Halloween Cycle in Dublin City

Friday brought the start of the Bank Holiday weekend (wahey!) 

After leaving work I headed to Dublin City to meet up with Ciaran at the start of the Critical Mass Halloween cycle. Unfortunately I had a bit of a false start after I realised that I left my phone in work, just as the train left Dun Laoghaire Station. I had to get off at Monkstown Station and cycle back to DL - in fairness it was a nice cycle on the protected cycle path of the DLR Coastal Mobility Route. After picking up my phone from my desk I returned to the station but unfortunately I just missed a train so that set me up to be late for the start of the cycle.  So I reassessed my plan and texted Ciaran to say that I would meet up with the cycle gang on Capel Street.  And that's what I did having got off at Tara Street and cycling down Abbey Street directly to Capel Street.

Many of the cycle crew were in full costume but we just wore masks - red dragon for me and werewolf for Ciarán.

Always fun to take part in this event and have a nice saunter on the bike around Dublin. But I particularly like the themed critical mass cycles depending on the time of year. I look forward to the Christmas one now that the Halloween one is over for the year.

And after the cycle it was back to Capel Street where we had wings & wine in All Bar Chicken......

....well I had wine, the werewolf had beer!

Click here to see my very first Critical Mass cycle - which coincidentally was a Halloween cycle too (and I dressed in full costume for this one)!

You can join Critical Mass if you like - just come along to the start at Parnell Square opposite the entrance to the Hugh Lane Gallery, at the side of the Garden of Remembrance. It is on the last Friday of every month and starts at 6pm. See you there!!

"We will park your bike for you"

Vegfest!

It was a fun day today at Vegfest in Rathmines where I was volunteering with the Dublin Cycling Campaign. We were offering a bike valet service where we parked attendees bikes in a safe convenient space at the entrance.

It was a fabulous sunny September day (I came wrapped up in two jackets but that was probably overkill!) and there was a big crowd at the event.  We were kept busy parking bikes all morning and we also got to talk to people about the work of the Dublin Cycling Campaign too.

All in all a fun day out - check out a few pics below

Vegfest is open again tomorrow (Sunday 24th) so get on your bike and make a visit to it!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

 It's St Patrick's Day and the sun came out here in Ireland!

It was cool and got up to about 12 degrees Celsius so I wore layers for what I got up to today. And what did I do?!  Well I cycled in the Dublin parade! 

The parade is back for the first time since 2019 after it was cancelled in 2020 - as we were just starting lockdown this time two years ago. Along with the parade being back, the Dublin Cycling Campaign are also back with a themed cycle which was the closing float (is a group of 100 cyclists, in costume, a float?) of the parade.

You can look back on past blogs here to see what I wore at previous parades.

The theme for our cycle float wass "Joyce Cycle" to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of James Joyce's Ulysses and we all wore Bloomsday / Joycean outfits. 

Ably led by Dublin City Councillor Donna Cooney, who coordinated the cyclists participations in the parade, we cycled, cheered and waved and had a lot of fun.

A clap from the President of Ireland

The stand out moment for me was when we passed the Grand Stand with all of the dignitaries, our President Michael D. Higgins stood and clapped for us as we passed. What an honour!

Here's a few pics of my costume and some of the parade.

Posing at my door way before I set off for the parade starting point. My house was built in the 1840's so my costume is fairly apt in this setting!

An essential copy of James Joyce's Ulysses strapped to the back of a bike

Some very smart Joycean outfits here!

Waiting for the start - posing beside my Brompton Bike. As you can see I sewed a ribbon to my hat which I was glad of as it was windy in parts and I think my hat would have blown off were it not tied firmly on.

In past years it has been bitterly cold waiting at the parade starting point so I came prepared this year with a flask of hot Baileys coffee!

Councillor Donna Cooney leading the way with Leopold Bloom reading in bed

Can you see me in the background of this photo as the cycling campaign group crossed O'Connell Bridge!

And now that the parade is over, I will unpick the ribbons off my hat and will donate it to a charity shop along with doing a big clear out of my attic tomorrow (I have lots of things up there that I haven't used since my return from Spain, so they probably can be donated).  

My dress was a casualty of the cycle having got caught in my chain a few times. It's now got a hole in it. It's a dress that I wore to a black tie wedding over 15 years ago, but all I've been using it for is for dressing up in costume for the last few years, so it is no loss (also having looked at the tear, I think I can probably stitch it up and repair it so it is fine for wearing again as a costume). I had worn it in previous parades (see when I dressed up as a suffragette) but the bike that I was cycling on that day had a chain guard which my Brompton doesn't. Seems like a chain guard is probably an essential piece of kit on your bike if you are going to be cycling in long skirts!

