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Somewhere around 9:30 or 10:00 pm we finally made it to Malin Head. Billy and I missed the escorted run through one of the small towns before Malin Head (anybody remember the name?) but we still weren’t the last to arrive.

Sunset near Malin (the town, not Malin Head)

Heading off into the Sunset

Up the Final Hill

Final Goal

I Don’t Want to Know

Yours Truly

Yes, I really DO fit in that little car.

Random Shots of Malin Head

This has to be my favorite shot. If you want a full-size copy let me know.

How’s THAT for a Sunset?

After this it was back to the hotel to stay up until 3:30 or so telling “stories”.

Nope – certainly NOT a breakdown. Nothing of the kind. Definitely NOT the thermostat!

This isn’t Keith either. Definitely not.

Neil wasn’t able to make it this year (something about a first communion and family requirements) so one of the stops was his house. I’m CERTAIN that 80+ honking Minis driving by your house will add to the party atmosphere.

We stopped briefly (and then much longer when the car wouldn’t start) and I grabbed a few photos.

Mini Marcos – Back End

Mini Blackboard

For all you Americans, think of “NAMA” as something like a combination of the SEC, FDIC and FED and TARP program. Sink a bank? NAMA is going to be taking a look at the spiffy cars in your garage.

The x-ed out Minis on the side are from passing Liam’s 850. Oddly, they only ended up with 4 or 5 of these and I personally watched at least one attempted pass that seemed to take a WHOLE lot of effort given what this machine is powered by.

And that’s it for the moment. We spent about 30 minutes getting our car running again (vapor lock) and then headed out.

Departure time is basically the crack of dawn – even this far north. We were supposed to arrive at 5:30 and leave between 6:00 and 6:30. Everything including the weather cooperated and Billy and I rolled out in the back third of the pack about 6:15 am. Not bad, considering that there were nearly 90 cars going this year!

Mini Insanity

This is the beast I arrived in last night. Turbocharged, painted flat black (mostly) and totally crazy. Also VERY fast – even without the boost being turned up all the way

Morning at the Barley Cove Hotel

5:00 am and you can already see the sun starting to rise. We stayed at the Barley Cove Hotel (http://www.barleycovebeachhotel.com) for the second year in a row and, as usual, they did a great job.

Morning at Mizen Head

For once we had GREAT weather and some fantastic views.

Replacement Mini

Here’s the replacement Mini. This one is an 850cc Automatic, which means we won’t be running at the front of the pack. Hopefully we also won’t be at the back of the pack.

Yep – 2 pedals only!

100% BMW Free

As I’m sure ALL of you know, I have the “new” version of the MINI, which is basically a baby BMW (and, therefore, called a BINI by all of the drivers of the real thing). The originals are VERY different and their owners take pride in the lack of German anything

Ready to Go

And we’re off – next stop, well, breakfast!

And we’re off!

Next stop, Mizen Head (http://www.mizenhead.net). The drive should take a few hours and we’ll be able to get some dinner, a couple pints and some rest before heading to the start at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Yes, 5:30 – and we have to drive about 20 minutes to get to the starting point.

OOPS!

Well THIS isn't good!

The trip went quite well until we got to Cork, which isn’t exactly that far. The Hornet backfired occasionally and seemed to have a bit of a misfire, but we weren’t too worried. At least not until it died about 20 yards from the entrance to a tunnel under Cork Harbor. The tunnel itself is curved, has no shoulders and seems to be inhabited mostly by fast-moving lorries. Fortunately the Hornet died BEFORE the tunnel where there was at least a bit of a shoulder to pull off on.

Various repair attempts didn’t work, but we got it running again and headed off to the tax office to complete the process of getting the car legal. Long story short: the car died, we pushed several times, called in the experts and still couldn’t make it go for more than about 30 seconds. Billy seems to never be more than 5 miles from a friend place to park a dead car so we ditched the Hornet, Billy caught a ride in a Porsche back to Ballyhooly for another car (yes, he has several Minis to choose from) and I went on with Adrian and Ronan (probably misspelled) in their absolutely insane turbo terrormobile.

I’ll post pictures later, but you can start on the mental imagery now:

• Take one late-seventies Mini Clubman (I think)
• Stuff in a Metro turbo engine
• Add various go-fast bits
• Remove various go-slow bits
• Replace seats with something salvaged out of a wrecked Alfa
• Paint the whole thing with flat-black chalkboard paint
• Buy a box of chalk to write things on the car
• Drive like hell every chance you get

Truly insane. And I was stuffed into the back seat with the luggage. It broke exactly once on the way to Mizen head – and then only because we hit a NASTY pothole. A quick bit of bending to the fan shield on the radiator put us right back on the road in no time flat.