Geoff Hill and Gary Walker are about to set off on the remainder of the CS Clancy Centenary Run. Having completed the Irish leg of the trip last October with a group of fellow bikers as told in previous posts the pair decided to wait until now to do the rest of the trip thus allowing for the lay-over that Clancy and Storey had in Paris on the original trip. They will join up with Greg Frazier (author of the book about Clancy) in San Francisco on 2nd June and finish up in New York on 21st June.


There will be a "send-off" at the offices of Adelaide Insurances, 4-6 Boucher Rd, Belfast at about 10.30am on Fri 22nd March. If you're in the vicinity why not come along and wish them good luck - don't mind the weather :-)

And They Are Off - Kind Of
 

Snow and cold, ugly stuff to drive motorcycles through. Clancy and Storey left Ireland in 1912 in cold and wet... the modern day fellows found snow slowing their departure. Here's a bit about their Start:

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/lifestyl...iker-1-4931607

Well, they've reached London where they enjoyed a good breakfast at the Ace Café before heading in to Pall Mall and the HQ of the Royal Automobile Club where Clancy and Storey stayed in 1912. The modern-day adventurers were given just as warm a :welcome:.

Peter Murtagh, Foreign Editor of the Irish Times has decided to accompany Geoff and Gary for the first few weeks of the trip and he has been posting updates to the Irish Times online edition:

Breaking News | Irish & International Headlines | The Irish Times

Peter was also a participant on the Irish leg of the CS Clancy Centenary Run last October :mchappy:

More fame for a famous man!
 

Here's a link to a nice article in the Irish Times about Dr Greg Frazier by way of some background to the CS Clancy Centenary Run story.

CS Clancy Centenary Ride - Travel News | Ireland & World Travel Advice & Tips | The Irish Tim - Mon, Apr 08, 2013

It's written by journalist and biker Peter Murtagh who has been accompanying Geoff Hill and Gary Walker for the first few weeks of their trip recreating Clancy's journey of 100 years ago.

Peter has been posting almost daily accounts of their trip making some interesting comparisons between then and now - these can be seen at

Travel News | Ireland & World Travel Advice & Tips | The Irish Tim

Geoff is also posting a travel blog about the trip - it's at

Adelaide Adventures

They're making steady progress and are glad to be getting away from the cold weather. :palm:

very interesting! a doctorate in economics??? When I see someone use the title DR in non professional circles I assume they are an MD, very poor form otherwise and a highly reliable sign of an accomplished BS artist...will have to bow out on the ride, looked very shaky anyway, nothing more than a list of cities has been posted so far and the start is less than two months away....anyway thanks very much for the link, it was a big help in making a decision on the ride

Are you serious? You're going to dismiss this whole thing because one of the organisers has a PhD in Economics? :confused1::eek3::(

And you think anyone called Doctor who isn't a physician is a BS artist? I imagine that refers to many of us here as well doh

Weird :rolleyes2:

umm, no that is not what I said at all, has nothing to do with having a PhD...USING the DR title outside of professional or academic circles when you are not an MD is extremely pretentious and the people I've encountered who do this have invariably been BS artists

Hmm. Not sure that's much better than what I thought you'd said. You're still basically judging someone you don't know, and dismissing the event, based on something entirely arbitrary.

It's a matter of opinion and choice whether one should use ones Doctorate as part of ones title. Some people like to be understated about it, others just see it as part of their identity and use that same identity across the board. A few people perhaps do use it to show off but then they probably feel they worked hard to get the qualification so why not flaunt it? :smartass:

I suppose it could be seen as a bit pretentious but then which of us doesn't have any pretensions?

It just seems rather churlish and ungenerous to dismiss someone over such a little thing, not to mention an event they are associated with but hey, whatever floats your..er...float chamber :funmeterno:

Just curious - what were you expecting this far away from the actual dates and cities? More details will come in plenty of time, and as we know them.

Be aware this is not a massive publicity stunt promoted by some megabucks corporation with umbrella girls :( and all, but just a few enthusiasts doing their best to honour an achievement by one of "us". (crazy travellers that is)

some minor details....for example the location of the start (there is a vague reference to "the docks" but the piers in S.F. number from 1-96 and cover a LARGE area)

Boethius, you'll know LONG before you need to! You don't really think we won't tell anyone what's needed to find it?

Relax, she'll be right mate! (spoken with an Aussie drawl...) :)

First post so I'd better make it count. Seems to me that selecting a username based on some ancient philosopher is more than a little pretentious, more like having a grand opinion of ones self when the reality is you probably couldn't find your way out of your masturbation room without a GPS.

FFS, blowing out a ride because you don't like the fact that one of the organisers/participants uses a title that he earned and automatically labelling him a BS artist? WTF?

Did Clancy have all the details of his route in advance? I think not, You're probably doing the other participants an immense favour by bailing - at least then nobody has to listen to you whinge and moan.....

Pikey.

Yeh I was gonna say that (and point out the spelling error) but hey, we all need the consolation of philosophy ;)

Off into the dark abyss of the unknown
 

PRESS RELEASE received April 18, 2013

In Glasgow, Clancy declared the people individuals to a man and the accent almost unintelligible from the red-nosed, bare-kneed women who gathered around them at every stop, rolling their r’s and sounding like Harry Lauder.

Storey was still too nervous to ride through the heavy city traffic, so Clancy gave him a lift to the city limits then went back for his Henderson .

