Drop your random ride pics

[Toppie]

Earlier this year I ticked off a Rally point on the outskirts of Dublin.

Connolly's Folly.

 

While I was researching that monuments history I chanced upon another, sort of 'oddity' and decided to give that a looking at as well.

That was months ago but when I got within just a few hundred metres of 'The Wonderful Barn' I was held up by a huge cycling event. 

Couldn't get near the place.

I sort of lodged it in the back of my mind though and sort of 'filed' it for a future ride.

Yesterday saw a break in the very mediocre weather so I took the opportunity to give 'The Wonderful Barn' in Cellbridge near Dublin a bit of a looking at..

I'd punched coordinates into TomTom but the satnav couldn't cope without trying to direct me through private farmland.

I resorted to my phone for an alternative route and it guided me to here....

 

Have to say...I was slightly underwhelmed when I dismounted to take a picture.

But...walking just a few steps further revealed this...

 

That looked more promising but I had to negotiate the last couple of hundred metres through a pedestrian walkway to get closer to 'The Wonderful Barn'

 

Well, it's 'different' and ever-so-slightly odd but, I'm not ever so sure how wonderful it is.

 

It's set in a little bit of a quiet oasis within a very built up area and so it served nicely as a spot for my packed lunch.

 

 

While I sat there contemplating why this strange tower-like thing had been built, a young Chinese feller strolled onto the scene. He was walking and exercising a nice wee dog, throwing a ball from one of those ball-throwing stick thingy's.

When he spotted me and the bike he made his way across and remarked 'Nice bike...is it new?'

Well, 'Ed'  (that was his name) the Chinese feller, looked like he'd just flown in from Peking but had such a broad Dublin accent that it could only have been formed from birth or closely afterwards.

He turned out to be very knowledgeable about motorcycles as well and owned a couple.

He declined half of my cheese 'n onion sarnie but accepted a stick of my Kit-Kat bar while we chatted bikes and biking in general.

Shame that there's not access to the inside of this oddity but it was a fairly decent reason for a ride out on a nice bright day.

 

And...I got home well before the rain came.

And, because I had a motorcycle, I got to meet a nice fellow enthusiast.

 

For anyone remotely interested here's it....

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Barn

[norton73]

Did parts of the MABDR on the way to a Norton Owners Rally in the Catskills of NY.

 

 

 

 

 

3514 miles in 12 days of riding over 14 days. Visited the Air and Space Museum at Dulles VA one day, watched a AFT flat track race in Port Royal PA and hit two deer in SW VA on the next to last day on the road.

First one jumped of a bank and caught the front wheel with it's hindquarters and tried to take the bars out of my hands. I stayed upright, but tweeked my wrist.

 

An hour later, another jumped a fence directly in front of me, fell on the asphalt and as it was scrambling to get up, caught the left fog light and tank pannier. As it got up, it kicked me in the knee right at the armour. Left a bruise, but otherwise i was OK.

 

More pics;https://norton73.smugmug.com/MABDR-July-7-to-19-2022/

 

 

Air and Space museum;

https://norton73.smugmug.com/Other/Air-and-Space-Museum-

 

Norton Rally;

https://norton73.smugmug.com/INOA-Rally-New-York-/

 

Flat Track race;

https://norton73.smugmug.com/Motorcycles/Port-Royal-AFT-flat-track-July-16-2022

 

Edited August 5, 2022 by norton73

[electric_monk]

7 hours ago, Toppie said:

 

Luverly, where's that?  I want to go....

It's one of a series of lanes around Passage East, you can just see Passage in the background, a ferry runs across from passage to Ballyhack.

[Rob-T7]

Morning shot after the nightshift 

[Tenerider]

Sunday ride in Bergisches Land (low mountain range in the West of Germany). Lots of really twisty roads here - and it starts about 5 km from my home. The T7 shines in this terrain.

