Featured Photo: Members of the Harley Family in Trentagh who turned out to support can run in memory of Joe Harley On Bank Holiday Monday proceeds of which went to the Donegal Hospice Photo Brian McDaid.
We free-wheeled down past the Clareman’s all the way from the top of Glencar on summer evenings and the windows winded down the breeze was the air condition and all you could hear was the sound of the tyres rolling along the roads.
The road took a left at the crossroads and we went flying down to a narrow bridge you could see the road ahead so Daddy would lean over as if he was driving a motorbike and we would all do the same as the road made its way down past windswept trees that all lay over on their expose site when the road came to the bottom of that wee hill there was two more bad bends which we went flying around before the old Anglia lost its speed daddy would switch in the ignition.
And the oil light and the charging light would light up, dropping the car into second he would let out the clutch and the wee engine would come to life. He would always give the horn two blows going through Bradley’s farm yard. Two cows came out of that byre many years ago. I nearly hit them with the ESB van. He would recall He always told us about them and when he was driving out that road. And when we went back the road which was mostly uphill he would tell us about the Circuit of Ireland rallying along this twisty road and how it went straight on at the Clare man’s, he and his younger brother Hughie went out to watch it one Easter weekend. He always mentioned the one driver Paddy Hopkirk and his mini describing how it went flying over the junction on an Easter Weekend in the 60’s as they made their way back to the finish in the North.
Over the Easter weekend, I found myself on the same journey down past the Clareman’s over the crooked bridge and through the trees that still lay over with the wind. I give the horn on my Berlingo van two toots before I went through the barns at Bradleys all looking so well whitewashed out with lime and cement.
Bradley’s old Barns that you still drive through on the road out to Trentagh. Photo Brian McDaid.
I was on my way to Harley’s on Trentagh (as my father always called it) to cover a classic car run in memory of Joe Harley who was sadly taken too young from this life. There that day a took a picture of the extended family as they assembled outside the pub and what once was also a shop. It stirred great memories of the evening of us heading out there for the messages which we got on tick and then my father would call in to square them up when he would get paid at the weekend. He would also enjoy a ‘half and a bottle’ or three as we would enjoy the craig out around Harley’s.
Members of the Harley family and friends out to support the Joe Harley Memorial Car Run. Photo Brian Mc Daid.
The Joe Harley Memorial run over the easter weekend in Trentagh. Photo Brian Mc Daid.
Circuit of Ireland
There were 58 there, I know because I counted them. That included the marshals, a live screening camera crew, a handful of photographers including myself and the rest were spectators. I must say that the Cookstown Motor Club organised a very good event. But when you go to the first junction on the very first stage of a rally with the name the Circuit of Ireland on the Easter weekend, you may feel a bit disappointed.
But here’s the thing when lockdown hit in the month of March in 2020 and we were sitting in our homes with travel restrictions, the annual date for the circuit of Ireland on or around the Easter weekend was a time that I longed for the most was to get away to the Circuit of Ireland even though it was only a shadow of its former self and it did look like it might disappear for good made that longing to head up the north on a Good Friday or a Easter Saturday or catch up with the rally when it was making its way back around Ireland coming up the west before heading back across the border to finish in the north on Easter Monday. I’ll never forget going up as a teenager with my brother Nelius with the late Andy Hegarty to watch the rally in an RS 2000 and in the dark of night somewhere in Co Leitrim waiting with thousands for Ari Vatenan in the Rothmans RS1800 and Jim McCrea in a DTV Vauxhall Chevette HSR to light up the night sky separated by a handful of seconds after racing the whole way around Ireland.
