With 2026 being the second ABR Festival I’ve attended I knew what I was in store for.

After my first ABR Festival last year I decided to get a Super Thursday ticket so I could get there early and get set up before the main festival started. Although it’s fair to say there is a huge amount of stuff to do already on the Thursday! It was going to be an exceptionally hot day today (around Ragley Hall 36 degrees “feeling like 38”) so I decided to leave London early and get up to Warwickshire as early as I could. I got up at 4am, my second 4am start in two days, and packed my bike. Heading out of London around 6am it was great to be on the road again with my camping equipment and bike!

It’s always great to be riding a bike but it was sad to be finishing this trip and riding home.

Waking up in the hotel I got packed up and headed down for breakfast. We were booked onto the 10:15 Stena Line ferry which was really busy with quite a few coach trips but it’s always exciting to be taking a ferry somewhere, even if it was headed home.

The plan for the day was to take the ferry over to Holyhead and then ride back via the M40. I wasn’t really looking forward to the traffic, especially as the ferry was landing at 13:45 and we’d be hitting rush hour during the ride home. But it was just the last push home and a very small price to pay for an amazing week away with great memories.

With our adventure almost at an end we headed for Dublin for one last night.

With one of our group already en route back to London we awoke to a stunning sunrise over our campsite in Connemara. Although we’d only had one night in this campsite it was great to get there because it’s in such a beautiful location and was quite busy but not too busy.

The site is settled in the machair dunes and is a carbon-neutral site with a private beach on which you can have fires in firepits, a sauna, and beautiful views.

What a difference good weather makes as we rode the stunning route from Galway into Connemara along the coast.

Waking in the cottage we got ourselves packed up and had breakfast. The girls had got me a gift for organising the trip which I was really touched by. It had been so lovely riding with them so it was sad that it already has started to feel like we were nearing the end of our adventure. Usually by the 5th/6th day of riding every day my body starts getting used to being on the bike consistently and all the aches and niggles from consecutive days on the road start to fade and I get into the flow of a trip. I’d also really miss riding with the girls as they’re exceptional company and lovely people. This was to be the last full day together because one of our number would be leaving the next morning around 4am to ride to Dublin, get the ferry to Holyhead, and then ride back to London in a one-er! But we still had today together, the weather was amazing, and we had some fantastic roads in front of us.

Waking up in our glamping pods the weather was bright and sunny, but the wind was to make an unwelcome return.

The plan for today was to ride up to the western tip of Connemara and stay in a coastal campsite. After a leisurely breakfast of scrambled eggs we then saw to the bikes; fixing a puncture in one and then adjusting the chain slack on two others. After settling up for our night’s stay we headed off north, with the plan to reach the coast in Connemara after riding along some coastal roads in the shadow of the Iorras Beag / Errisbeg mountain.

None of us got much sleep in the battering wind and come 6am it was getting worse so we had a decision to make, and pretty quickly.

It had been a noisy and blustery night with heavy rain and high winds and a 6am check of the weather forecast showed that the highest winds hadn’t even hit us yet. So I quickly got packed up and loaded my bike before saying to the girls that I’m going to help them pack up although we needed to do that now. Because the winds were so high we carried stuff into the toilet and shower block for shelter from the elements and packed up in there, clearing the camping field quickly. Although not before two of the group’s tents had been damaged by the wind; suffering snapped poles!