Yarnbombing - for Immrama and Lismore's Travel Writing Cyclist

A colourful attraction!

I just had to share this with you all in the blogosphere and knitting and crocheting community - a craftosphere perhaps - as it is the coolest thing to hit Lismore since the Barber of Seville Yarnbombing of the previous weekend, which you can see here.

An unlikely Urban Guerilla.

In the Tuesday Knitters at Angela's Design Workshop we had a plan afoot for the Immrama Travel Writing Festival, especially as this is the 10th Festival and has just concluded last night after a very successful weekend. I will blog about the festival anon. Meanwhile, a bicycle yarnbombing seemed most appropriate given that it's the preferred mode of transport of our own renowned traveller Dervla Murphy. Dervla is world-famous is travel writing circles as an octogenarian who has written of her journeys through life from her first book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, through her autobiography Wheels within Wheels to her latest work The Island that Dared - Journeys in Cuba and she is soon bringing out her book on Palestine. She has a wonderful body of work, Lismore is very proud of her, and we are delighted to have her as a friend. She visited Laos after we told her what a wonderfully unspoilt place it was back in the 90s, and she is a real inspiration to all generations.

My crocheted contributions

Street art!

So this is the outcome of our endeavours! Angela kindly supplied the bike, which was somewhat past roadworthy and its prime, and we embellished it with love and lots of crochet and knitting and weaving to make this fabulous work of art. Many Tuesday Knitters made various parts - mine was the half-moon rear-wheel "skirt-guard" which is a peculiarly Dutch innovation - "Jasbeschermers" or coat protectors. I found these wonderfully colourful embellishments online and on Ravelry and adapted one to my end procuct, which I love. Then Dairiona made the beautiful front-wheel covers in crochet shades of blue, while sisters Annie and Agnes made the basket - in basketweave stitch with a pre-patterned yarn. I can't name each and everyone as I'd be sure to omit many but suffice to say there were myriad contributors!

The ornate basket - bees making honey!

Last Friday, coinciding with the Immrama Festival, the bike was placed on the steps of the Heritage Centre, a nerve centre for tourism in Lismore, and the visitor numbers were certainly up this weekend, due to the festival but of course we take some credit with our own visitor-magnet! I saw lots of people photographing it, being photographed beside it, and in one case, in it! A little  baby was placed in the basket for the sweetest photograph, which I saw on Facebook! Some people thought it was Dervla's iconic bike, Roz (Rozinante, the Quixotically named bike that took her to India and beyond in 1963 and which found a home in the Lismore Library, where her father was once County Librarian).

So what do you think? We are totally biased and love it and hope it finds a long-term home in Lismore, as a tourist attraction in its own right. Who knows, it might even go down in history.

On My Bike in the Spring Sunshine - Out and About Around Lovely Lismore

At Ballyduff Bridge in Hi-Viz!

The past week we have had fabulous summer weather in late March and this unseasonal weather was such a treat that everyone tried to make the best of it.

We did some gardening and planted some new shrubs in a bed near the patio and I finally got out on my bike for some longish cycles around the beautiful countryside. I've been very bad with getting going on the bike and hubby Jan's put me to shame by keeping up his cycling during the winter, but this is my first week of proper cycling, apart from trips to the shops for the messages (a Hiberno-English expression for grocery shopping).

Like everything I tend to defer the moment but once I get started I'll  be on track for a few times a week and aim at the Sean Kelly Challenge 50km charity cycle in late August. This will be the third year I'll  be doing this event and I've enjoyed it immensely for the past two years. You can read about 2010 and 2011, and watch this space for 2012.


I came home from work two consecutive evenings and went out on the bike for about an hour,  doing the same circuit of 15.2km both evenings and glad to see I'd knocked a  minute and a half off my time the second day. Yesterday I went for a longer cycle of 22.5km and didn't expect to do too well time-wise as there was a strong headwind on the home stretch, so I was pleased with the end result.

The River Blackwater at Ballyduff - towards Fermoy

River Blackwater at Ballyduff - towards Lismore

Cappoquin - R. Blackwater and the old Railway Bridge

New Cordylines and old banana trees

The Knockmealdown Mountains from Glencairn

There are some wonderfully picturesque cycling routes around Lismore, with the river valley providing circuits out one road and home another, with no major hills to wear down the weary start-up cyclist.

I only wish I had the stamina of our world-renowned cycling author and travel writer extraordinaire Lismore resident, Dervla Murphy, whose exploits on her various bikes and other modes of more exotic transport have been documented in her numerous books for the past almost-fifty years, since Full Tilt - from Ireland to India on a bicycle was published in 1965. 

