Long day’s journey
The summer solstice occurs in the northern hemisphere when the North Pole reaches its maximum tilt towards the sun, providing the year’s most prolonged dose of daylight. It has been celebrated by cultures around the world for millennia, and more recently it has also been marked by a growing cohort of cyclists who use the extended ride time to chase the sun from one coast to the other.
It’s for this reason that I am up and in my Lycras at an hour more conventionally reserved for staggering home. Behind me, the sun is hiding just beneath the horizon beyond Belfast’s famous dockyards.
Scheduled for 4:46am, the sun’s appearance will trigger the start of a self-supported 336km dash across Ireland that will take us from Belfast in the northeast, across the border and on to Enniscrone on the west coast. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t playing along. So instead of the sun’s first rays releasing us from the start pen, it’s left to one of the organisers to inform us the time has come to get rolling.
Carpe diem
The ride I’m taking part in is the latest in an expanding series of Chase the Sun events. Having begun as a casual jaunt organised among friends, what can now claim to be a brand has spread from southern England to spawn events in the Scottish