By this time it was almost dark, and before long they were lost in the gathering gloom, made almost infernal by the lurid glare of countless iron foundries, and were forced to stop for the night in the unprepossessing Black Bull in “the dreary town of Stonehouse ”.

Still, at least it only cost them $1.15 each for a hearty supper, a big feather bed and breakfast the next morning, during which a clergymen, as Clancy puts it, “told us that although he had been a weekly visitor at The Black Bull for several years, we were the first guests he had met; the bar being the inn’s principal mainstay and pure whiskey its principal staple”.

Naturally, it could only go downhill from there: a peeling monochrome pile on a windy corner, it’s finally been closed because of the inability of its customers to pop in for a small glass of sherry without finishing the bottle then breaking it over their neighbour’s head.

Warmed, fed and watered, we found a hotel and fell gratefully into bed. Gary and I took turns at keeping each other awake by snoring in shifts, and we rose at seven and were on the road at eight, heading for the balmy south.

Indeed, the snow looked ever so slightly warmer as we rode into Northwich in Cheshire, where Clancy and Storey had stayed at the Crown and Anchor, which had closed in 1960 and was now Madison’s Bar and Restaurant, the forthcoming attractions of which included the Playboy Bunny Party on Friday, with free bunny ears and a prize for the best costume.

“I can just see Clancy and Storey rolling up the street on their Hendersons and saying: ‘Playboy Bunny Party? That’ll do us’,” said fellow biker and journalist Peter Murtagh, who was riding with us as far as Spain , and whose hands had gone a funny shade of blue which matched my nose.

It was time to find somewhere warm to stay the night, and after riding around for a bit, we found the Blue Barrel, a pub with rooms and a sign outside advertising a Psychic Evening.

Funny, I had a feeling we were going to stay there.

The next morning, we rode between the frozen fields the next morning to stand in the exact spot where Clancy had a century before when he took a photograph looking up St Werburgh Street towards the cathedral.

It hadn’t changed in all that time, apart from the large Chrysler parked on the double yellow lines. And the double yellow lines, come to that. Still, at least Clancy would have been pleased that it was an American car.

In Birmingham , we took shelter from a blizzard in the Witton Arms, which turned out to be the worst Irish pub in the world, a cavernous hall occupied by a gloomy Mexican and an inexplicably cheery Jamaican watching the horse racing on a giant screen.

Things got much better in London, where two mornings later we pulled up at the stroke of nine outside the Ace Café, which Clancy didn’t visit for the simple reason that it only opened in 1938, to accommodate traffic on the new North Circular Road.

Because it was open 24 hours a day, it started to attract motorcyclists. It then became popular with the Ton Up Boys and girls in the 1950s and the Rockers in the 1960s and many bands and motorcycle enthusiast groups such as the 59 Club formed there.

It was, you’ll be glad to hear, exactly as it should be: down one end was with three Triumphs, a Royal Enfield, a BSA and a Brough Superior; the first time I had seen in the flash the machine favoured by Lawrence of Arabia up to the point where he met his death on one.

Down the other was a jukebox on which Mick Jagger was complaining yet again that he couldn’t get no satisfaction, and in the middle, a bunch of grizzled chaps with faraway looks in their eyes were sitting at scrubbed wooden tables, tucking into bacon butties washed down with mugs of tea.

In the circumstances, it seemed impolite not to join them, then buy an Ace Café sticker as a memento and a Castrol one because it reminded me of the metal one that once turned in the wind outside my dear old dad’s motorcycle garage.

All stickered up, we rode into London , where Clancy and Storey spent several happy days at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall planning their route east.

Clancy had joined the RAC associate organisation the Auto-Cycle Union of England before leaving the States, and called into the RAC, which had only been built the year before, to enlist the help of the RAC's resident experts in getting maps, GB numberplates and international passes, although only after having his riding skills approved by an examiner in the street outside.

He was deeply impressed by the magnificent building and interior, and he had every right to be, for it is a soaring hymn to tasteful opulence, from the richly carpeted reception room in which someone had carelessly parked a Bentley Continental, through the swimming pool, saunas, steam room and gym to the St James’s Room in which we were expected for a press conference; an appropriate venue, since it was named after the saint whose bones had inspired centuries of pilgrims to set off on their own adventures to Santiago de Compostela.

In deep armchairs all around, the descendants of the same chaps who had sat in the same chairs when Clancy was here were busily unscrewing their fountain pens, just as their grandfathers had, to write letters of withering erudition to the Daily Telegraph about the state of the nation’s roads. [End Of Text Of Release]



(An unofficial update has Geoff and Gary not being able to secure visas in Paris for Algeria due to poor timing and paperwork barriers. Rumor was they were last seen rolling around southern Italy with hopes for entering Algeria from Tunisia in the east instead of from the west. In the true flavor of the original Clancy ‘rtw ride, they are vectoring into the dark abyss of the unknown with no designated layovers, GPS waypoints, chase vehicles or handlers to schmooze their adventure into one more often taken from an armchair or keyboard).

The Clancy Centennial (CC)
 

Thanks for the update, Greg. Looking forward to further news, history and information.
It was great meeting you by chance at The Riders Corner in Chiang Mai a couple of months ago.

Left to right, I am with Joe Simpkins of W.Virginia holding a ST Owners Club (STOC) Memorial Travel TAG with Greg.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-t...80-o/photo.jpg