When I find myself surrounded by the rugged beauty of the west of Ireland, I often feel I’m balancing on the precipice at the edge of the world. My mind tends to wander to the vast expanse of Eurasia, from the eastern coast of China all the way to Western France, and off there lies England and eventually Ireland, which a few hundred years  ago was the last stop before the great unknown. Western Ireland must be one of the wildest places in Europe, but on a fine spring weekend I chose to go west where I met a small slice of tranquillity and sunshine – a rare scenario for a weekend surf trip.

The Gaeltacht has always been great at attracting visitors. From Americans with glazed expressions searching for a shred of heritage to Germans with an enviable command of the Irish language. I chose to visit Ballyconeely which boasts merely a shop, pub and harbour, but in reality holds such volumes of beauty that on a fine day would make the Amalfi coast look like Bray with a fancy accent. Away from the beaches are sheltered coves filled with water as blue as anything to be found in Fiji (though a 5mm wetsuit could be a reasonable idea), and small but sheer cliffs that are perfect for the odd ceremonial jump – though if neither of these float your boat, there’s a few things to do on land.

Hiking and scrambling around the coast is nothing short of spectacular, with sweeping views down the craggy western edge, and eerie ruins ranging from tiny ramshackle cottages with pots and pans still among the rubble, to sprawling Georgian mansions slowly crumbling to dust. When the tide goes out it is perfect for hunting for cockles, mussels and periwinkles to cook up for dinner, which allows for a certain sense of achievement and a quick marvel at your own hunter gatherer prowess.

For the more adventuresome non-water sports enthusiast (or when there’s no waves) there’s always rallying: much of this area is surrounded by a sort of giant grassy tundra which you are allowed to drive on. This is an undulating terrain, great for screeching around like a man possessed.

If the west of Ireland hasn’t taken a strange fancy to you and it’s raining (as is mostly the case) things to do in Ballyconeely may be a bit thin on the ground. A few suggestions would be putting on a wetsuit and going cycling, having a long chat with a friend, extra-slippery rallying around the place, or the pub – a fine place to while away the long rainy hours beside the warm fire, playing board games. There is a nice pub in Ballyconeely, but it wasn’t exactly the wildest place I’ve ever been of a Saturday night. Down in Clifton was a different story altogether though, as that weekend in particular was offering a Hannah Montana tribute show. I’m sure every weekend of the year features another treat for music lovers everywhere.

Last Summer I was lucky enough to be among four good men on a cycling excursion across Europe. Beginning with a shaky break through a makeshift toilet paper starting line in Blackrock, and finishing six weeks later as we tumbled off a car ferry onto the Greek island of Antiparos. Here’s a vague list of everything I can think of that might make this sort of trip possible for anyone who fancies the challenge.

I believe the main ingredients to be 90 per cent reckless optimism, mixed with a light smattering of general know-how and sensible preparation. It’s the smattering I’ll attempt to document.

By far the most important thing to consider on a trip like this is your company. Preferably you want the kind of serious people that you would gladly follow into battle – but failing this, just bring some friends. Four is a good number; three can be claustrophobic, and with more than that it starts to get messy. Look for people who are easy-going, as long days can grind on anyone, and much of your time will be spent on lonesome stretches of beach or forest, with only your comrades and the darkness of the night for company.

A route to suit everyone’s needs will make or break your trip. We chose a coastal route for immediate jumping-into-the-sea purposes, but any route through Europe will hold its own slices of brilliance, as long as mountain ranges are avoided (the Alps being a prime culprit). Mountains are not nearly as much fun as they sound, and they don’t even sound that fun to begin with.

As far as equipment goes, try to bring a bike with as many gears as you can. All of them will definitely be used, as will a sexy little pair of black cycling shorts for the dual purposes of avoiding constant agony and a general fancy appearance. For the truly rugged adventurer this may suffice, but for the rest of us mere mortals we need a few luxuries such as water (best stored in camel packs or platypuses), for the rainy sort waterproof coverings for everything are a necessity – there is nothing more grisly than attempting to get to sleep in rain soaked gear. Also, your tent will be home for the duration of the trip, so a light but comfortable model is important.

