Rare Adventures

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Petrolhead tour: Wild Atlantic Way adventure in Ireland, Part 5

From Blarney Castle to Dublin

Day 5 and the final day of driving was another big one, all the way to Dublin and another 250 miles. At this point the novelty of the long drives was beginning to wear off, Wooksie had been doing very well in the passenger seat but her back was starting to complain so our mindset would be best categorised as lets get this done with the minimal hassle.

The first section of the drive was the countryside to Blarney Castle, which was our main event of the day, after that it was head for Dublin and every man, woman and child for himself.

Blarney Castle is a major tourist attraction and was full of coaches of Americans from Dublin and other tours who had come to kiss the Blarney Stone. The convoy arrived mostly together so we had a chance to line the cars up and a photo opportunity, as normal I missed the memo and was parked around the corner, but it made for a good video.

To be honest, there isn’t much to Blarney Castle, an interesting bit of history and the legend of being blessed by fairies if you kissed the Blarney Stone was one of the more ridiculous fables I’ve come across in my time, but we still queued for nearly an hour, to kiss the almost completely inaccessible Blarney Stone, which requires you to hang upside down with a bloke holding your ankle, quite a good way to get Covid as well I would imagine with the dozens of people before you doing the same thing.

After a pleasant hour wandering the grounds we bumped into Yaris GR Simon and had a much more interesting hour listening to his world when he was a Formula 1 Team Principal and eating ice cream.

We then spent the next few hours on back roads and motorways heading to Dublin and we ended up at the spectacular 5* St Helens hotel, great choice OTR guys. Which was fabulous, but where the staff were not too bright,

For some reason the entire hotel was designed to have nowhere to sit in the sun and enjoy our last night beers. So the Plymouth (me and Blowey) and the Pompey boys had to reorganise the furniture on the lawn so we could sit in the sun, and that worked very well.

We had our last night dinner together, which was fabulous chatting with our new friends despite the hotel’s best efforts to sabotage the event with slow service. However, the fun was not completely over, as the ferry back to the UK did not leave till 2pm.

There was time for one last high speed drive across the amazing Sally Pass, a mountain range that seemed to start almost within the city limits of Dublin. Wooksie wisely opted out with some of the other wives and went on a walking tour of Dublin, so the boys were left to their toys.

This was one of the most fun drives of the trip as the convoy stayed close together, Kevin out front was being an excellent pace man and alterted us to oncoming danger, whilst the rest of us had a high speed tour of the mountains – a great way to end.

We all headed back to the ferry for the 4 hour crossing and the long trip home to all corners of the British Isles, literally, from Scotland down to Plymouth and even over to Kent.

Though in my case it wasn’t quite so straight forward, I went back via the hotel to settle the bill, and my satnav gave me a different and much slower route to the ferry port, and as I sat in mile upon mile of queues I have to admit to having a bit of squeaky bum time as the clock ticked on, but I got there on time, to find a flustered Wooksie at the gate waiting for me, I didn’t bother mentioning that I’d gone up the wrong side of the motorway and was faced by a mass ot traffic that I just managed to duck away from down the slip road, but that is a story for another time. So, a wonderful week with the OTR boys, some of my besties and a whole bunch of great new people that sincerely hope I will get to meet again on a future adventures or chance meeting somewhere I very much hope.

12/08/2026
Petrolhead tour: Wild Atlantic Way adventure in Ireland, Part 3

Rally driving, road rage, a singing chef and a dip in the fountain

This was the day when the fun and laughs did not stop from the moment to set off to collapsing into bed at 2am.

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At this point we had reached the halfway point of our tour, and we were up and ready, I was determined to follow the group this time and see what it was like in the convoy. We had a wonderful route over moors planned by the OTR guys.

So, I tucked into the convoy determined to enjoy it. For the first hour I followed one of the little Yaris GR rally cars through the mountains, The owner, Simon, had to do all the work watching for dangers ahead as we headed across the cliffs, I momentarily looked around and enjoyed the scenery and when I looked back, he was gone, you can’t relax for a second with these guys.