 

 

[ImpatientSteve]

Pictures of our latest trip where we did Tet Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, so much fun and adventures ! 
Ended up replacing my new rear tire (Mitas e-09 Dakar) in the hotel room after only 7 days of usage, luckily they had the E09 in-stock near Mostar.

 

 

[Idarex]

A little 3 day ride weekend before last.  Crossed Craters of the Moon National Monument.  Crossed Dollarhide Pass to Smoky Bar.  Followed the South Fork to Featherville.  Then reversed it to get home.

 

 

[1wdrive]

Recent 3-day Idaho backcountry ride with my buddy on his BMW 1150GSA.  Note to self:  stop and take more photos next time!

 

Boise to Copper Basin via Featherville, Dollarhide Summit, Ketchum....

Copper Basin to Yankee Fork via Mackay, Pahsimeroi Valley, Livingston Mill, Clayton

Yankee Fork to Boise via Pinyon Peak, Deadwood Resivor, Garden Valley.

 

 

[S.Ga.Rider]

Rode in to work this morning. 

[Tom_R]

a little fog in the early morning .. before riding in the woods 

[S.Ga.Rider]

My current rides.

[Hibobb]

56 minutes ago, S.Ga.Rider said:

My current rides

SGR,

What is the Cafe style bike on the right?

[S.Ga.Rider]

Just now, Hibobb said:

SGR,

What is the Cafe style bike on the right?

Its a bonneville.

[Hibobb]

Neeto... I like the retro style bikes!!!

Thanks!

[Tenerider]

Just had to take these pictures some time - Yamaha Germany HQ is only 20km from my home:

 

 

[Hollybrook]

Yesterday, my daughter and I traveled 90 minutes to visit Taskers Gap OHV riding area.  She took her Yamaha TTR125 on a rack on the back of her car and I rode the T7.  My daughter recently got the TTR as her first bike and only had a few hours riding experience. 

 

This area was created about 20 years ago from forest fire roads on a mountain, but has had little maintenance since then.  The roads have degenerated into rocky, rutted trails that were not the best place for a beginning rider, nor for an adventure bike that is over 450lbs.

 

Nonetheless, we were there and had a fun time.  She dropped her bike a bunch of times and we often had to turn around when the rocky ledges and baby head sized rocks proved to much for her.  After about two hours she was quite frustrated and I was feeling very bad about taking her somewhere she was not ready for. 

 

I had a Pol Tarres like moment when I was turning around on a trail and misjudged how much room there was.  I ended up with the front wheel pointed slightly downhill and didn't have the strength to back up.  There was a very gnarly 45 degree downhill that my front wheel was sliding into and when I turned into the hill to try and get back onto my trail, the forks were compressing instead of the wheel rolling.  Left with no good options, I had to go down the hill, not an easy task on this bike.  There were diagonal ledges with 1+ foot drops and lots of loose dirt and rocks.  Luckily it was only a couple of hundred feet long and I got down without dropping the bike.  If I had been on a 250lb dirt bike it would have been fun but I really thought there was a 50/50 chance the bike would be tumbling down the hill and I still needed to ride it home! 

 

After this, we took a lunch break and l realized that I needed to figure out how to make the day end on a fun note for my daughter.  There was one of the "easier" trails nearby and I told her we would try that one. Right next to it was a well maintained gravel rode that I led her down instead.   We rode out and back on that for about 45 minutes and it made a fun ending for the day. 

 

The photo is of us cleaning the bikes back at my house.  There really were not any good times to stop and take a picture while we riding. 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Hollybrook

[RoyFrance]

First rain for 8 weeks here on Swiss/French border. Made the tracks bit more interesting.

 

Rode a friends world raid for the first time today. The suspension is a real upgrade. Bike is a bit wider, but feels about the same, nice touches like led lights and steering damper.

[Motojo459]

A little break in ride on the new T7 in the North Cascades.

