RtG The Daily Dispatch - Shamrock 2024 - day 1 - Flipbook - Page 10
12 to 15 May 2025
Day 4
Kenmare - Bantry loop (139 miles)
15 May 2025
Photos: gerardbrown.co.uk
Spirit of the Rally winners: David Brabazon and Celia Drane, 1932 Alvis 12/60 Beetleback
They say time flies when you’re having fun, and
it’s hard to believe today was the last day of the
Vintage Shamrock 2025.
There was no sense of the pressure easing though, as the
Organisers had squeezed a quart into a pint pot, with four
Regularities and three Tests to tackle, the last within metres
of the finishing arch. The weather was still being good to us
and we enjoyed it to the full, with another stunning route
taking in the Wild Atlantic Way, the Caha Mountains and the
Sheep’s Head Peninsula.
From Sheen Falls a southerly route led us to a Passage
Control atop Priest’s Leap. Here we roamed along some
of the most dramatic boreens in South West Ireland, with
countless blind crests, sharp turns and steep gradients.
Known locally as dual cabbage ways, these single-track
roads feature a central grass strip and are just about wide
enough to take a WO Bentley.
A Route Check at Fort Hill ensured we were all on the right
Shane Houlihan and Richard Pain,
1937 Frazer Nash-BMW 315
road and funnelled the rally neatly into the Test at the Bantry
Bay Driving Academy, where the L plates were attached for
two laps of a well-laid-out set of junctions and roundabouts.
Clutching their pass certificates, the crews were then
qualified to tackle the first Regularity from Castledonovan,
which featured two short but intense agricultural sections
thanks to another pair of obliging farmers.
A Time Control in the Drimoleague Inn preceded the
dusty Horse Track Test, where two of the four-legged
locals cantered gamely alongside the track displaying
their very own particular horse horsepower.
It would be impossible to say whether the Mount Corrin
or the Dunmanus Bay Regularity was the most impressive,
but these two back-to-back sections around Bantry Bay
and over the Sheep’s Head Peninsula were as breathtaking
as they were challenging.
After a long, physical morning, lunch at the Time
Control in the Westlodge Hotel in Bantry was a welcome
respite. Disturbed only by the instructions for the next
Regularity from Adrigole being issued deliberately late…
www.rallytheglobe.com
