Ireland the North 2 Dundalk

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Ireland the North 2. Dundalk

An overcast day with better weather than forecast with the odd spitting and a few heavier showers demanding my cape escape its moorings on my rear rack. Quite an uneventful ride through rolling dairy country, although some may say that some of the hills are definitely not rolling. One nice descent was followed by a rumbling sound from my front wheel which was found to be a puncture. Luckily it was not raining and a quick wheel removal showed that it was caused by a thorn, which was duly removed by my teeth since I had no pliers. I got out my spare tube only to find it had a Schrader valve which will not fit. It must have been sent to me by mistake as I never use schrader. Lorna lent me hers only to find after fitting that it had a hole in it. Tyre off again. Robert came by at the right time and lent me one of his tubes. Bingo, we are on a roll, especially as Bill has also landed and I used his track pump to quickly blow up the tyre and we were on our way again to Newry and a brew at Coffee Nero. Rain a bit heavy now and cape on for the next 10 Km. A pleasant cycleway to Carlingford to meet up with Bill and the rest of the group for lunch. As we left Carlingford we headed for Howard Heights and the name gave the game away - another hill. I would have preferred Howard Depths. After dropping down to Bush we joined the busy R173 to Dundalk with not much protection from the heavy traffic for much of the way. The Glen Gat was found to be two old town houses joined together and is rather quaint and well fitted out. A great day was rounded off at the Grande Italian restaurant after a puncture repair.
Dublin tomorrow.

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