Day 1 - Blarney to Killarney (163 miles)

Photo 2: Ferry arriving in Cork on Thursday morning

Photo 3: Our team at the starting line at Blarney Castle.

Photo 4: Kissing the Blarney Stone at the top of the tower.

The ferry crossing to Ireland was fortunately very calm and the boat bar and restaurant were kept busy as cyclists gathered and exchanged stories. The ferry crew had obviously under-estimated the amount of business they were going to get as there were large queues everywhere with people waiting to pay. This became a real challenge in the morning at breakfast as literally hundred's of cyclists descended on the restaurant to stoke up ready for a long day in the saddle.

The ferry came into Cork harbour about 8:45 which was 45 mins later than scheduled. We had a 30 min drive out to the starting line at Blarney Castle and a further wait there to let the Marshalls get out onto the road and get the signs up. With 8-10 hrs cycling ahead depending on the terrain a 10:00 start could mean a late finish unless there was some serious leap-frogging. Leap-frogging basically meant letting the next cyclist start his ride just before the previous one finished. So you still covered the full distance, but for a couple of minutes at each change-over you had two bikes on the road.

We'd decided on a running order of Colin, Paul, Jason then Rich so I was first up for the day. The sun was trying to come out as I set off so I was able to put the Flip camera on the handlebars and try to get some video. It took a little while to get warmed up and for the legs to get moving quickly but it was a beautiful ride through fields and woodland and along streams. There were quite a few vans on the road shouting encouragement and I was lucky to have another rider to slipstream with for the last five minutes so we kept up a pretty good pace. That was the end of the first ride of the day and I then handed over to Paul.