34th Riders Rally - 1st to 4th August 2008
Starting from the Hazel Hotel, Monasterevin, Co Kildare, Ireland (off M7)
Start Checkpoint Open: Friday 1st from 4pm 'til 10pm and Saturday
2nd from 8am 'till 11am
This is NOT the Friday night camping/B&B overnight location
Get away from the city and motorway onto the back roads of Real Ireland for the first weekend in August. The route is designed by our hard-working Route-meister and rally-team to avoid Bank Holiday tail-backs, be safe and to be licence friendly (but that is really up to you!). The Riders Rally is a 2-day 650 mile point-to-point motorcycle navigation rally. We don't expect driving at night and have arranged secure camping in the grounds of small rural hotels with bars, food and friends 'on-tap'. On the Riders you will ride hard, party harder, and have a great time with other high-mileage road-riders. It's almost like entering a dimension beyond your normal life. Riders' machines might range from the latest exotica, through to cruisers, 2-strokes and vintage, but, for many riders, back-road Ireland is home for big Endurance Tourers.
Past Photographs
The Plot
Either start Friday afternoon with an easy 70-mile ride to our overnight halt, or start Saturday morning with around 9-hours intense riding to the Saturday overnight. A shorter ride on Sunday should get riders to the final checkpoint by 5pm where the badges, awards and more mayhem await you. The Sunday night hotel offers a buffet supper between 6 and 7pm at a nominal charge, which will be followed by the Awards Ceremony. DMTC Ltd have arranged camping, limited bedrooms and function rooms on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. If you don't want to camp, you can pre-book B&B (download a form below) at the Rally HQ each night. Motorways do not exist unless you want them; urban centres avoided, the focus is on safely riding the back-roads. Watch out for tar, gravel chips and cow-s**te. A new feature may be GPS co-ordinates downloaded from laptops or flash-memory cards at Saturday and Sunday checkpoints FOC. Because of recent software upgrades by Garmin, some units with older software may not accept automatic uploads. Because we are talking about 100/150 km long stages with many direction changes, rather than a few waypoints it may not be practical to load waypoints manually.
The aim is not to cover mileage for the sake of mileage, since the pleasure is as much in the journey as the destination. The exact route remains a secret with details of each stage only being revealed at the prior check-point. Boyne Riders Photo Rally subjects may be near by, but that's their rally, only divert if you have time. Scenic locations and historic places abound, photo them in your mind, visit them another time; your target now is to get to the next checkpoint before it closes, to get to the overnight before food stops and the bar closes. It’s not a race; sections are achievable at a average speed of 30 mph/50 kph. Trophies are awarded for the spirit of the rally - Individual, Club, Motorcycle, Distance. We welcome Irish, UK, European & RTW motorcyclists to experience good hospitality, great scenery and an immersion in motorcycle riding on the best of Irish backroads.
Location of Monasterevin, Co Kildare Map24
Download an entry form / PDF - Download a Pre-book B&B Accommodation Form / PDF - Book a Ferry (new webpage)