We know summer can't be far away when we hear that oh-so-lovely sound of a vintage motorcycle. Or 70 of them to be exact, as they head off on the Galway Vintage Motor Cycle run on May 2nd and 3rd.
Eddie Carpenter, vintage motorcyclist, club president and founder of the Galway event, and who at 87 years of age must surely be Ireland's oldest participant, will lead the way. The route chosen by Eddie, for beauty and excitement, goes via Kinvara, Ballyvaughan and the Burren in Co Clare on Saturday, and Maam Bridge and Costello in Co Galway on Sunday, with speeds averaging . . . 24 m.p.h.
This is the Galway club's 21st rally, which until recent years was organised by Eddie and his late wife, Phyllis. Four of the original 24 motorcyclists who attended the 1977 rally will ride again this year.
To celebrate their coming of age, organiser Mick Temple has arranged an extra event this year, when the motorcyclists and friends will actually part company with their beloved bikes and board the Corrib Princess for an outing to Inchagoill Island.
Motorcyclists attending the rally come from all over Ireland, North and South, as well as England. All are eager to give their bikes an airing and meet kindred spirits. Rudges and Indians, Velocettes and Triumphs are dusted off, polished up and loved into life again to claim the open road once more as they did in their heyday.
This year Eddie will ride his favourite motorcycle, a 1934 Model 18 Norton. This is one of his eight vintage bikes, the oldest of which is a 1908 Abbington which he rode on week-long runs through the Cork and Kerry mountains.
In the 70 years since he rode his first 1923 single-belt drive Revere, bikes have been an essential part of his life. Simply, he loves them. A 1927 camshaft Velocette was another he liked a lot, and a 1,100cc Indian with a side-car proved particularly reliable on runs from his native Cork city to Youghal as a young man.
Look out for Eddie in his familiar army dispatch rider's coat, issued in 1942 when he was involved in organising a motorcycling section of the Civil Defence in Belfast; even the war didn't put a stop to his motorcycling.
To admire these two-wheeled and even three-wheeled works of art, observe the frenzy of kick-starting and inhale the aroma of engine oil, be at Flannery's Hotel car-park, Galway, at 10 a.m. next Saturday and 10.30 a.m. on Sunday.