Wednesday July 9, 2014

Surprisingly even with very little light coming into the van, I was awake as usual at 6:00.  We got up, I had a “wet wipe” wash and got ready to face the day.  Last night we had bought our breakfast so we ate dried muesli buns, juice and a yogurt – not one of our better breakfasts, but it kept us going for our bike ride back to Troon.

We dropped the van of without any problems and jumped on our bikes and headed for Troon.  At first we were on the A77, then spotted NCR 7 to take us to Prestwick and Troon.  The route looked fairly good – crushed gravel.  I asked a lady if this trail was good, “Aye” she said “you won’t ha nae problems.”  I asked if it was crushed gravel all the way “Aye, if fact I think it goes to pavement later on” “ you won’t ha nae problems”  Now I am sure you can tell by this we did have problems within about a kilometer the trail changed to a narrow track and then to grass and eventually we were pushing two loaded touring bikes through sand dunes.  “Nae Problem”, my arse.

We spotted a parallel road, over the fence and down a hill.  After another 500 metres, we decided to manhandle the bikes over the fence and down the grassy hill to a very nice crushed gravel path, which then miraculously turned into a lovely paved NCR7.  The worst thing that happened on this ride was that I caught my pannier on a nail and it has torn a 3inch  gash in my pannier, fortunately it is only on the pocket, we can patch that, but I was annoyed about it.

We arrived at the ferry terminal at about 9:15 am, picked up our tickets and went into the waiting room, where we met two other couples – one couple was from Australia (Sarah and Scott) on a 4 year round the world trip and the other couple from Germany (Juliaue and Patrick) on a 6 month trip.

Sarah and Scott have just started their trip and asked for advice from “seasoned” tourers!  I don’t really feel that we have been on the road long enough to be classed as seasoned tourers, but I did say always be honest on how you are feeling, if you are not enjoying the day – say so.  There are days when you really don’t want to be cycling, but it is not a rest day and you have to do it, be honest with your partner on how you are feeling it is much easier on them if they know you are just having a bad day and it is nothing to do with them.

One of the things that touring cyclists do when they meet is compare what we are carrying (the weight and size).  We are actually carrying less than the other couples, Sara and Scott were next heaviest and Juliaue and Patrick were the heaviest at 40 kgs each.  That is the disadvantage of carrying your stuff in a trailer, you keep loading it up.

We arrived in Larne at 1:15 and found our campsite straight away.  We had decided to stay the night in Larne, pick-up maps and plan the next couple of days ride.  People are friendly in N.Ireland, they smile at you and greet you. I am really looking forward to cycling here.

The Information Centre was really helpful, even though we had our campsite, we popped in to check out maps and possible cycle routes. We picked up a great map of Northern Ireland that shows camp sites and a couple of brochures regarding cycle routes.

The warden at the camp site told us about the big bonfire that is being built for the parades on Saturday.  Celebrations of the Battle of the Boyne – William of Orange.  I am glad we won’t be in Belfast on Saturday.

Sarah and Scott decided to stay at the same camp and are heading into Belfast tomorrow.  We gave them a heads up about the parades. Juliaue and Patrick headed straight for Belfast today.

The park next to our campsite had this statue which is dedicated to the memory of the first Ulster emigrants that sailed from Larne in 1717, bound for Boston – the first of many.