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Lots of happy memories of Glenlough. Not proud of all of it but it happened and made me laugh at the time. Stayed there at TT 04 with two mates, we were all riding Triumphs at the time, a 955 speed trip, a 900 sprint and a 900 Daytona. We were camped near two very quiet and friendly german fellows, a group of Dutch including a particularly large chap who must have been seven feet tall and a courting couple who rarely left their tent.
There were lots of rev offs taking place that year, usually in the small hours after the railway had closed and the fires burned down and for the first few days we tutted away. Cold oil, mechanical mayhem, imagine the damage to the engine etc. We realised however that the 900 Triumphs were not fuel injected and would therefore spit flames out of their exhausts if held on the rev limiter.
On about the fourth night we staggered bck from The Railway and settled in to drink whatever stray cans of lager remained and listened to the nightly revving, particularly between a group of Germans to our left, and Austrians some distance away to the right. Some form of evil spirit had alighted on us during the walk back and the Triumphs beckoned. Removing the exhaust cans from the Daytona only took a few minutes, a formerly mechanically sympathetic mate then started it and pinned the throttle.
I have never hear anything so brutally, brain bleedingly loud in my life. Flames shot out and the two German chaps, no more than eight feet from the bike, must have thought the world was ending. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been to be woken in the small hours by that kind of row and I apologise unreservedly however when we shut the bike off the competing Germans and Austrians roared approval, clearly recognising people more ***/stupid them.
Within seconds somebody in a position of authority was on the scene. He pointed out that we were knobs and we had to agree. Furthermore, if we so much as farted we would be off the camp site then and for ever. Again we had to agree.
Next morning we hauled ourselves out of our tents with vague memories of what had happened the night before. We had left bits of bike where we had dropped them and astonishingly, nobody had lobbed the exhausts into the hedge. The German chaps ignored us completely. The huge Dutch camper however wanted words. We prepared for the worst, his clogs were the size of canoes and he certainly looked handy.
"If you are going to take the exhaust pipes off your motorbike, would you mind doing it before midnight?"
That was it! Relief! He could have killed all three of us without trying and I have admired Dutch people for their forebearance ever since. There was some pennance when we lost a small but vital part of the exhaust down a hollow cast wheel spoke but nobody tried to beat us with pick axe handles and some weeks later the event was mentioned in the MCN letters page. Not in complimentary terms but I did cut the piece out and selotape it to my desk.
Other years have been equally entertaining if less noisy, events have included Welsh fellows writing "Gay porn available here" (not true) on our luminous gazebo, fitting about 12 people into a family saloon, slow races with a gang of Irish lads and trying to ride sports bikes down the treacherous track out of the back of the campsite.
Great times, great place, thanks to the people who run it and sorry to anybody we have inconvenienced.
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