An Irish Adventure

We set off for the English port of Holyhead on Wednesday morning with the sun shining all the way. Our ferry sailed on schedule at 3pm and the crossing was relitively smooth and fast, docking in Don Louaghaire (just south of Dublin Docks) at 5pm. The sun was still with us in Dublin but we went through a few showers on the journey up North to Belfast.

The track at Maghberry had clearly suffered from lots of rain over the last few days and weeks so we were relieved to have all the old airfield concrete to park up on. This was probably a life saver for this weekend! Fortunately, with just 260 drivers, the concrete hard ground was enough to accomodate everyone with very few chosing to venture onto the grassy areas.

Thursday and Friday were both decent days. Rick and I went out on our bikes on both days and did a few miles around the country roads. There were lots of hills though and i have to admit that i ended up pushing my bike up them a couple of times! Meanwhile the Down Autograss track crew worked hard on the track all day on Friday and created a great looking race circuit.

On Friday night the rain came and boy did it come! In fact it didn't stop until late on Saturday night. On Saturday morning we were all relieved to here the start time had been postponed until 10am, and after the rain didn't stop we were even more relieved to hear of a further delay until 12pm. At 12, with the rain still beating down, all the drivers took a vote to cancel Saturdays racing and start the meeting on Sunday at 8am no matter what.

For the rest of the afternoon the world of autograss hit the local pub and i don't think the pub knew what had hit it! Needless to say there were some sorry states by early evening and a wise move made by most to come back to the field at around 8pm for the beer shed disco.

A promt 8am start on Sunday saw the first heats over by 11am, the second heats over by 2pm and the third heats by about 4.30. Time may have been tight for those catching the 9pm ferry but I think it was a wise deicision by the BAS committee to give everyone a 3rd heat and we did indeed still have time to run the finals. The track turned out incredibly well considering Saturdays rain, the slope of it allowing the water to run off albeit creating a very muddy pits!

We made the decision to set off to Dublin on Sunday night even though our ferry wasn't utill 11.30am Monday. With all the local weather warnings and stories of roads closed and ferries cancelled, we just couldn't risk leaving it too late. So we parked up just North of Dublin for the night and set off again at 8am for the ferry. We set sail a little late at 11.50am and took slightly longer to arrive back in Holyhead but with the company of Shuke and the Price clan we couldn't complain about a boring journey.

So it was a long, expensive weekend, for weather that we could have got back in England but it was an experience, and an adventure that was well worth it. Even with only 260 drivers no-one ever expected us to complete 3 heats and finals plus champ of champs in just 1 day after all the rain on Saturday, but Down Autograss and all of the other clubs helpers pulled it off and did grassin proud.