We came along a beautiful coast road and the OTR guys found a little coffee van in the middle of nowhere on top of the cliffs. To our surprise, in this wind torn wilderness, there was a museum to the worlds oldest farming settlement from some 5000bc, I did find this at little bit of an incredible claim, but as I couldn’t prove it wrong, I guess we have to accept it, but by far the most interesting thing about the Failte museum was the toilets, that we needed after our coffee!

As we headed through the next town the group got split up and I found myself out in front setting the pace, whilst and knowing the cars behind me would overtake if I didn’t put my foot down, I really pushed myself as we flew across the moorland roads, it was absolutely exhilarating pushing the Porsche in a way that I had never done before. Having Sandy and Mr Blowey behind me itching to overtake if I gave them a chance, I kept me foot to the floor.

Arms locked on the steering wheel like Colin McRae the rally driver, the manual gearbox being pushed to the limit, the roar of the engine to keep revs in the middle range, eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead I had absolutely no idea what the scenery was like because I was firmly fixed on the road ahead and determined to make up distance in the bends so that the supercharged Jag of Sandy wouldn’t overtake me on the straight. As Wooksie said, it was like being in a rally car, at the end of it we pulled into the little coastal town of Mallaranny to give us chance to calm down.

My friend Mr Blowey pulled in behind me and opened with the words “Thank god you took that cork out of your ass mate”, which I took to mean well done. Then things really kicked off, there wasn’t much space in the road, Mr Blowey was stood beside his car, but another car driven by a pensioner insisted on pushing through as he stood there.

At this point there was a loud howling noise coming from Mr Blowey, basically the car had driven over his foot, and he was not happy. The car stopped and was pursued by Mr Blowey hurling abuse. It bought back memories of our younger days where such things had turned into quite major incidents as punishment for stupidity was administered, but now in his older and calmer years, he noticed the driver was about 80 so limped back to the car after handing out some obscenities as punishment.

This wasn’t the end of it though, because he had to put the roof up on his convertible. Daz’s mate Pompey Ian was stood close by and was given instructions on what he had to do to help. To be fair, after a long drive, Ian had other things on his mind and didn’t quite follow the instructions about putting all his weight on the boot lid. Ian, unfortunately, took his weight off the boot lid too soon and before we knew it, the boot lid was jammed with all sorts of bits poking out in the wrong places.

This was now all getting too much for Mr Blowey and he cracked, lots of rude words and he pretty much blamed Ian for wrecking his holiday, wrecking his car, and the Iranian war. To be honest I could see he was holding back his violent tendencies as best he could, bearing in mind his foot was throbbing like a good un as well.

Luckily Aston Martin Stuart turned up, with a calm disposition and his excellent toolkit, and before we knew it the damage had been recovered, so we all sat down for a nice lunch on the seafront in the sun prepared for the next escapade.

After the excitement I was only too glad to settle into a drive along the coast, enjoy the scenery as we followed the Sky Road along the cliffs and into our hotel for the night, a genuine castle called Abbeyglen Castle with the promise of a great night out, but not before another trauma for Mr Blowey.

After we had all checked in, Mr Blowey had to pop up to our room to collect his stuff. Fortunately for us we had been given the best room, not only did we have fabulous view of the coast, but we also had a patio door out on to a turret that acted as a balcony.

Mr Blowey looked at our room, stomped around the balcony in silence, checked the bathroom, let out a fearsome growl and stormed out of the room. It transpired he had a room with a lovely view in the rear of 2 trees, and he managed his frustration by stamping down the corridor back to his room, refusing to speak to me again. This was the 3^rd consecutive night that we had a better room, and he was struggling with the unfairness, his throbbing foot and the burgeoning repair bill for his car.

Saturday night dinner was a grand affair and even Mr Blowey cheered up. The owner of the castle gave a wonderful speech about the history of the hotel, and then we moved on to dinner where he became the centre piece of entertainment, even sharing his Irish version of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Not only that, but we also had the services of the Singing Chef, who sang Irish ditties between courses, it was a truly fun experience and we had a wonderful time. The food and service also fantastic, life couldn’t be better.

But it didn’t stop there, England were playing Norway in the World Cup, so we all headed to the bar to watch the game. Strangely, the Scots were having a great time when England were 1 0 down, so much so that Sandy’s daughter, the vivacious Louise who had already been lots of fun up to now, stepped up a gear and bought a round of Baby Gunnesses, which inspired others to do the same and before we knew it everyone was singing and laughing.