A note about Ukraine

As you can see we wore blue bands on our hats along with a yellow sunflower in support of Ukraine. This is something that I was very happy to do. As you can see I haven't written a blog in a few weeks and quite honestly it was because I couldn't bring myself to. I wanted to write about the atrocities that are being done on Ukraine but I am finding it hard to verbalise how devastated I feel for the Ukrainian people. I am so incredibly sad for them. 

As their country was attacked, Ireland immediately began to welcome in refugees and it has been inspiring to see Irish people open up their homes to those in need. There is a huge fundraising effort and as usual us Irish dig deep and donate as much as we can.

As a country that gets celebrated the world over on our special day it is tough to see Ukraine being foremost in the world's mind - but not for something positive but instead the world is looking on in horror. 

At this point in time I do not hold out much hope for Ukraine, but one thing I do have hope for, and that is, the strength in humankind. The Ukraine people will survive with the help of the world. We are one big globalised community and we must look out for each other.  

Good will prevail over evil.

And on that sombre note I end by wishing you a Happy St Patrick's Day where ever you are in the world.

Monday Funday!

So Monday turned out to be fun, considering it was, well you know, Monday....

After work I got up to two things. First off I did an online Zoom Bikram Yoga class all the way from Luxembourg - that was A-mazing! 

And then after dinner (well I lie, I was actually eating dinner  at the beginning when I joined - but I left my camera off) I went to an online meeting of the Dublin Cycling Campaign Group with 100 other participants. It was so good and very inspiring. It got me all riled up so I emailed my local councillors this evening to thank them for all the recent cycling infrastructure improvements in Ranelagh (wands have been installed to protect cycle lanes) and to ask them if more could be done to protect cyclists and pedestrians.

It felt like I had a very productive Monday after a really slow Sunday. It was invigorating!

Bones also joined the meeting for a few mins - he plodded up the stairs to me and asked to be picked up. I had my camera on at this point so presumably he was seen by all!  In fairness he behaved himself and sat quietly - but he is a big fan of cycling as he loves me nipping around on my bike with him peeping out of my panniers :-)

Happy St Patrick's Day 2018

St Patrick's Day 2018 was wonderful!

I set my alarm to give myself an early start and get the dog walked and get myself organised and on my way to my sisters place.
I then had a tasty full Irish with my twin sister in her apartment. Thanks for the great hospitality Amy!

Afterwards we cycled (rather quickly as we were a little late) in costume over to Constitution Hill to meet up with the Dublin Cycling Campaign who we were parading with with.

Our group was made up of 100 women on bikes dressed as Suffragettes to celebrate 100 years of the vote for women or "Votáil 100" as it is known as gaeilge.

Our cycle was led by Senator Ivan Bacik and Meterologist Joanna Donnelly. Unfortunately even though we had a weather woman among us we were not favoured with the weather - it was cold, cold, cold. Luckily Amy and I wore layers upon layers so were not too bad and we warmed up quickly once we got cycling.

There were lots of different costumes but we all wore homemade sashes - some in the purple and green of suffragettism and some in the Irish colours as Irish suffragettes were very much aligned with the Independence movement.

Here's the pair of us ready to get going. As you can see we started without hat scarves but it was so windy that they were badly needed so we whipped them out and tied them around our hats.

  

Artist Laragh Pittman created the phenomental signage along with Freedom Machine coordinator and creator Donna Cooney.

You can check out more pictures by looking up #FreedomMachine on Twitter.

Here is meterologist Joanna Donnelly up the front and leading the way. Joanna is a regular cyclist and often cycles in to RTE to present the weather forecast. 

Here is Amy in old fashioned clothes in front of the classic Gate Theatre carrying out a very modern day activity - going live on Facebook!!

It was so much fun cycling through the main streets of Dublin from Northside to Southside.

Here we are at the end of a marvellous parade with the brilliant Senator Ivana Bacik. What a pleasure to have our photo taken with her.

From the end of the parade, we rushed to McGrattans to watch Ireland beat England and win the Grand Slam and the Six Nations. This made our St Patrick's Day!
Bones even got in the spirit :-)

Later that evening we went for Tapas and a glass of wine in La Bodega which was a really nice atmosphere and very tasty.

Amy then stayed the night with me and today we got up and took the dog for a walk in the snow and then made another full Irish for brekkie.

Afterwards we chilled out in the hot tub and then had coffees and watched retro TV of Highway to Heaven starring the very watchable Michael Landon. What a blissful Sunday!

Quite a lot of snow fell all night but it thawed today and seems to be all clear for the bank holiday Monday tomorrow.  With the snow gone we can have a nice day tomorrow to finish out the holiday weekend!