Rondine

Don Cronin is on a mission. He’s travelled more than 60 miles from his home near Kinsale, on Ireland’s south coast, to Adrigole, a village on the Beara Peninsular. The 580cc flat single thumps out a deep baritone as he turns off the coast road and heads for the Healy Pass. This is one of the finest biking roads in Ireland, rising 334m as it twists and turns between two of the highest peaks in the Caha mountain range. If any road is going to prove that the Rondine was built to be ridden, then this is it.

With his friend Mick O’Shea, Don had won the 2013 AMD World Championship in Essen, Germany with the café racer-inspired motorcycle they spent two winters building in the workshop at the bottom of the garden. It was the first time that the prestigious custom bike building competition had been held outside the US, and the Irish pair had beaten nearly 600 entries from around Europe and as far afield as Russia, Argentina and America. Not only had they