Not so much when England scored their second goal, but that didn’t stop the banter with more Scots in the shape of father and son team Cam and Fraser getting in on the act as well, booing every England move and cheering Norway wildly, so much so that a couple of genuine Norwegians couldn’t stand the noise and went back to their rooms. The Scots even decided to wear their own football shirts as an declaration of war.

Even better, Wookie’s (who had also gone to bed by now) won the sweepstake with the time of England’s second goal, so we won a pot of about £40. The next morning, we realised that the money had disappeared overnight, did the barman take it, but we then came up with the most likely explanation,

I’d used it to buy a round. This round, amongst many others, pushed Pompey Ian over the top and he collapsed with bout of Guiness poisoning.

Things deteriorated further at the end, for some reason I’d promised to jump in the fountain if England won, so I did. Cam and Fraser were too drunk to get a photo, and I started to suffer from exposure waiting for this photo to be taken. I headed back to our posh bedroom and couldn’t sleep, because every time I rolled over, I started giggling again, which didn’t please Claire very much.

The next day we were all rather subdued at breakfast, armed with sore heads we headed off on the longest day of the tour, 280 miles to Cork, with the only aspiration being to get to the next hotel without any more incidents.

07/08/2026
Petrolhead tour: Wild Atlantic Way adventure in Ireland, Part 2

From Bushmills to Donegal

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Refreshed and exciting from the previous day’s events we were up early for a day which started with bright sunshine and a lovely breakfast. So, we were up and ready to go for the next stage of our journey to from Donegal via Londonderry.

Getting out of the small car park was no straightforward task, and as he had managed to find a spot that meant we needed a 3 point turn and by the time the opportunity arrived the procession of cars had already gone – last again and it the day has only just started.

We did catch the group up when they stopped for petrol, and we flew straight past them as we didn’t need fuel – aha we are out in front at last. We didn’t see them again for an hour, which was when we stopped for coffee and they all went flying past us again, the routine of the day was taking shape.

The drive towards Londonderry was pretty busy and not much fun, and it was only when we came out the other side, entered Eire and started to enjoy the empty roads over the mountains and along the coast that things really improved.

We joined the Wild Atlantic Coast that was to be our route for the next 5 days. Luckily, we didn’t follow all the signs or we would have been there for a month as the route follows every coast road, but the OTR guys had done a good job of planning.

A highlight of the first day was travelling a national park that is dedicated to being Bog , so that was a bit of surprise as we travelled through the remote moors. We had our first experiences of the wide open spaces as we travelled over the mountains between Carrickart and Dungloe and the boy racer in our heads in us took over as the cars were put through their paces, driving like a joy rider was a good description.

The OTR guys had another cool safety strategy, one of the cars acts as a pace car and warns the other cars of any oncoming traffic (there wasn’t much) or other things to be aware of. In fact I started to get a feel for the ability of our car that you would never discover on normal driving, the Porsche Cayman is reputed to be the best balanced sports car ever made, and we learned we could handle pretty much any bend at speed, we just lost out when it came to straight line speed. Somehow we managed to pass them all again somehow lose the convoy.

After long day of scenery that took in the stunning cliffs at Sliabh Liag, where once again we bumped into the main body of the group as they hiked up to the cliffs as we were wandering back – but the ice creams were worth it and the cloud formations rolling over the cliffs were totally unique.

The route back into Donegal took is through a place called Kellybegs which had a fleet of monster deep sea trawlers that were clearly geared for long trips out into the Atlantic, they were quite a site moored up around the quays and the smell of fish was everywhere.

Before our arrival at the hotel in Donegal, on the way down the main road we noticed an odd thing that was quite disturbing, there seemed to be a national cull of cuddly toys. Teddy bears were hanging from fences, nailed to telegraph poles and hanging from lamp posts. Whatever the cuddly toys had down wrong the kids were clearly after revenge. Further research identified that this was a tradition linked to a motorbike fund raising charity convoy of bikers, which I have to say did not make some of the scenes any less disturbing.