Rozinante was the name of that bike and she surely was an Irish Don Quixote tilting at more than windmills, certainly she threw the book at the stereotype of Irish womanhood in those pre-feminist wave days. We are very pleased and proud to call her a friend and have spent many a pleasant evening in her company.

Here are some of the lovely scenes around Lismore and Cappoquin and Ballyduff, and our newly planted shrubbery out in the back garden. Hopefully the banana trees will flourish again this year with a nearly-frostfree winter, and the cordylines will thrive and grow.

My trusty steed - nameless

Ben and our newly planted garden

Dromana House at Villierstown

Horses on R.  Blackwater Inches

Enjoy the beauty of our Blackwater River Valley - and if we only had this kind of good weather here we'd be living in the best place on earth - in fact it's pretty good as it is despite the weather, as it's the rain that help the Emerald Isle live up to its name!

River Blackwater from Cappoquin

Reflections from the Kitchen Hole, near Cappoquin

The 2011 Sean Kelly Tour of Waterford - My Big Biking Challenge

With Sean Kelly in Villierstown

  I should have posted this two or three weeks ago as it was the last Sunday in August that the 2011 Sean Kelly Tour of Waterford took place - this was my second time participating and it was a great day out. I really enjoyed it last year and entered this year's tour with a little trepidation as I wasn't as well prepared as I felt I was last year. I hadn't done many long cycles in advance of the mega-50km trip I'd signed up for (the shortest of the three runs on the Tour so I am not that adventurous!) but I had done about 35km the previous week so I thought I wouldn't have too much trouble. So I was thrilled when I completed it in around the same time as last year - at just over 2 hours and 30 mins. It was a fabulous day weather wise - the sun shone, it wasn't too windy and there was just one small sunshower as we entered Cappoquin for the half-way pit stop.

Certified Cyclists!

Jany and Shayne and kids

Hubby Jan did the 90km tour as he has done for the past three years - he started with the 50km the first time he did it so it was such a doddle for him he decided to do the 90km. The first time he did it the route took him from Dungarvan to Carrick-on-Suir and back in a big circle via Clonmel and Ballymacarbry. Carrick is the home of the aforementioned Sean Kelly, the famous Irish cyclist who has done the Giro d'Italia and taken part in the Tour de France on numerous occasions as well as winning the Vuelta d'Espana in 1988.

Waiting for the starting countdown

Jany & Livia, Shayne & Sofia

The route of the 50km is from Dungarvan to Cappoquin via Villierstown, the  home village of another Irish sporting hero - John Treacy who won an Olympic Silver medal in 1984 in Los Angeles in the Marathon, and who was World Cross-Country champion in 1988 and 1989. So he heads up the Irish Sports Council, and is on the Council of Concern, our old NGO where we spent many happy years working overseas in Development Work. Jan was on the Council with John for the past 3 years and he was pleased to meet John after the cycle. John and Sean Kelly and the Taoiseach Enda Kenny all did the 50km cycle and it was very evidently a fun-run cycle for them all as they posed for photos with the punters in Villierstown and after the Tour back in Dungarvan at the Sports Centre. I got a nice photo of Jan and John, and me and Sean Kelly in Villierstown.

Jan and John Treacy

The scenery looked terrific on the day as we cycled through the verdant sylvan by-roads of West Waterford and from Villierstown to Cappoquin we were in the woodlands that border the Blackwater Valley and caught glistening glimpses of the winding river far below the road - yes, that was some climb from Villierstown to the top of the ridge before descending to the Finisk River valley at the wonderful Hindu-Gothic Bridge, a romantic folly built for the new bride of the local Lord of the Manor- Villiers-Stuart of Dromana House in Villierstown, back in the 19th Century.

Jan arrives back in Dungarvan - 90km on.

The Hindu-Gothic Bridge at Villierstown

We had a lovely food stop in Cappoquin where the local community centre was full of delicious food - pasta and sandwiches and Barron's Brack - the local bakery sponsored the lovely bread and fruit brack, their speciality, and we were well fortified after the refuelling to face the return stretch to Dungarvan. There were no challenging hills on this stretch of the N72 and I felt great after the cycle. I met up with Shayne, Jany and the two children, Sofia and Livia, while we waited for Jan to return from the more gruelling 90km trip along the Copper Coast and the Geo-Park of the old Copper Mines of Bonmahon and along to Tramore. There are some devilish hills on that coast road - the cliffs are indeed scenic but they're also very high when you try to cycle along from sea-level to cliff-top road. He was back in just over four hours which was pretty good for such a difficult trip - and the pros were by then coming back from their 160km mountain challenge through the Comeragh Mountains.

