Race Week

It's the North West 200 road races this week and the place is chaos.  The event gets bigger every year it seems - about 100,000 people descend on our little townland and about half of those are riding bikes, or so it seems.  I've posted about it before (here and here among other times) but in case you're new to it all you can see some onboard footage by clicking here where you see the man known as Michael Dunlop ride around at a leisurely pace for your amusement.  Just after he hits 195mph is a road to the right and about 100 yards up there is where I live.  To get your bearings, the event starts on the road between Portstewart and Portrush, they start off heading into Portstewart then up towards Coleraine before swinging back down to Portrush and around again.  It's not known as the Triangle Area for nothing, y'know.

Mr Dunlop is, of course, living history, since his family have produced some of the best road racers in the world.  Actually, that's not correct - not just some of the best, but the best.  Their father was Robert Dunlop and their uncle, Robert's brother, the legendary Joey Dunlop with a record 26 wins at the Isle of Man TT.  But when things go wrong road racing doesn't take many prisoners.  Michael is, you could say, the last of the Dunlop dynasty since his brother William, father Robert and uncle Joey have all been killed doing what they loved to do - racing bikes.  Such was their passion for the sport that both William and Michael continued to race just days after their father died at the NW200 back in 2008.  In fact, Michael went on to win his first ever race at the event that year - you can read about it and what his mother had to say about it here.

Anyway, we all hope that this year's event will pass off without incident.  I have to admit I find it hard to watch it these days - perhaps I'm too aware of the risk of injury or worse not just to riders but to spectators as well.  These days the spectators are pushed well back from the road - back when I was a lad I was able to poke my head (and OM-1) through a gap in the hedge and feel the wind on my face as they whizzed past.  Not so any more, which is probably a good thing.

So...after all that adrenaline rush it's time to return to the peace and tranquility of Ballintoy Harbour:

Ballintoy, one May evening in 2019.  Cropped from the 'Blad on HP5+ and printed on Adox MCC paper.