Mr Blowey arrived and his car developed a new fault, the roof on the convertible wouldn’t go down, which added to a long list of issue. The Mercedes roof is a horribly complicated affair and my technical skills with a hammer were not much use.

Pulling and pushing a range of fuses did little to help the situation. however, help was at hand when Stuart, the Aston Martin owner, appeared with an incredible tool kit. He explained that if you want to own an Aston Martin you needed a lot of tools, which promptly knocked the Aston Martin off my bucket list. After much time in the car park a solution was found, sit on the boot lid to force the electrical connection, and happily it worked and the roof went up, and even down again the next day.

To make matters worse, when Mr Blowey checked in, he had a view of the car park again whilst mine was out over the main entrance, he wasn’t happy but he had had enough stress for one day and we decided beer was the best antidote.

Meanwhile, the ladies decided they had had enough of male company during the day and had an evening to themselves drinking as much Prosecco as they could get their hands on, so us chaps downed red wine, learned a lot more about the intricacies of beef farming near Loch Lomond from Sandy, and hit the pillows.

04/08/2026
Petrolhead tour: Wild Atlantic Way adventure in Ireland, Part 1

From Bristol to the Giants Causeway

This was a very different type of adventure for us, but it was an adventure, nonetheless.

When my mate from Plymouth called and said he and Pompey Daz had signed up to a sports car tour of Ireland I wasn’t initially overwhelmed with enthusiasm. I did a round Ireland tour in my VW Camper back in 2010 as part of the Eireball Run, and I was still traumatised by the everchanging weather, slow progress and looking after 2 young kids on my own.

However, the idea took hold and the thought of spending a week with my friends, and the opportunity to meet new and interesting people with a common love of sports cars began to appeal. My wife, Wooksie, took a bit of convincing, but eventually agreed to spend a week in the passenger seat of our Porsche, as the tour did look a lot of fun.

The trip was organised by OTR Car Tours. The 2 tour managers were great guys (Richard and Kevin) as petrolheads themselves, are absolutely living their best lives taking people on car tours, driving fast cars and earning a living, almost as much fun as being an Chief Adventure Officer. Each day involved clocking up 200 plus miles over 6 or 7 hours, so it isn’t for people who get car sick.

My mate Mr Blowey is one of my lifelong Plymouth friends, and a person that has the potential to cause even more chaos than me when ignited, so the thought of spending a week in his company promised fun but potentially carnage. Though it has to be said he is moderating with age, like a fine wine or stagnant water!

So, we had to meet our fellow adventurers in Holyhead for the start of the trip. I decided that this was a great opportunity to see the Welsh mountains, so from Bristol we took a direct route up the Cambrian Way to take in Snowdonia on the way.

Now the Cambrian Way is basically a holiday on its own, with numerous mountain passes on the way, andwith a detour, you can travel through the Snowdonia national park with stunning view of Snowdon itself, before crossing the Menai Bridge and into Anglesey.

I have done this route up to Coed y Brenin on various mountain bike trips but had never been blessed with blue skies and glorious weather, which was promised for our trip.

Things nearly got off to a good start.

But the days leading up to Mr Blowey leaving Plymouth had not been kind to his superfast Mercedes SL55 AMG sport car. When it was new it was the fastest convertible produced, but it was no longer new and had been stuck in the garage for a couple of years. A few issues had arisen, some of which had been repaired and others hadn’t.

Two notable ones affected the trip, firstly the stereo stopped working the day before they departed, and before setting off there was a complex array of Bluetooth speakers and data feeds to be connected as part of each departure, which took ages and involved a fair bit of cussing.

Secondly, he had no handbrake either. Mrs Blowey observed the car seemed to roll when they got out, he insisted it was her imagination and everything was fine.

So, we headed off towards Anglesey and discovered that north of Newport, Wales is almost devoid of toilets and places to stop for coffee, it is one big vast countryside with nothing in it but 20mph speed cameras and closed cafes. I suspect the bikers and drivers that used to pour into Wales for the great roads stopped when the ridiculous speed limits were introduced.

