Dromara CC Trailquest League Round 3

03.12.2008

This morning started very cold with widespread frost and snow in counties Antrim and Derry. However, the sky was clear and the sun was shining when the 'sign on' opened at Dundonald Old Mill. Twenty three teams had gathered from across Northern Ireland to take part in round 3 of Dromara Cycling Club's Trail Quest League organised to raise money for The Northern Ireland Children’s Home, Shimna Valley in Newcastle. Numbers were down from last week. Perhaps given how savage last week's weather was it was no surprise that a few teams decided to stay in bed this morning. Those that did stay at home missed a cracking day's cycling around the hills surrounding Newtownards. With frost still on the ground the teams of 1 to 3 riders set off at one minute intervals starting from 10:30 in the morning. The riders were given a map of the local area with circles indicating the location of a marker or reference point. Teams had 3½ hours to find as many of the markers as they could before returning to base. The local area was defined within the dual carriageways from Belfast to Bangor, Bangor to Newtownards and Newtowards to Belfast with some points placed around Scrabo Hill and along the Strangford coast.

Once again there were cyclists from nearly all the local cycling clubs including Banbridge, Newry wheelers, Apollo, Lanterne Rouge, Phoenix, Ards and Dromara. It was, however, no surprise when cyclists from the local area, Ards Cycling Club, dominated the event achieving the top two highest scores. The top team (Who the fox is that?) were last year's winners and consist of a team of three strong riders including Paul McMinn, John Ruddell & David McCann. In second place was fellow club mate Alastair Martin (Ards CC), doing a solo effort, who finished just 10 points behind. Quite a bit behind Alastair was another lone rider, Ivan Millar (Lagan Valley Orienteers), who was 90 points behind today's winning team.

Today's event had been set out by Martin Grimley from Dromara CC who was brought up in the local area. As well as organising the sign on on the day, Martin provided the back up as well as event photographer. Martin had only one incident to attend to when a member from team CCAR had an unfixable mechanical problem with his rear wheel. The rider + broken bike were returned to the car park at the old mill. Once all riders returned to base they were able to use the café where there was plenty of hot soup and wheaten bread laid on for all the hungry riders. This was the first time that Dromara CC have used this location to host one of the rounds of their Trail Quest and from the feedback from the riders the club would be keen to use this venue again.

Round four of the Trail Quest League will be held on Saturday 27th December 2008 in Seaforde, County Down. The headquarters will be at Brennan's Service Station. See website for more details.