Nothing constructive is going to happen without at least a vague idea of where you’re going. Maps are very handy for this. Petrol stations are a great source of maps for large areas of the country in question, but when you’re entering a city, a more close-up view of the area might save you from being run over by a truck: therefore, keep an eye on Google Maps, and remember that GPS is officially considered cheating.

All your gear can be held in two large panniers strapped over the back wheel of the bike, as well as a few extra treats such as knives, cooking stoves, headbands, reading material, a mascot, suntan lotion, lots of stickers, beards and passports.

What makes a cycling trip worthwhile is simply the fact that a bike allows an experience of your surroundings that no other form of transport can match. The feeling of constantly moving in one direction towards a goal is something I had never experienced before this trip, and the way every night the sun set just behind my right shoulder – whether I was in Athlone or Athens – was a something to write home about. So really, all that’s really needed is a borderline dangerous drive to succeed in a task and some sense of adventure, that and a few quid; roughly €1,500 should cover it.

We stumbled off the boat into the merciless heat of a Greek afternoon, wine still sloshing in our stomachs, and hazy memories of planned day-trips with Turkish truck drivers and lawless wrestling matches with hordes of wry Italians. It was in this unenviable state that we made our way to the nearest internet cafe for the dual purposes of planning out our route and availing of their air conditioning.

On sitting down I noticed that the gentleman to my right was openly viewing the sort of gay porn that would make Boy George blush. After a brief meeting with the lads it was decided that it’d be sleeping arse-to-wall and with one eye open from then until Athens.

The days on the bike were some of the toughest on the trip so far; temperatures prancing around 40°C and the threat of a bumming from every angle can do terrible things to a man. For the first time on the trip we managed to become separated into two groups after an ill-advised turn on my part; while half of our group managed to find a campsite, I was left to make my bed in the car park of a rural pub.

The last night before we made the push for Athens we spent on an out-of-the-way beach with the dim lights of the city in the distance; I recalled our first night where we slept at an old pub in Courtown where I imagined where our last night might be spent, a continent away. I went to sleep struggling to imagine a better place.

Our trip had brought us from country roads winding their way through rare days of dappled sunshine back home in Ireland, to seemingly endless, barren stretches of highway ploughing through the deserts of north Spain; from seeing cities slowly rise and build as we coasted through their hinterlands toward grand centres, to gripping tightly to sweaty handlebars as we juggled imminent danger and magnificent views on treacherous mountain passes; from sleeping on rough ground in pit stops on the edges of motorways; clutching knives for the impression of safety, to drinking all night to the sound of street music in sleepless cities. It had become a collection of experiences worlds apart, tied together by the constant roll of wheels towards our goal.

That was the goal we had reached as we stood on the deck of a ship pulling out of Pariaus Harbour. I remember fleetingly looking towards Turkey, imagining the Bosphorus and the new continent that lay on the other side with a whole wealth of experiences waiting…waiting, of course, for another time as I was headed for the Cyclades Islands and a month of kite surfing and drinking with some good friends.

As I write this six months later, nostalgia is creeping in and I can guarantee myself that my memories will only become more gold-tinted and romantic as the years go on – because very simply, those six weeks of cycling were fucking unbelievable.

Read all five instalments of Kris’s diary at http://short.ie/kris.

Rome’s main port is called Civitavecchia (I still can’t pronounce it). We were one month into our cycle across Europe, and our ferry had just docked one hundred kilometres north of Rome in this dubiously-named town.

It was getting dark, and we had to cycle a sufficient distance out of the town in order to camp, with road systems were nearly as complicated as the place name and without a map. It was also too hot to cycle in anything more than a very revealing pair of Lycra Cycling shorts, further adding to our appearance as a very sweaty group of gay men heading for the Greek islands.

Needless to say we made it out in one piece, but this was the first day we realised that nothing in Italy works even remotely the same as anywhere else. Nothing is properly signposted, people’s hand gestures are far too erratic, and drivers adopt the age-old tactic of speeding up and beeping when anything gets in their way. Suffice to say Italian drivers didn’t gain their reputation by chance.