The route took us up through Abergavenny, towards Brecon ,then on to Builth Wells where we finally found a loo and a cup of coffee, then on to a whole load out unpronounceable places with one particularly spectacular mountain pass, Abergwesyn Pass, which gave, tight hairpins, and incredible views before heading towards Llanberris and the views of Snowdon,

After 6 hours of amazing scenery, purchasing numerous fridge magnets for the Blowey family at Llanberris, we found the only traffic jam in Wales, 2 miles from our hotel.

Time to meet our fellow travellers, and what a lovely bunch they turned out to be, and what a scary bunch of cars they owned, I put my little Porsche Cayman round the back out of the way.

A few beers to get to know people before dinner and an early night. 6am we were up and ready as we had to get the 7.30am ferry. A bit of a dash from the hotel and suddenly the ferry had a very long queue of expensive cars and needless to say we were the last already.

My morale improved with the girl in the ticket booth leaned out the window and said she thought out car was the nicest, I’m pretty sure that was because it is red rather than a technical appraisal of its capabilities. The ferry then promptly departed at 7.10am, 20 minutes ahead of the 7.30am departure time for some reason, they are called Irish Ferries for a reason.

After a 4 hour ferry trip we hit the roads of Ireland, and within seconds I had lost everyone as the other cars demonstrated their exhaust tones and acceleration to each other, whilst we battled with the satnav and made steady progress.

The OTR guys are really good, they have Kevin out in front setting the pace and showing the route and Richard follows up the rear, so we were glad to see him in our rear mirror, we weren’t too far behind

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Day 2 (Day 1 is arriving in Holyhead) involved a long drive from Dublin to the north, once we were off the motorway we followed the coast road with great views across to Scotland on a beautiful summer’s day. We picked up the convoy again and the procession of burbling sports cars made its way along the coast with passers by taking snaps and waving, with the average speed of the convoy increased as soon as the road cleared .

One of the problems with the Northern Ireland stage was it is in the UK, and as a chap with a few too many speeding points, I didn’t want to have any interactions with the law after 3 stressful years on too many points, so I tucked myself in behind one of the Yaris GRs and enjoyed someone else taking the strain of speed cameras and got used the excellent handling of the Porsche on the coastal road.

We finally made it to the big event, the Giants Causeway with the strange rock fhexagonal rocok formation, this is the second time I’ve been there and the second time I’ve been underwhelmed but it was a good excuse to stretch our legs. I’ve visited many famous natural sites around the world, but none as disappointing as Giants Causeway, the unique hexagonal stones appear to be huge in the photos, but can be measured in inches rather than feet, anyway, never need to go there again.

OTR had organised a great hotel (Bayview) on the waterfront near Bushmills and we all checked in. We had a lovely see view, whilst the Bloweys were given a room overlooking the car park, so we put them in charge of vehicle security, which they weren’t that chuffed about.

So, we had beer on the seafront, a fabulous dinner (which we were late for and had to sit on our own as punishment) and off to bed in preparation for another long day tomorrow when we picked up the “Wild Atlantic Coast” road along the west coast of Ireland.

Here are the best of the cars on the trip

28/07/2026
Ha Gaing Loop adventures – Day 1 to Dong Van

Before we could do the Ha Gaing Loop we had to get out of SaPa, and that proved more challenging than we expected. An hour to go 1.5km in a cab seemed ample but nope, the place was still gridlocked at 8.45am with people leaving the celebrations, so the trip to the bus station ended with us abandoning the cab and running down the middle of the road with bags on our bags in scene straight out of “Race Round the World”.

We arrived at the bus station bang on time, only to find multitudes of buses leaving in all directions except Ha Gaing, my head was swivelling in all directions until I accepted the situation was useless, found our travel agent who said our bus was late and not to panic.

So, at 1030, and after much anxiety, we boarded our sleeper bus to Ha Gaing. This was our first sleeper bus and it was quite an experience; they are beautiful things. I had a flat bed, that sort of propped up, a little cabin with a privacy curtain, lots of switches to fiddle with that changed the lighting atmosphere.

Eventually the bus pulled out, I laid down, and that was that for the next 6 hours, I couldn’t read as I was on my back and the bus rolled around, so I just listened to podcasts and stared out the window and eventually we were dropped off in Ha Gaing, and I certainly wasn’t ready for bed !

