Harvest Rally returns to Killybegs after a 16 year gap:
The majestic Atlantic Challenge is tied up to the end of the pier, with a cross section of rally cars lined up in front and cones with tape are in place to keep the public and press back a safe distance.
Ever so often you will here some one on a mobile phone saying, Were all here now, where are you?
Just like a soft Donegal evening Donegal time can be on the soft side as well.
The organisers stand back a bit to try and slow down the process, with the hope that they can hold the hungry press core long enough for everyone who was to be there finally arrive.
Credit where credit is due, I have to take my hat off to the amount of local reporters, photographers sports writers and radio stations that made the trip to Killybegs on Tuesday evening for the Harvest Rally press conference.
This might seem hard to believe but I can remember the time press conferences for rallying were none events as far as local media were concerned.
From time to time my good friend Seamus Mc Bride, who worked in the advertising world for the Donegal Democrat and the Donegal News will remind me of the time I convinced him to do an advertising feature for the harvest rally many moons ago.
We headed off one Thursday afternoon with our publication under or arm to see if we could secure a couple of support adds in the area that the event was running.
To make a long story short at five-o-clock that evening we had secured just one add, the smallest possible, a single column support add.
In them days the newspaper was printed in twelve page sections.
Which we called “workings” and over the years my friend would remind me that we wouldn’t need and extra working to cater for the rally feature that I had in my head.
We are only waiting on one now the organisers announce to the waiting press, its “The Milk Man” and then we are ready to go.
The rest of the cars are in place on the pier with their trailers and transporters sitting ready to reload them up again following the photo shoot.
In the background I can hear the bark of a “redtop” or something.
It could be the milkman but I’m not chatting about semi skimmed milk here.
I am talking about the sound of his red top engine, which may have had its head skimmed a couple of times to get the best out of it.
In the distance the Co. Meath registered Toyota Starlet makes its way down past laid out fishing nets on the pier.
Those fanatical enough about rallying like me have locked on to the sound in the distance and its still makes the hairs stand on the back of my neck.
This is full fat, nothing else, The crowd make a break in the tape to let Declan on to the stage that is the pier tonight.
Where he parks up his Starlet which is dwarfed by the Atlantic Challenge in the background.
This is not the stage that Declan is comfortable on and quickly disappears into the crowd trying to avoid eye contact with any one.
Declan Gallagher, like his uncle Joe McHugh from Frosses are happier letting their driving do the talking.
Declan Gallagher or ‘The Milkman” as he is known is just one of the local talented drivers who will be competing on the Harvest Stages rally this year.
It will be interesting to see “The Milkman “and the winner of this years Donegal International Rally Manus Kelly, who hopes to compete in the Killybegs event in a MK2 Escort.
Manus who won his first Donegal Rally outright this year in a WRC Subaru will be back behind the wheel of a Escort for the Harvest.
The 2016 Donegal Harvest Rally will be run under the stewardship of Letterkenny’s Karl Reid and will be named in memory of the Late Martin Howley.
He was the skipper of the Atlantic Challenge which graced the press conference on Tuesday evening.
Headquarters for the event is the Bayview Hotel and will run on Saturday the 8th of October.
The entry which has opened for the event and is already filling up quick,
On the Old Lough Swilly Railway line from Derry to Burtonport there stands a goods shed at the first station out from Letterkenny.
One-Hundred and ten years after it was built and nearly 70 years after the line closed from Letterkenny to Burtonport , the goods shed in Foxhall station still stands proud in the station yard.
Over the years it has been a dance hall, a community centre, and even more recently temporary chapel.
On Sunday last it was the venue to help raise money for the refurbishment of Glenswilly Chapel.
A Honda 50 motorbike run started and finished at the lovely refurbished station house shed on Sunday in memory of a great local man that passed away a year ago.
Paddy McDaid was a well known figure as the local coal man.
Back in the day them big trains that passed through Foxhall bound for the west of Donegal would have burned some coal even on the short distance from Letterkenny to the elevated station at Foxhall.
On Sunday The old train station smelled more like a petrol stations as a clatter of Honda’s arrived into the yard.
The float was stuck in the carburettor of Steven Sheridan’s Honda and ever so often while waiting for the start he would fire her up to burn off some fuel like a big afterburner on a fighter jet.
A minutes silence can say a lot without saying anything at all as the packed hall remembered Paddy McDaid, for his forty six years on this
earth which is far to short for anyone to live the life they plan for.
He was gone far to soon, Paddy would have been embarrassed at how many turned out to remember him on Sunday.
His friends including myself looked a bit like a flock of his sheep in the dipping pen as we
crammed into the converted goods shed.
Actually we looked more like a flock of paddy’s sheep when we got out the gate where I was lucky enough to capture one of the motor biker doing t the exact same as a
released sheep would do and made his Honda 50 jump into the air over an invisible fence.
As anyone knows about Honda 50’s they never were about style, status, or social climbing, and that was backed up on Sunday when real people who were happy in themselves landed with all shapes and all ages of the biggest selling public mode of transport of all times.
The Honda 50 when it came out first was the next step to walking, a way of getting from A to B.
Nothing complicated about it to day it still the same but its also a means of escape from the pigeon holes we force out selves into.
A fisherman and a shepherd remembered:
This week in the motoring world in Donegal two men were remembered in the sport or pastime they loved.
Martin Howley Killybegs who was the skipper of the Atlantic Challenge is remembered in rallying which he loved and supported over the years.
He is honoured by the Donegal Motor Club as they Harvest Rally is renamed in his honour.
Glenswilly’s Paddy McDaid , a local coal man with a love of farming and looking after his flock of sheep was remembered by his friends in the annual Honda 50 run.
Both men were from completely different walks of life but had the exact same connection with the people that the met along the way.
Both were taken from us far to soon but in both walks of life the ones left behind are proud to rekindle their memories in the sport or pastime that they loved.
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