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Thursday July 1 Nottingham to Dublin 210 miles
I set off at 9.00 am and had my waterproofs on by the time I had reached Capel Curig in Wales. So much for the Fantastic views of Snowden etc. Still, I was expecting mixed weather. Got to the ferry port in plenty of time and bought a ticket for the ferry. By this time it was raining heavily. Parked the bike and went into the cafe to get out of the rain. Little did I know, but within half an hour I would be KIDNAPPED! Three bikers from the Welsh Valleys, standing next to the window, offered a bit of radiator to dry my gloves on and said they would look after my gear while I went to get a cup of tea. They were all in their mid fifties and had come up from South Wales to see the “Road Racing” in a little town called Skerries, just up the coast from Dublin. They reckoned it was the best form of bike racing there was, and would I like to tag along. Well wasn’t I going close to there anyway for my first stop? Paul, Monk and Yosh, ex miners. Now these guys were bikers, I mean proper bikers. It seemed like they knew every nut and bolt on every bike ever made. They could tell every bike that passed us just by the sound of the exhaust. Chop ‘em in half and they had “biker” written all the way thru! After an uneventful ferry trip we are off and on the way to “Skerries Road Racing”, 15 miles up the coast. Now, here’s a tip from the boys – Take the sign for The Tunnel when you come off the ferry. It will cost 10 euros but it bypasses the busy city centre and deposits you well north of Dublin on the main road out. It saves a lot of time. And so it starts – the bikers stories. Paul had warned me that the other two were” a bit loud”. Lovely people but you could certainly hear them coming! Story after story came from Monk, with Yosh joining in, it seemed, just to crank up the volume a bit. It soon became obvious that they had known each other all of their lives. They had worked down the pit together, rode motorcycles together, drank together and just about managed to stay on the right side of the law together (although sometimes it had been a very close thing!). The more we drank the more the stories came. And we did drink! I haven’t laughed so much in years! Whenever they spoke to anyone else (and they did speak to just about everybody) they would tell them that they had Kidnapped me off the ferry and brought me to Skerries. I was becoming a very willing captive.
A taxi back to the campsite and straight to bed. I took no rocking that night.
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