Online Programme
A son of mine sent me a link that enabled me to download the complete rally programme, a first as far as I know for any rally. I love to get a rally programme in print form in years gone by, but I find it more difficult to get so this especially if you are travelling to a rally as few stock them or stock them to late, and as it was in Galway earlier this year or search was in vain in the road up the west on the Friday at the start of the rally and it was only for a friendly sponsor of the event at the ceremonial start in Eyre Square who gave us one of the spare programmes they had, we would be without a map, stage timed or and entry for the event that we travelled down the west of Ireland to watch. So full marks to the organisers of the Cookstown based rally that put the programme up in line, I used it so much over the weekend and even this week I could go though it when I was finishing off this write up.
The downloaded rally programme a great idea by Cookstown Motor Club for visiting spectators to the rally this year.
Early on a Saturday morning I set off from Letterkenny for the first stage of the newly located Circuit of Ireland Lough Fea was the location I was looking for, and thanks to google maps on my phone and the radio on the Berlingo van I was on my way. I might have pressed the go button twice on the app because I was getting two sets of directions on two different routes to the location, but between the two of them they weren’t long getting me to my viewing location. A quick walk around a very scenic lake and I was there just as the double oo’s were running through. You could hear the cars coming for miles down the flat out straight and the engines hitting the Rev limiter and the cars would occasionally take to the air over the pumps and lose their grip on the tar.
All the familiar faces at the top of the leaderboard were there, the Moffett’s Josh and Sam, young Devine, Callum and young Evans from Wales all in a charge right from the start. Followed by all the modified folk who seem to be matching the R5’s for pace on the dry straight.
The very unique rear-wheel drive Ford Orion arriving at the Junction at the Circuit of Ireland Driven By Barry Meeke. Photo Brian Mc Daid.
As the field made its way through the stage you could hear the odd historic rally car making its way to our point in the road. No sequential gear change on them. Beautiful RS 1800’s and twin Cham mk1 filling the morning air with that old high pitch escort note as it pushes through a ZF gearbox. Then there was the iconic Ford Orion that Sydney Meek back in the day with rear wheel drive still in the colours that Stephen Finley ran it in those far off days. A big drift into the junction with Barry Meeke behind the wheel as a few young fellows standing at the stage who had never seen a Ford Orion in their life tried to figure what kind of a car this was. Is it an XR3 with a Sierra boot? One of them called as this iconic car made its way up past us and out over the hill. And then that familiar forward stance of a plain white Subaru Legacy made its way into the junction and locked up its wheels to try and find its way up past us running on the beautiful gold wheels that all Subarus ran on back in the day.
I saw this Subaru back in February on the Galway international rally back in February and admired it and figured because of its English reg it was one of these new historic cars competing in the event along with all these beautifully old classics like Porsche and Minis that come to iconic rally’s in Ireland like these to compete on the event.
Ray Green on the Galway International Rally in February. Photo Brian Mc Daid
Ray Breen On the Circuit of Ireland over easter where his som the Late Craig Breen gave a hand with the service and was also out watching the rally. Photo Brian McDaid.
Looking through my camera card I pulled up the image of that plane white Subaru to have a look at it and on the window I was to find that the driver was Ray Breen the late Craig Breens father. I was later to find out that Craig was up in Cookstown on Easter Saturday helping out servicing and was also out on the stage watching his fathers Roy Breen progress. I thought about Breen out watching his father on the stage only a few days before his own untimely accident and thought on how quick things can change as we went down or watched online at the wee church transmitted to the funeral of one of Ireland’s greatest rally drivers.
Craig Breen was buried on the same date that my father died on the 18th of April.
That was 33 years ago in 1990 which is the same amount of years that Craig was on this earth. I didn’t see Craig at either the Galway or the Circuit of Ireland but I now know he was there helping out as his father competed in a classic Subaru. I never saw Paddy Hopkirk in his mini heading through the Clareman junction but I nearly feel as if I was there because my father told me that story so many times. They are all memories now and like the buds on the wind sweep tree that are slow to show their leaves as the summer arrives but like memories that will always arrive and life will always go on.
Paddy Hopkirk taking part in the Circuit of Ireland in the 1960’s
Happy Motoring Folks
