where even on a dull day such as this one the water and the harbour and the ferry all felt like a reward.

I didn’t meet Eddie Izzard but I dined like a queen of the mountains that night on mussels and John Dory fish and the flouriest of potatoes in Kealy’s Seafood restaurant overlooking the lough. I slept soundly that night in my room at the Castle Inn hotel, set beside the eerie ruins of the 14th-century Norman castle of Richard de Burgo. With a flight to catch in Derry that afternoon I didn’t have time to visit the Inishowen Maritime Museum and Planetarium but added it to my list of things to do next time I was back. I knew I would be back, if only for the John Dory smothered in anchovy butter.

I had planned to return to Derry through Donegal but as I cycled past the harbour a ferry was about to depart and I decided to return along the other side of Lough Foyle. The ferry only takes 10 minutes to reach Magilligan Point, from where it’s a flat road past HM Magilligan Prison and the firing range spread out across fields on both sides of the road.

I took it slowly through here, amazed by the other-worldliness of the place, the creeping silence interrupted only by shrill birdsong. It was just across the water but it felt a world away from the fishing village of Greencastle.

I watched dozens of rabbits hopping through the fields, finding refuge from this stranger on a bike in the bunkers scattered around. I stopped to take note of the bye laws of Magilligan firing range, which I discovered included a sprawling sea area off the north coast of Co Derry.

The area is used to practise anti-air-craft, machine gun, rifle, grenades and antitank fire. Firing may take place at any time throughout the year, I read. Target practice is clearly signaled. Red flags by day, red lights at night. I started to pedal harder when I saw a red flag hoisted high on a pole and was gripped by a sudden urge to be far away from this deceptively peaceful place.

There were no more hills, just a flat road through the rain bypassing Limavady and on to the Foyleside village of Ballykelly. I had lunch there from Tommy’s award-winning fish and chips shop, crisp cod and mushy peas in a cardboard box, which I ate perched on a fallen tree trunk in Ballykelly Forest Park reading the newspaper reports of the bombs.

I was tired now. Saddle-sore, soaked and weary. My calves were turning rapidly to jelly as I pedalled closer to my goal. Cycling into the airport at Eglinton I was filled with quiet relief. I was relieved, first of all, that I hadn’t given up. And relieved that despite my better judgment I’d worn those awful shammy shorts. If I felt saddlesore now, the technical difficulties I’d have faced without them just didn’t bear thinking about.

This article appeared as part of the series in July 2005. To read the full articles as they originally appeared visit:

[ Day Two ]

[ Day Three ]

[ Day Four ]

[ Day Five ]

[ Day Six ]

[ Day Seven ]

[ Day Eight ]

[ Day Nine ]