[TheoremX]

On 8/8/2022 at 1:57 PM, Idarex said:

A little 3 day ride weekend before last.  Crossed Craters of the Moon National Monument.  Crossed Dollarhide Pass to Smoky Bar.  Followed the South Fork to Featherville.  Then reversed it to get home.

 

 

That's a beautiful area, just passed through there on my way up to Montana to get my T7.  Did the ride have a fair bit of dirt vs pavement?

[SCARd4Life]

Greetings from Northeast Washington State!  Took a Sunday morning ride up to Salmo Lookout. 

 

 

The forest service made repairs to the Sullivan Creek Road, removing most of the forest whoops that I had previously used to test my suspension setup.  They must have had some free time in between fighting fires, hence the smoky backgrounds in these photos.

 

 

 

[yambam]

Raw photos from my wee trip in the hills at the weekend. 

[Idarex]

On 8/19/2022 at 8:51 PM, TheoremX said:

That's a beautiful area, just passed through there on my way up to Montana to get my T7.  Did the ride have a fair bit of dirt vs pavement?

Maybe about 15% pavement the entire ride.  -EP

[katana]

[Toppie]

I had a very enjoyable ride out yesterday.  +-  seven hours and covered about 350 kms.

On a whim I decided to fire up the 'LocaToWeb' track that I recorded a week or two back and add yesterdays trip to it.

I thought it'd be interesting to keep my ride outs on one recording for a few weeks/months to see my progressions across the island.

This is yesterdays bit....

 

...added onto my two day trip a couple of weeks ago...

 

I much prefer to have a destination rather than just head out without a bit of a plan so...on this day I decided to look up a couple of castles.

I headed north of the border into Co.Tyrone to give Harry Avery's pozzie a bit of a looking at.
Thought to have been built around 1320 by a local chieftain of the O’Neill clan, but named after Harry Avery (Henry Aimbreidh) O’Neill, a local chief who died in 1392, this structure is considered unusual in that Irish chieftains of the time rarely built stone castles.

 

I didn't spend too much time here as the weather suddenly threatened to turn out not quite the coast to coast sunshine I'd been promised.

Also, I had my bike parked on a very narrow lane and encroaching a bit into some residents driveway.

I headed westwards from here and bimbled along the shores of Lower Lough Erne.

This is the little crossing to Boa Island...

 

I rode into some light, intermittent rain showers towards the west coast and aimed for Mullaghmore Peninsular.

There's a much more modern castle there in very picturesque surroundings.

 

You can't get ever-so close to Classiebawn Castle.

It's not open to the public.
How the land became English owned is well documented and here's not the place to discuss it in detail.

Suffice to say, the Classiebawn Castle wouldn't be here today if it weren't for a few very dubious political manoeuvrings  by the English Parliament back in the mid 1600's in some very Putin-esque moves.

Here's a short history for anyone half interested.

 

http://www.carrowkeel.com/sites/sligo/classiebawn.html

 

The Mulaghmore penisular's a nice place to visit and even though you cant get up-close-and-personal to the quite impressive building, there's some nice views of it.

 

There's monument here that I seem to remember being a Challenge Point.

 

The little house in the background was once even more humble.

It served as one of the gatehouse's that serve the castle.

A man called 'Freddy' once live there and it's why this monument's here now.

 

How pitiful that a person could live so poorly and in sight and sound of others who lived in such opulence and in positions of great privilege.

 

If you get closer to the cottage and move to the left, you see this...

 

When this castle was completed, a nearby village community, whose presence was apparently offensive to the castles owners, were evicted from their homes and those homes demolished.

 

 

 

Shameful.

It's still an impressive building though.

It's most famous in 20th Century times as the summer residence of Lord Louis Mountbatten who was assassinated  whilst fishing the waters off-shore of Mullaghmore...

The wee harbour he sailed from is also quite picturesque. 

 

Mullaghmore's has one of those lovely west coast sandy beaches that are never very busy.

A nice place to visit.

And a nice motorcycling day out.

 

 

[Tenerider]

Suspension settings test ride: