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!

Cycling Cruise - the Sean Kelly Tour of Waterford 2010

I did it! I took part in my first cycling event today and absolutely loved it - the 50km Sean Kelly Cruise in the Tour of Waterford 2010. Long-time readers of this blog will know that hubby Jan did this cycling challenge for the past few years and I have been on the sidelines to cheer him on and welcome him past the post last year, which is documented here.

This year was different though. I got a bike for my birthday in March, and you can read about it here - it's a lovely lipstick red Hybrid Kelly's Kappa bike, part touring, parttown bike. Suits me to a tee, and I even got a basket much to the horror of the cycling purists in the family. It's black wire mesh and detaches from a small fitting on the handlebars, and is perfect for those little forgotten messages (= things from the shop - a peculiar Hiberno-English-ism which tends to confuse anyone unfamiliar with our oft-obscure terminology). I knew Jan was planning his assault on the 90km Coastal Route, which was pretty daunting as it traversed plenty of steep climbs which would challenge the pros, let alone the amateur enthusiast. I wondered whether I'd be able for the 50km and decided to get a bit of training done. Shayne, our eldest son, decided to go on this one too, using his dad's old racer.

So since June/July I've been cycling regularly, about three times a week, from a 15km cycle a couple of evenings after work to a longer one at weekends - the longest being39km. Not alone did I surprise myself at my ability to cope with the longer runs, but I felt great afterwards, despite being exhausted when I came home at first. My stamina improved very quickly as did my speed andIenjoyed seeing the proof of my progress when Jan logged it onto a nice Excel spreadsheet with line graphs as evidence. For example (without getting pedantic or too boring!) the first 15km I did took just over an hour, whereas now I can do it in about 50minutes. I knocked 9 mins off a 22km run in the space of three weeks, which I felt very smug and virtuous about. I got plenty of encouragement from Jan and the family and also colleagues at work, some of whom were participating themselves or had family members taking part.

The great thing about this cycle is that it's all about fun. There's a professional element to the longest run, 160km, and then for the amateur enthusiast like hubby there's the 90km run. That's along a rugged coastal road with lots of steep inclines and some spectacular scenery - the Copper Coast and Geopark are famous for their beauty and historic significance in the Bunmahon area of Co. Waterford and the scenery might serve to distract the cyclist from the pain inthose calf and thigh muscles on the climbs!

The 160km mountain trail is for the serious amateurs and the professionals who enjoy a day's stage equal to an Etape in something like the Tour de France or the Giro or Vuelta. There's steep mountain passes to negotiate and endurance is needed to keep going to the end. So not for the fainthearted, and it was evident in the numbers that the 160km drew the biggest crowd and that cycling is fast becoming one of Ireland's most popular leisure and sporting activity.

The 50km started cycle for the beginners like me and eldest son Shayne was perfect - short enough to be attainable without huge time commitment and long enough to give a good adrenaline rush and an immense sense of satisfaction. And there was plenty of time to enjoy the view. The scenery from Dungarvan to Cappoquin via Ballinameela and Villierstown is beautiful especially the Villierstown-Cappoquin section which runs parallel to the Blackwater River and foms part of theDromanaDrive, a scenic route along back roads in the lands once owned by the local governor Lord Villiers-Stuart for whomVillierstown is named. Nowadays Villierstown is famous for an Olympic medallist John Treacy who won Silver in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in the Marathon. Today Villierstown was transformed into a haven for cyclists, who were given refreshments at the first water stop of the day. A very welcome break after 23km and I enjoyed the banana and Flahavan's Flapjacks (locally made in Kilmacthomas - supporting local produce is a hallmark of these events).

In Cappoquin we had a food stop in the magnificent new Community Centre, and I had to laugh to see the bikes thrown around outside in seemingly random fashion - everyone being very trusting. Shayne was on a racer and he went ahead quite early on, and we didn't meet up till Cappoquin when he passed me on the home stretch while I was heading for the food stop. We had pasta and sandwiches and delicious Barron's Brack, with hot tea and plenty of meeting up with other cyclists and some friends who were around the hall. The home stretch to Dungarvan was along the N72, the main road I drive daily to work. It was a lovely run with gentle hills and hollows, and a nice tail wind to push us along. I felt no pain and apart from the odd numb bum, which was alleviated by dismounting for a few minutes rest every 15km or so, I felt great at the end. Shayne and me waited for Jan to return from the 90km, which he duly did, and it was a far greater challenge than ours, as some of the hills were so steep many had to dismount to walk them.

We took some photos at the start and finish, and a few along the way of the rest stops. We collected our certificates of achievement at the end, and I will be very proud of mine, as I hope it will be the first of many Tours of Waterford for this keen cyclist. By the way, my time was 2hrs and 30 mins for 44km, which was what I clocked up - my speedometer wasn't connecting at the start - but I am very happy with that - average speed was over 17km/hr, given the crowds that was pretty good, as there was little opportunity for setting a pace along those narrow roads for the first 15km. So if you are contemplating a new hobby or some gentle exercise, you could do worse than to take up cycling - I did after a 30 year gap and it got bridged in no time.

St. Patrick's Day Celebrations - Past and Present

I know it's a few days after St. Patrick's Day and I don't really have a lot to write about it as I posted last year also on the National Holiday - suffice to say that this year I went to two parades - one in Cappoquin, which is fairly new to parades, and Dungarvan which has been running forever and is very similar year after year. Cappoquin has only been running parades for the past year or two so it is still in its infancy and there's great credit due to the organisers for such great enthusiasm.

The parade was on at 12.30pm and teen daughter was in the Lismore Foróige Club group - that's the National Youth Development Organisation, which runs Youth Clubs at local level and provides training and leadership skills to young people and the club leaders. So they were all kitted out with logo-ed T-shirts and marched through Cappoquin. I took some photos and videoclips and hope they give a sense of the day. As Cappoquin is twinned with a French town, Chanat-la-Mouteyre, they had a French element in the parade and these "French" folk gave out free French Onion Soup and yummy cheese and baguettes to all comers - a lovely gesture that beat the free cuppa tea in Dungarvan!



You may wonder where's the spirit of St. Patrick? As most of you who know the way these parades go, they are a celebration of things local and Irish, a showcase for all kinds of local talent - bands, Irish dancers, community groups and clubs, as well as local sponsors of floats - so it can be quite a hotchpotch of displays and groups on the march.

The best float (which was in both parades) was the Tiger Woods PGA Tour - you can see the photo of the car crash on the flatbed truck here - it was very funny and was done by a group from Melleray who always excel at creativity when it comes to floats and fancy dress. The PGA in this instance bears no reference to golf in the acronym if you can read what's on the photo!

There were some lovely set dancers from Cappoquin and I have a video clip which I will add here, as well as a clip of the parade.



There are usually a selection of local dignitaries on stage - which is often a mobile stage in the town square (in the past it was often a trailer or the back of a lorry but these days they tend to be purpose-built mobile units, albeit on the back of a lorry!) In Cappoquin the County Mayor was at the parade, as she is from there, and this year the County Councillors made a great show of not going to New York as they had done in more boom times, given that these trips were generally roundly condemned as worthless junkets by the taxpayers and electorate of the county.

Nationally there are huge parades in the main cities, with Festivals lasting up to a week in Dublin, where there are spectacular Skyfest fireworks displays as well as the trad parade. I used to love the Dublin parade when the kids were small and we went whenever we were in Dublin on the day.

Of course Paddy's Day is a much bigger event for expat Irish and when we lived abroad we celebrated with great gusto, with Embassy bashes and black-tie balls in Dar-es-Salaam, while Concern seemed the natural organisation to lead the partying in any other workplace, like Iringa in Tanzania and Vientiane in Laos. In our early days in Bangladesh Concern always hosted the official Paddy's Day party while the British High Commission put on a formal evening around the actual day to mark the occasion as we had no Embassy in Dhaka and were under the protection of the High Commissioner (for those who don't know, the High Commissioner is like the Ambassador but only in the Commonwealth Countries - so that included Bangladesh and Tanzania.

Of course the Irish do know how to party and my most memorable Paddy's Day has to be the one we hosted in our home in Vientiane for everyone or so it seemed - we had a wonderful garden for parties and it was swelteringly hot and humid, we had a band and green beer, and lots of Irish Dancing which became increasingly rowdy and most un-Riverdance-like as the night wore on. At another Lao Paddy's Day party I remember coming home in a Mini with 10 people including a number of children standing up with their heads out the sunroof! Not something to contemplate in this day and age, but that was another time and place.

I hope you all had a great day wherever you were celebrating - it seems like a lot of blogposts have been written about the day so this reflection is just a tad late. I seem to be running to stand still these days!

A Tale of Two Reports

Something that has served to blight life in Ireland in recent weeks has been the release of two harrowing commission reports. The first was the Monageer Report on the death of a family in Wexford two years ago in tragic circumstances. This report was non-statutory and as a result had large portions "redacted" - a new word in the national lexicon that involved blacking out large portions of text and testimony of witness statements and is censorship by another Orwellian name. This led to much speculation and conspiracy theorising about what was concealed and why there wasn't full disclosure in such a case of public interest. That is not merely prurient interest, as there are major unanswered questions arising about our social services and the gaps therein, whereby there is no social work cover at weekends and if a family crisis emerges it has to be dealt with by the Gardaí (police).

Also the lack of inter-departmental communication leaves a lot to be desired with no feedback between professionals involved in the same case. In an infamous case over 15 years ago, known as the Kilkenny Incest Case, there were over 60 visits by social workers and public health nurses yet there was no communication of concerns between both disciplines. Child protection guidelines were amended and laws introduced to prevent recurrence but it sometimes seems little has changed on the ground. It is a damning indictment of our priorities that resources are not put into resolving the staffing levels and ensuring 24/7 cover for such situations. There will never be a way to prevent some tragedies, but at least you could say that all that could have been done was done.

This family were actually on a Garda watch after a diligent undertaker reported concerns after the family visited enquiring about family funeral arrangements should they all be killed in a car crash. The Gardaí watched the house over the weekend and once the car was seen to be there they didn't intervene. The Parish Priest visited and left once reassured by the father who was apparently very manipulative and convincing. There were numerous missed hospital and health appointments detailed in the commission report which alone mightn't be picked up but collectively would show a pattern and raise concern about the family's commitment to engaging with the services and their welfare. We are all questioning our professional practice and trying to plug gaps to ensure tragedies like this can be averted and prevented in the future.

The other report is the Ryan Commission Report - an enquiry into institutional child abuse in religious-run institutions from 1930-1990. The full report runs to 5 volumes and about 3000 pages. I have linked to the Executive Summary here It has been years in the making and has opened the Pandora's Box on this dreadful issue. It is another damning indictment on our society's attitude to poverty and to children, and the power the church as a body had over the entire country and especially the government. Since child sex abuse came to light in the past 10-15years this stranglehold has been loosened forever, and FOI (freedom of information) has revealed the extent to which this power was abused through much of the life of the Irish State. Government and societal collusion ensured that the perpetrators could act with impunity, as these children were already abandoned by a society that was happy to have them locked up and not be a burden or embarrassment on the country.

The report has shaken the whole country in its graphic portrayal of the abuse these children suffered, and the deal the government struck with the religious bodies to cap their financial liability to compensation at a paltry €127 million has been pilloried. They are being shamed into offering further compensation to the victims who had to go through a court-like redress board to get their claims recognised, and were bound up by all kinds of confidentiality clauses. It is clear from the Ryan report that the religious challenged and denied the allegations of abuse right to the bitter end, and it was only following irrefutable evidence and realising that the Ryan commission members were getting to the heart of the matter and believing the victims, that they climbed down and showed some latter-day humility. This is despite the promise that the redress board would be a non-adversarial forum for the victims to get justice. A former inmate of Ferryhouse in Clonmel, Michael O'Brien, spoke eloquently on Questions and Answers(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBi4sYK5rjI), RTÉ's flagship topical issues programme, about his experiences of the same board. He went on to become Mayor of Clonmel and was a staunch government supporter and felt very let down by their deference to the religious orders. He refuted any illusion that the government or the public may have had about the impartiality of the hearings of this board.

This report came out in late May and it is still headline news with daily revelations of the lasting impact of such horror, on the victims, their families, frequently hugely dysfunctional, and the stigma that led many of them to alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, and ultimately destroyed their lives by ruining their childhood. It makes for sobering reading albeit in very small doses, as it is so hard to read. Letterfrack and Artane were among the most notorious industrial schools, and one of the Industrial schools was in Cappoquin, only 4 miles from Lismore, on our own doorstep. Paddy Doyle, who was abused there, wrote one of the first of many first-hand accounts of life there in The God Squad. Everyone of a certain vintage, myself included, has a memory of the crocodiles of scared boys on Sunday walks, heads downcast and looking gaunt and miserable. It turned out that many had stunted growth from virtual starvation, as the capitation from the government was often diverted into other "more deserving" schools, like the mainstream day schools.

There is a huge national and public guilt at all the years of turning a blind eye and as recently as last week one priest outraged his flock by seemingly justifying some of the treatment by suggesting in his Sunday sermon that the boys at one reformatory, Daingean in Co. Offaly, were "ruffians", as if this made them deserving of whatever abuse was meted out to them. There are those church members who still think the people and government will respond to a "belt of the crozier" if they have the temerity to speak critically on chuch issues - thankfully those days are gone and it can only be for the good of the country. The younger generation cannot credit how church-ridden the governments of the past were, and yet we had this deal struck as recently as 2002 by then Minister Michael Woods in the closing hours of a government on the eve of a general election.

I hope the publication of these reports will serve to prevent any authority from losing the run of themselves in the future, we can all hang our heads at the collective shame of the treatment shown to vulnerable sectors of society and be vigilant to ensure no recurrence. It wouldn't be the first time that we hear "never again", and history repeats itself yet again.