Back home

The end of a great holiday as we cycle to Dublin Port for the ferry to Holyhead, passing locomotive 086 at the head of a train for Tara Mines.
The end of a great holiday as we cycle to Dublin Port for the ferry to Holyhead, passing locomotive 086 at the head of a train for Tara Mines.

Our holiday ended with sunshine, riding into Portadown where we waited for the Enterprise to whisk us to Dublin. An elderly gent came over for a chat and was anxious to establish that we’d had a good time and people had treated us well. No doubt about that, and we return with a great impression of the scenery and people of Ulster. The platform staff surprised us by telling us to leave our bikes with them while we boarded the train, a sensible way of minimising station dwell time.

At Dublin we rode the short way to the port and onto the Jonathan Swift, then waited on the platform for the train to take us back to Bangor and the seven mile ride home. The conductor was the first grumpy person we’d encountered in two weeks, moaning that our three bikes were an inconvenience on his class 158 diesel unit. He should speak to the designer.