It was on shaky legs that we embarked on our Italian job, and it was with full body convulsions and heavy signs of relief that we boarded our boat to Greece. We rolled into Rome the evening of the second day and generally did as the Romans did: we took photos of ourselves in front of St Peter’s Basilica and the Colosseum, ate Carbonaras and drank one euro bottles of wine. We even managed to get into a multilingual verbal argument with an upset policeman.

Expecting to be passing through something akin to the rolling Tuscan hills, we were disappointed to find that the road to Naples was a seemingly endless chain of tacky seaside resorts. Upon arriving in Naples we were lulled into a false sense of security by what, from a distance, looked like beautiful scenery but what in actual fact turned out to be the worst place in the world.

Four hours of treacherous cobbled streets, perfectly bike-wheel-width tram tracks and articulated lorries followed, in what I will always remember as the most back-to-back near-death experiences I will ever have in my life.

After the worst place in the world things started getting better, we wheeled our way into Pompeii a few days later to look at a load of fancy dead people and hang around a 2000-year-old brothel, went to Sorrento to rent a speedboat, and drive to the island of Capri (what recession?) before pedalling on to the Almalfi coast. This is a road carved out of thousand foot high cliffs winding its way above the bluest sea I’ve ever seen, and it’s a memory that will stick in my mind forever, hopefully keeping the one of Naples at bay.

If asked for any advice I would give for someone cycling in Italy, it would simply be this: don’t do it. But if you have to, move worlds to avoid Naples, it’s as rough as a bag of hammers.

Kris’s diary continues after Christmas…

This was a rough leg of the trip, maybe the roughest thing I’ve ever got myself into. The plan was to find our way from the Atlantic coastal city of San Sebastian to Barcelona, the Mediterranean’s own Sodom and Gomorrah. This route would take us across the foothills of the Pyrenees, into Pamplona for the opening of the San Fermin bull run, down into the desert wastelands of Spain’s red centre, a final traverse of a few unexpected mountains and straight into the welcoming Mediterranean Sea.

This all seemed like great fun until our first day setting out from San Sebastian after a few days surfing, accompanied by the manner of hangovers that could bring a grown man to his knees. A trail of bright orange vomit wound its way behind us in a sort of Hansel and Grettel fashion all the way to our first stop on a busy roadside just outside the strange little town of Tolosa.

Day two saw us making the push for Pamplona where the male ego would lead us all into reluctantly risking our lives in order to outdo each other in the infamous bull run, but first we would have to make it through the opening ceremony.

This was like nothing I had ever seen before, an ocean of red and white gradually merging into a solid block of pink as every man woman and child was covered from head to toe in sangria. People were hurling this vicious concoction from balconies by the bucket load onto a heaving mass of people, fighting, kissing, groping, even writhing around on the ground, this was a case study in madness.

The next few days followed the same course with intermittent moments of sleeping and eating. The bull run is a story for another time, the amount of emotions crammed into that unforgettable fifteen minutes is difficult to describe, after four days of this we were all swept up in a dangerous case of the fear and decided it was time to get the hell out of there, we escaped our campsite through a wheat field in the dead of night in order to escape paying, then it was back to the gruelling ride towards the sea.

The following week was spent pulling contorted facial expressions as we struggled up the ‘foothills’ of the Pyrenees. We picked up an alarmingly hairy American who was endeavouring to do the same trip alone, talked our way into spending an unnerving night in a monastery somewhere obscure, nearly lost a man in a very dark encounter with the inside of a tunnel and collectively lost about ten stone in weight along the way.

The journey into Barcelona in the early hours of the morning was nearly as hairy as the American, but we rolled triumphantly into two hedonistic days of celebration.

As our second ferry of the trip pulled out bound for Rome we couldn’t help but feel that the most exciting leg of the trip was over, but for better or for worse we were about to be proved very wrong indeed.

I have firmly decided that cycling is the finest form of travel there is – it’s the best way to engage with the landscape. Most forms of transport involve looking out a window of a stuffy car, train or plane, cut off from the smells, the sensation of the wind, even the rain. Looking out the window might as well be looking at it all on television. These are the thoughts that were running through my head, cycling through Normandy’s farmland breadbasket, heading for Paris on the longest day of the year.