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Ha Gaing is a nice, clean and friendly town and we stayed at the De La Mont hotel that was really excellent. I went out for a walk and found myself having a beer in a little street café, at which point the clouds opened and once again I was drenched.

Ha Gaing itself seems to have absolutely nothing to do, in the centre, for food there is only very basic street kitchens and getting something to eat proved very difficult, so not a place to hang around. For such a famous location, tourism seems to have passed the main town by, I guess the bikers must stay out of town in hostels or something.

Next day, we were picked up for the Ha Gaing loop tour by our guide Mr Happy, and things took a definite turn for the better. We had a nice SUV to travel in and we had a guide who spoke excellent English and was clearly going to be a bundle of fun, so we settled down to 3 days of good company.

The Ha Gaing Loop can be many different routes, using the road system that runs through the mountains of Northern Vietnam and along the border with China, The actual route you take will depend on your tour guide and mode of transport, and as we set out from Ha Gaing it was raining again and I was feeling very smug that I had chosen the SUV option as we watched the bikers in their waterproofs huddling from the rain.

Mr Happy was a great guy and taking us to all the interesting places. The scenery is quite stunning, the Limestone Karst landscape in the Dong Van Geopark is covered in little peaks that jut out of valleys and mountains full of caves.

Unfortunately, the views on the first day we spoiled by the low cloud and fog, but that is life. We went to see the Booby Mountains, basically two hills side by side that look like a pair of tits and everyone does this photo!

This area of Vietnam literally was bandit country, ruled by warlords over the centuries and they seemed to take a lot of delight in beating of the Chinese and more latterly the imperial French. They united under one leader in the 20^th century and is one of their legendary figures, so we visited his palace, which wasn’t very exciting but had to be done.

The landscape was constantly changing and after one long climb through the mist was arrived at the top of a mountain pass, that looked every bit like I would imagine the moon, A rocky landscape with minimal soil anywhere, but there was a cafe, where the locals were blasting out their drum ‘n bass tracks to keep the travelers happy, strange but true.

We also started to notice that wherever we went on the mountains, the locals had used every crevice to grow plants, in particular, corn. According to Mr Happy this was so the could make plenty of Happy Water, their local brew.

Eventually we arrived in the down of Dong Van, our tour operator had organised a decent hotel which was nice. After a quick scrub up we went out for dinner with Mr Happy. We ended up in a big dining warehouse with lots of other groups who were travelling by bike, it was at this point things took an unexpected turn of events when we were introduced to the local custom of toasting and drinking Happy Water.

Happy Water appeared with the drink made from corn, (in other parts of Vietnam it can be made from rice) and upon tasting it you know immediately that this is not going to end well. Mr Happy was a very enthusiastic distributor of Happy Water and very keen on the toasting game that each group was doing, even though there were only 3 of us, we got roped into the game too.

At this point, Mr Happy developed an even happier personality, very akin to Mr Chow from the Hangover films. Before we knew it, we were standing on tables and doing lots of toasting. One of the groups had an American sport teacher who was very used to this chanting idea and adopted Wooksie and taught her how to lead entire room in chorus.

When dinner was over, Mr Happy took us on a tour of a surprisingly lively little down that had been taken over my groups of people on bike trips. We ended up in the main square in some sort of community dancing game that made as much sense as the toasting game, but it was a lot of fun.

Mr Happy was on a roll now, we were oblivious to the time and next stop was a karaoke bar, where everyone from dinner had gathered. The Vietnamese bike riders were enthusiastically tucking away the Happy Water and every other Karaoke song was in Vietnamese and they joined in with gusto, then we would have a Western song, where we all joined in with gusto and the night rolled on into the early hours.

Mr Happy assured us that nobody gets a hangover from Happy Water, which I found hard to believe, so we drank beer as he sourced more Happy Water and headed off to join his local pals. Eventually we headed back to the hotel and agreed a 7am start wasn’t necessary and we would see him at 9.30am, which was definitely a good plan.

To be honest, Happy Water did leave us with clear heads in the morning, the only problem was we hadn’t gone to bed till the early hours.

Next morning, the sun was out, the weather warmed up, we connected our phone to the Bluetooth in the car and we headed off on day 2 of the Ha Gaing Loop.

Here is the full story of our big night out

04/07/2026