The dappled road from Villierstown to Cappoquin

I hope you enjoy the photos I'm sharing with you - and it gives you an idea of the fun and delights of the day. I do hope to keep up the cycling year round but it's always more challenging in the winter to cycle during the week especially as it's dark so early. I will try to get out on the weekends but they are so full of activities with kids and grandkids that it's hard to prioritise cycling in my me-time!

Musings on Midlife Madness - my Brand-new Birthday Bike

I just had to share this with you - I got a lovely new bike yesterday from hubby Jan as a belated birthday present - a sort of midlife milestone that doesn't end in zero but momentous nonetheless. As it's nearly thirty years since my last bike was stolen from the house in Drumcondra we shared with my mother before we went to Tanzania, it was not before time for a replacement. I was a bit like Flann O'Brien's Third Policeman in that my bike and myself were so unified it was hard to tell where where one ended and the other began and there was probably an atomic exchange between us. It took me to work in every hospital in Dublin when I did agency nursing in the years before and after my Bangladesh sojourn.

Suffice to say that wherever I went, like Mary's little lamb, the bike was sure to go. I say "bike" advisedly, as a generic term, as I nearly went through more bikes over the nine-year period when I lived in Dublin (with two years off for good behaviour that I spent volunteering in Bangladesh with Concern, where I met Jan) than the proverbial hot dinners I may have had. Through the mid-1970s I lived in the heartland of Dublin flatland, Rathmines where it was always open season for bike thieves. The chances of having your bike nicked from the railings of your own or a friend's flat were pretty high that no self-respecting gambler would take bets on the bike's chances of survival. Kevin Street Garda Station had regular auctions of bikes that had been stolen, abandoned or recovered and unclaimed, and a £10 or £20 bargain could be had for the canny cyclist.

There was a whole culture around cycling in Dublin in those pre-Celtic Tiger days - everyone cycled, no-one had a car (students or young Civil Servants or nurses) and the buses were never going where you wanted to go. This was generally from one suburb to another on the Southside, but all the bus routes worked on a hub and spokes basis (no pun intended!) - with the City Centre (An Lár) as the hub and the routes to the suburbs radiating out as spokes - which added cost and hours to a journey of maybe a few minutes by bike, as you had to go everywhere off the bus route via the City Centre.

The first intimation I had on the demise of the bike as an essential mode of transport was when I returned to Ireland in 1980 from Bangladesh, took up the two wheels again to traverse the city when I started agency nursing,and realised every nurse in Ireland seemed to be driving a car. Even though the 80s is generally decried as the decade of the first recession, it heralded a shift for the bike's place in Dublin society as far as I was concerned, and when I left the country in early 1982 for the next 16 years, I had resigned myself to a four-wheel future.

So now the two wheels have come full circle - bikes are eco-friendly, recession-proof, and more popular than ever - and I am delighted with my new bike. We chose it yesterday from a small specialist bike shop in Fermoy, after looking at a big chain store (another unintentional pun?) where we felt the spotty youth didn't really seem to care whether we bought or not and certainly wasn't offering much in the way of service or information. The other shop had a different take on customer service - I got to ride a few bikes up and down the street, the pros and cons were detailed, my dumb questions about gears and ratios and different types of bikes were patiently and unpatronisingly answered, and I felt they weren't just about selling the dearest bike but more about what I wanted from a bike - not a mountain bike, not a "High Nelly", but something in-between.

I ended up with this lovely bright red Kelly's Kappa Hybrid bike which has a nice gel seat (minimising the numb bum effect!) and 21 gears with 3x7 speeds. As my last bike had 3 gears (a nice Raleigh Tourer) and was a High Nelly for the 80s, I am having great fun playing with all the gears on this one. Yesterday I went for a short 3mile spin and today Jan and me went for a longer haul - 15km on fairly level ground in a circuit that took us home along the beautiful Blackwater river. Never mind gel seats - I had the original jelly legs and an extremely numb bum on arriving home! I'm assured this will get better as time goes by - Jan had already cycled 93km on his racer earlier today so this spin with me was like a cool-down for him. In fact a classy new racer is top of his wish-list and will be fulfilled for his upcoming significant birthday next month!

Those of you who've been following my blog for a while will remember my post on Jan's 100km charity Seán Kelly cycle last August, and know he's a seasoned cycling enthusiast. He's already signed up for the 2010 Seán Kelly Tour of Waterford, and suggested I do the 50km "starter" circuit! Right now that seems way beyond my capability so I will have to review that in a few months and see if the quads and hamstrings are bearing up - on the plus side I envisage the cellulite falling off and the coveted size 12 regained in no time - the old mantra of "No Pain, No Gain" never seemed truer than now.