“Looking for somewhere to camp and drink some well-earned rum, when suddenly the ocean was just… sort of… there”

We passed the first night in an abandoned fort of some kind; waking up with a face covered in spiders, with corn fields as our bathroom, was to set the scene for the rest of the trip. A few days passed and the kilometres rolled by. Eventually we found ourselves looking at the twisted arteries of roads leading into the city of Paris. In a judgement made with a lethal cocktail of stupidity and fatigue, we decided that the best route into this bustling metropolis would be via the four-lane-wide motorway. This resulted in us, for the first time on the trip, being faced with the possibility of imminent death. A decidedly grim yet exhilarating few hours passed and we arrived, exhausted, into the centre of Paris.

At this point we had to take a train to the coast, due to time constraints, before alighting on a punishing three-day cycle to the coast. Our first encounter with the Atlantic was emotional. We found ourselves in a dense pine forest at twilight. Looking for somewhere to camp and drink some well-earned rum, when suddenly the ocean was just… sort of… there. With no further communication we stripped down and made for the cold water, and I was content.

Again we set off towards our Athens-shaped holy grail, through to Biarritz. Here we met some great people, whom we would keep encountering all the way to Barcelona. We surfed and drank too much, and then set off on our way over the boarder to San Sebastian. With a stomach full of wine and rum, and the constant puking, some of the majesty of crossing our first land border was somewhat lost. Yet through the terrible fog of one of the worst hangovers of my life, some dull feeling of accomplishment did resonate, and even in the grips of ‘the fear’ I did manage to look forward to the Spanish leg, which I was fairly certain was going to be the hardest challenge so far.

Catch up with Kris in Spain in our next issue on 10th November

I hate flying, but I love finding myself in far-flung places – and I’ll be the first to admit that this is not a winning combination. Often I find myself looking for some sort of underhanded, cunning method to avoid any form of aviation yet still find adventure, and this summer I think I might have hit the nail on the head.

While pouring over some maps and drinking a few beers with the lads one evening, I discovered that it would probably be foolish not to cycle from my house to Athens over the course of six weeks, and to then safely at sea level continue by ferry to the Cyclades islands in the Aegean. So managing to convince a few good men to come with me, one of whom has a boarder-line sordid love affair with maps, and acquiring a few bikes we were set to go.

Two months later and with collectively about twelve hours cycling experience between us we set off from my house in Blackrock, through a makeshift starting line made of toilet paper, to drag 50kg of bike and bags across 2,000 kilometres to the Athenian port of Pireaus. In the coming weeks we would find ourselves cycling through Paris and down the beautiful west coast of France, traversing mountain ranges in the Pyrenees, stopping only briefly to get chased down the streets of Pamplona by severely pissed off bulls, drinking moonshine in the Adriatic with unnervingly friendly Turkish truck drivers, examining very closely the fascinating driving styles adopted by the Italians, along with the odd other experience or ten.

Firstly though we had to find our way up the slightly inclined road outside my house and onto the N11, all of us hoping against hope that we’d at least make it round the corner and out of sight before we collapsed in a heap. To our surprise we began to make good time and as we swung onto the long straight road that was going to lead us out of Ireland, uncertainty turned to excitement and the sense of adventure swelled as we realised that we might actually have a chance of pulling this off.

To everyone’s surprise, not least my own, we completed the first 85 kilometres in a reasonable five and a half hours – exhausted, and with a renewed appreciation for the number of dead things on the sides of Irish roads – we pulled into Courtown for our first night. After a fitful sleep and a minor sexual assault by a bulldog, we were ready to begin the day that would take us to Rosslare harbour and onto a boat bound for France.

The second day saw the beginning of the plague of sore arses that would hound us until Athens, but our minds seemed to relax and wander as our legs surrendered to the monotonous robotic motion they’d be adopting for the coming six weeks. As the boat pulled out from the harbour we sat there drinking a few well-earned cans not knowing in the least what a self powered two-wheeled excursion through Europe would hold in store for us. As we lay on the tiled floor of the ferry’s bar listening to the strange lullaby of Latvian truck drivers drunkenly smashing bottles over each other, it was with that rare and brilliant combination of dread and adrenaline that we fell into a deep sleep.

