Day Twenty One

Yesterday was a really good rest and I had two night's of sound sleep at Sandrock Hostel, Malin Head - I don't know how they do it at 10 Euros a night - excellent.

Rodney, who runs the hostel with his wife, said that there was a storm coming but that Tuesday would be ok. He even phoned the Lough Foyle Ferry to check that it was operating - it was thankfully otherwise Phillip and I would have to have peddled all the way back to Derry and up the other side of the Lough which would have meant an extra day of not very interesting cycling. As it was it stayed fine with the winds at our backs all the 40 kms to the ferry at Greencastle. We had some food then took the short trip over to the United Kingdom -Northern Ireland - and back into the land of miles and pounds. It was great to cycle with someone else and we talked of many things mostly stuff about bikes and trips we had made. Phill has made a couple of trips across the Picos mountains of Northern Spain - which got me thinking about my next trip but my backside said 'Never again!' So maybe not. Phill gave me lots of ideas of what to do in his home town of Belfast and perhaps we'll meet u
p again there. He was camping on the beach tonight - which I did not fancy so we said farewell and I cycled on another hour or so through Bushmills, of Irish Whiskey fame, past the Giant's Causeway (seen that been there so cycled on ) to Ballintoy and a quite nice hostel. The meal in the pub was not great and the 300 American tourists plus three Spaniards gave the place a definite, non Irish feel. So I came back to the peace and quite of the hostel kitchen. Where I met Alan. He is camping out at the back of the hostel where he has a Swedish tent similar to a teepee that he has a fire in. He works for himself running courses in self protection for people dealing with the public. We found that we had started our businesses at about the same time and, although the subject matter is very different there were lots of similarities.

This being the UK their is no telephone signal - why is it my phone will get a signal everywhere in Europe but in UK I have to be on top of hill under a mast to communicate.

The pictures are all a bit out of sequence because of poor signals lately so I will sort it all one day.

Val tells me the storm that is on its way is a hurricane - I hope Phill has got some really strong tent pegs tonight. I am meeting Broth in Belfast on Saturday morning and hope to arrive there on Friday night so that gives me three more day's cycling and they will be quite short days as well. The end is in sight - just a hurricane to cope with and that's it.

97 km today
Total of 1675 since I started which is just over 1000 miles.