Good morning everyone and welcome to the 2023 Ride4Life!
As you will probably have seen from the live tracker, the team are already well on their way into this 130 mile epic journey, and if they are on schedule they should be arriving at the second checkpoint any time now!
But let’s take a look back at how far they have come so far!
The Start Line
The team started this year’s journey at Arachas’ Galway Office, right in the heart of the city itself. Arachas, part of the Ardonagh Group having joined in 2020, offer personal Car, Home, Van and Young Driver insurance as well as a host of specialised business insurance such as Contractors and Professional Indemnity.
Huge thanks to them for hosting the start of the ride this year, and to Cathal Lowe and Ryan Coles for signing up and joining the ride itself!
Galway (The City not the County)
So… what information can I steal from Wikipedia give you about Galway itself?
Galway has a population of around 80,000, although that’s likely to have increased significantly since the last census, and around 80% of Galwegians (yes, that is the correct term, I didn’t expect it either) are Irish.
Built on the site of an earlier settlement (Dún Gaillimhe) Dún Bhun na Gaillimhe (‘Fort at the Mouth of the Gaillimh’) was completed in 1124, by the King of Connacht and High King of Ireland Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair. The castle served as a naval base from which his fleet operated and a new settlement eventually grew around it.
The merchants of the town, who would come to be known as ‘The Tribes of Galway’ took control of the walled City from the Normans in 1484, who had invaded a couple of decades previous.
As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a LOT of history, but I think I know my audience and I’m sure you’d rather hear about when they got their first Sainsburys Local in 2021, or how they filmed part of Indiana Jones there or something (those are just examples by the way, and not actual facts about Galway.)
Galway has given the world quite a number of notable people, including Jockey Graham Lee and actress Pauline McLynn (best known as Mrs. Doyle in Father Ted) but I think my favourite ‘notable’ Galwegian on Wikipedia has to be Pat Gibson, who was the 4th contestant to win £1M on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire back in 2004.
I’ll be heading out into Galway later today, so I may well cover it in more detail in a later blog post!
On to Casla
From the Archeus office the team rode out of the City and into the stunning Irish countryside, taking costal roads to their first stop; The Courthouse Cafe in Costelloe (or Casla.)
Other than being the location of the first stop, there isn’t that much to cover about Costelloe. It features in a novel by Olivia Manning, and is the home of one of Ireland’s biggest radio stations.
The Running Total
The team have just departed from the second checkpoint so I’ll leave you with a quick totaliser update before moving on to the next set of locations!
We’re currently standing at…£10,577 so we’ve smashed through the current target now! In fact, if I’m not mistaken we’ve already achieved the second highest total in R4L history!
Outstanding work!