Find out more of Kris’s two-wheeled adventure in next fortnight’s issue.

I received a call from Duke Special before our meeting in the RTÉ cafeteria to tell me that he’d be the guy in the corner drinking coffee. As I arrived, I realised that he’d failed to mention that he was also wearing a 19th century ringmaster’s outfit, outrageous eye makeup and sporting a two-foot tall mountain of dreadlocks.

This is a style coined as ‘hobo chic’ by its otherwise mild-mannered creator, Peter Wilson, also known as Duke Special. It’s a style that he may be planning on bottling as “an eau de toilette with a hint of tramp.”
Life is moving fast for Duke Special at the moment. Having won this year’s ‘Best Irish Male’ Meteor award (which he describes as “hilarious”), just last week he released his second album I Never Thought This Day Would Come and he is embarking on a nationwide tour next month.

“Life is a rollercoaster of emotion, one minute you’re laughing, the next you’re crying. I try to reflect this in these songs”

Despite the hectic lifestyle, he takes touring in his stride, which might be due to the days where 150 shows per year was the norm, and he enjoys adding a bit of strangeness and excitement into the mix.

Along with being an avid stage-diver, of which he says, “we try to make a point of it”, he’s also been known to engage in the occasional swordfight, mainly with his long time creative rival, Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy. He feels that “it’s time for him to stand down and feel the point of my sword”.

Eccentricity seems to be a running theme in his live shows, which can be described as some sort of vaudeville meets cabaret brand of twisted strangeness. He incorporates a wide range of interesting instruments, from gramophones to Shardi Drone Boxes, described by Duke as “a magazine rack with bellows”, to the odd symphony orchestra.

On the idea of using gramophones he explains, “even if there’s no musical difference it’s visually way more fun to see a gramophone on stage than some sort of synthesizer”.

This antiqued sound transfers itself to his records also. His previous album, Songs from the Deep Forest, and I Never Thought This Day Would Come, both exhibit a timeless quality.

His new album contains a lot of his own dirty laundry, a very personal work, of which he says, “songs aren’t just black and white… life is a rollercoaster of emotion, one minute you’re laughing, the next you’re crying. I try to reflect this in these songs”. It’s an album for “sleepwalkers, gravediggers and skeletons”; a notoriously tough scene to crack into, but on a lighter note the Duke has been jamming with the Muppets.

He’s been writing the theme music for Sesame Tree, the Northern Irish version of Sesame Street, and has been receiving artistic direction from a certain Mr Snuffleupagus; a well seasoned Muppet.

After all this fun, Duke Special has his eyes set on the world of theatre. He’s halfway through a musical based on the life of Huckleberry Finn, his theory being that his live performances are theatrical enough to make this the natural progression. Although he’ll be pulling strings behind the scenes, not performing himself.

When asked where he’d be if he wasn’t touring, writing and winning awards, he thoughtfully says, “I’d probably give Neil Hannon a break and go back to sword fighting my three wee boys”.

After the interview, we realised we were going the same way and the Duke accepted an offer of a lift. Piled into the back of a crumbling old Volkswagen Polo, this famous sword fighting, Muppet collaborating, stage diving Duke was as down to earth and friendly as could be hoped.

Duke has been described as “the fucked up ringmaster of a broken down circus, the lead dancer in a forgotten ballroom of ghosts.” His gig on Tuesday, 25th November in the Olympia promises to be interesting at the very least.

New Zealand lies fourteen and a half thousand miles away from our little green island, yet it is simultaenously completely different and frighteningly similar. The rolling green, sheep-filled countryside passes by and a relaxed familiarity takes hold, when suddenly a gigantic mountain range or a forest of prehistoric trees bounds into view. These sights provide a sudden reminder that this is totally different place, a strange new world.

Most flights will arrive into Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city far to the north, an unfortunately charmless place which feels like a mix between a European city without the history and an Australian city without the scale and vibrance.