Watch this space for occasional progress reports as I will be shamed into keeping up the good work if I blog about it from time to time, so all encouragement will be welcome!

On being a Spectator at The Tour of Waterford - and Ireland

Yesterday hubby Jan completed a charity cycle of 100km or 60 miles ( you can convert it accurately on my little converter widget at the sidebar!). It was his second year doing the Seán Kelly Tour of Waterford Charity Fun Cycle, and last year he also did the 100km. He loves cycling and as there is no cycling club in Lismore he goes it alone and times his journeys and can compare past and present times.

He raised €140 for the designated charity, the Irish Cancer Society (ICS), and last year over €100 for the National Council for the Blind in Ireland (NCBI). By today the ICS had taken over €30,000 in sponsorship raised through this cycle tour, and I think it is one of their biggest single fundraisers.

It is also the biggest Fun Cycle in Ireland, with 3,480 cyclists taking part in the three distances, the 50km, the 100km, and the 160km for the real pros. This takes in a number of challenging mountain passes across the Comeragh mountains, and hubby didn't even consider doing it. He is in it for the fun and the exercise and fitness is a welcome by-product, not the end in itself. We are all proud of him for doing this and he is delighted with his achievement.

His route took him from Dungarvan - start and endpoint for all three routes - to Carrick-on-Suir (home town of Seán Kelly of the Tour of Waterford and one of Ireland's best-known cyclists who was on the international circuit for years) and Clonmel, and back to Dungarvan. It was a filthy day, with lashing driving rain for a large part of the day, and an Irish mist for the rest, to ensure a thorough drenching, and yet the spirit of the cyclists never seemed to flag. I waited by the finish line for an hour or so watching the straggle of cyclists coming back in high spirits to the cheers of the onlookers, and there was a great buzz.

Being a fun cycle the only rules were that helmets had to be worn, and there was a motley crew of machines from top-class racers to tandems (including a blind cyclist with a buddy)and mountain bikes to high nellies with wicker baskets on the handlebars, more befitting a sunny country lane and floral frocks than splashing on Irish roads in the driving rain. Plenty of kids took part and there were cycling club members from all over Ireland and a number of cyclists from overseas, looking at the number of foreign registered camper vans and cars with bike racks.

The WLR-FM blastercaster was there with commentary and music and there was a huge backup crew in the sport hall in Dungarvan providing tea and soup and sandwiches for the returning heroes and heroines. The last time I was in this hall was at the Local and European Elections (see the blogpost) back in June, when it was transformed into the Count Centre and was full of high drama and tension. Today it was thronged with a different melée but equally colourful and noisy. Jan collected his Certificate of Achievement here before we went home.

The first few photos show Jan after the Tour, with another Labour Party Councillor, Ger Barron, and also with his Certificate.

The more high-profile Tour of Ireland was held over three days in August and came to Lismore on Day 2. There were over 100 cyclists from the well-known international teams that take part in the famous European tours like the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Spain's La Vuelta. The Peloton whizzed by Lismore Castle and didn't go through the town and a crowd gathered to cheer them on. As Lance Armstrong was taking part in the race there was a buzz of celebrity around, though unless you knew his colours you would be challenged to pick him out! I managed to get a few photos but they are a Jackson Pollock-like blur of colour and individual identification is impossible.


You can see the Tour of Ireland Peloton in these photos, and Lance Armstrong's Astana Team car with spare bikes was the next best thing to getting his photo!

There is a nice photo of Lismore Castle on a rare sunny summer's day, as the Tour of Ireland passed by. It is nice to see it surrounded by lush trees compared to the starkness of the winter photos I took in earlier posts like here.

So we have had quite a bit of cycling around here lately, and maybe it will inspire the government to promote cycling by providing more realistic cycling lanes in urban areas. Currently they are a joke, going nowhere and many that stop suddenly at a traffic light and that are shared with the bus lane. Cycling is a bit of a Russian Roulette activity, it is so dangerous as the urban cyclist is often seen as a nuisance by motorists and there are a number of fatal accidents every year.

Compared to our fellow-Europeans like the Dutch and Danes, who seem to accord cyclists great respect and services, we have a long way to go. Despite having Green biking ministers in government, there doesn't seem to be much happening on that front, but then they are so hapless in every undertaking and have lost so much credibility since joining the Coalition, that they probably would make a total mess of any new venture, even promoting cycling.

I guess we're on our own here, I don't have a bike any more after years of cycling in Dublin as a student when it was my mode of transport, I haven't been persuaded since returning to Ireland twelve years ago. Now I enjoy my onlooker cheerleader status.