Deep into the countryside sits the small coastal town of Hahei, home of the hot beach. This beach lies on a geothermal vent heating the water to near boiling point, mere feet underground. So in the dead of night, armed with pots and pans as makeshift spades, a few intrepid Travelexplorers hitchhiked to the beach to dig a jacuzzi in the sand. Drinking whisky in a geothermal hot-tub is another of those feeling very far from home moments.

A quick stop in a tiny, one-horse-town called Waitomo to absail through caves into the bowels of the island leads to Raglan. This is a treat for anyone but for surfers, it is is paradise.

Cheap accomodation is found in little log cabins nestled in the forest overlooking the water, providing a Lord of the Rings style wilderness and that edge of the world feel, while looking out at the Tasman sea in the driving rain is an unmissable experience.

New Zealand has a population of a mere 4.2 million, 14 per cent of which is native Maori. The Maori have survived much better than the Aborigines in Australia against the onslaught of European settlers and have a firm place in Kiwi society today.

Rotorua is a town steeped in Maori culture. It lies in an area of huge geothermal activity and until quite recently, many of the houses were heated directly from vents in their back gardens. The huge sulpher pits that dot the city make beautiful smoke plumes rise up from the ground, but unfortunately, they also make the whole town smell of rotten egg. Consequently, it’s a very strange place indeed.

It seems strangeness breeds strangeness, as Roturua is the home of the fine sport of Zorbing. This is when a person or two are placed inside a massive plastic ball filled with water and then rolled down a hill- simply the most fun twenty seconds you can have.

The beautiful capital city of Wellington is a small area that was built up from humble beginnings as a whaling town. It’s home to an astounding museum, the Tiki Ora, a beautiful display of the country’s anthropological and environmental history. Learning about things like the extinct indigenous giant eagle, big enough to sweep down from the sky and carry a grown man away, leaves your head spinning.

Flying from Wellington south west towards Australia allows a view of the beautiful Southern Alps and when falling suddenly into the Tasman sea, the truth that the natural wonders of New Zealand can be found nowhere else is inescapable.

Take surfing, windsurfing and wakeboarding, mix them all together then add in forty-foot jumps and triple backflips and you begin to get the idea of this madness. So after being told to go hard or go home via email
from the society, Otwo found its way to Dollymount strand, went hard and subsequently went home in order to write this article.

About fifteen of us congregated on the strand at eleven o’clock on a blustery Saturday. There is no concrete way of deciding when a session is going to happen due to a heavy reliance on the fickle wind, this though,  as a perfect day.

A gentle breeze was blowing steadily and without gusts, great for beginners to get the hang of the kites. Everyone started off with a one-metre stunt kite and gradually throughout the day people began to progress to larger more powerful beasts.

By the end of the session, thanks to the friendly and patient instructers, some of us were harnessed into a big ninemeter monster and were even riding a land board.

The learning curve is steep and the more experienced surfers say that every time they fly a kite they learn something new, so with a little bit of dedication, anyone could be very competant in a few months.

The club has come a long way in the three years since its establishment. With efforts from both last years
captain, Justen, and his successer, Oggie, the club has now got a fine quiver of kites and boards.

The only major expense in joining this sport is the need for at least one professional lesson which can end up costing around about €140. However, luckily, the kitesurfing club will heavily subsidise this fee for its members.

Kitesurfing in the way that we know it today has only been around since 1994, it’s still really just taking off (pun intended).

From meagre beginnings as a sort of novelty spinoff from windsurfing there is now roughly 200,000 kitesurfers in the world, a number which is steadily rising.

Kitesurfing is the most popular mutation of the semi-airborne sports, but there are numerous variations
which are equally exciting. As mentioned before, on land, a sort of skateboard with big rubber tyres and footstraps can be used to a similar effect, or team the kite up with a snowboard for mountain surfing and
there are even ideas for huge ships to be partially powered by massive kites.

If you happen to be a surfer tired of waiting for the elusive and underwhelming east coast wave, a
wakeborder who can’t afford the fuel for the boat or just someone with a sense of adventure and taste for the extreme, this is the sport for you.

We have got world-class beaches and conditions for the sport right here in Dublin and a club that will do everything it can to get you ripping in no time.

Kris Goodbody