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Local History of the worst possible kind! The story of Carnage Hill.

This post is shamelessly copied from a local history book, now out of print, that is also available in pdf format on line: http://www.bayburn.com/29128%20Helen's%20Bay%20&%20Crawfordsburn%20History.pdf .   It is one section only of a much larger and more broadly based book.  All credit is then due to the book's author, and to the team at bayburn.com. Those who have travelled the main road between Bangor and Belfast will know the corner known as ‘the Devil’s Elbow’, which is located just before the junction leading to Seahill/ Rockport.   On the left side of the road when travelling from Bangor there is a small road leading up into the Holywood hills.   It is now called Carney Hill, but according to this article that name derives from Carnage Hill.   To see where it got this name read on.   Many thanks are due to Sam, my friend and avid local history buff.   It was he who originally showed me a paper copy of this book.   Unfortunately it is not a proud episode in
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The Great Storm - 22nd December 1894

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I’ve seen a few good storms in my time, although probably nothing that would match the one below.   The description of a great storm in 1894 (in bold and italics), again comes from the local history booklet by C.F. Milliken. ____________ In Bangor Town Hall you will see some photographs of old sailing ships which were blown ashore on 22 nd December 1894.   Out of six sailing ships anchored in Belfast Lough only one escaped.   This was the Norwegian full rigged ship “The Malone”, which early on Friday morning slipped her anchor and went to sea. The three-masted schooner “Doctor”, went aground on Ballymacormick Point and was in matchwood in about five minutes.   The greater part of her crew were drowned. The barque “Lancaster” ran aground at Grey Point, but the crew were all rescued by the rocket apparatus. The Italian barque, “Espina” was demasted and afterwards brought into Belfast. The “Noel”, probably on poor holding ground, dragged her anchor and was driven as
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The next time you have to buy Magenta toner/ ink for your printer, think of this.....

The Battle of Magenta took place near the town of Magenta in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, a crown land of the Austrian Empire on 4 June 1859.   The dye was discovered in 1859 and named in honour of the event.  Now here is the Irish bit; the leader of French forces was of Irish descent.  According to Wikipedia, his family his family originally had land in Munster, lost it because of Cromwell, and then eventually emigrated to France after 1690. Patrice de MacMahon (Paddy to his mates) joined the French army in 1820 and distinguished himself fighting for Napoleon.   After winning the Battle of Magenta, he was made Duke of Magenta, before eventually becoming President of France!
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Buyer Beware!

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Let’s face it, when you are buying second hand it pays to be cautious and to look for faults that the buyer may not have declared.   I have no problem with this, although I do try to be as honest as I can when selling anything.   What I do have a problem with are undisclosed problems that would be dangerous, but which would be impossible to find on any inspection without both prior knowledge of what to look for, and disassembly of the item being bought. Old and new sprockets from the Funduro.  The gearbox output shaft should be a good fit in the splines shown on the new sprocket on the right.  Instead its splines wore quickly to almost non existence. If you have read my last two motorcycle related posts here, you will have followed the tale of me buying and fixing up an old 1994 BMW F650 Funduro for winter transport.   You will also have read of the numerous faults that these bikes are afflicted with and the ones that I suffered.   I have no doubt that if BMW had produc
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One thing leads to another.

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Last summer, that wonderful locked down one, my wife parked her car in the road in front of our house while I was cutting the grass close by. Our neighbour across the street then clipped it while reversing out of her driveway leaving a small crease in the door of our MX5. Damn! Still, these things happen and the crease was neither very big or very deep. Yet when we got a few quotes some, from the bigger body shops that handle only insurance claims, were astronomical (over £1000 for that little ding!!), and they wanted to replace the whole door rather than to simply fix it. Fortunately, there is a local business that specialises in MX5’s (East Engineering) located further down the Ards Paninsula in a small industrial complex beside the Kirkistown race track, so we went to him. If you want to see his work, check out some of the videos on his Facebook page. East Engineering Mazda MX5 Parts - Home | Facebook If you look hard enough, you should still find one showing chassis repai
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An old mistake.

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 I have owned my BMW R75/6 for many, many years now and have always had something of a love/ hate relationship with it.  Get it going well on a long run and all is right with the world, but despite the image that BMW are keen to portray, it has been less than reliable over the years.  I must point out that not all of this unreliability has been BMW's fault.  For example, I have been through two Boyer electronic ignitions over the years, and as mentioned in the story link below, had an oiling fault caused a previous owners attempt to fit an oil pressure gauge (more on this particular fault shortly).  There has been one nagging issue that has been in this bike throughout though, and it bugs the hell out of me. The bike's engine has always made more noise than a bucket load of angry rattle snakes!   I have written about this elsewhere, including here:  Living with a 1974 BMW R75/6 (oldandireland.blogspot.com)  in a story first published in Real Classic magazine.  Eventually. a few
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Island life.

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OK, Islay has nothing to do with Ireland, but it is only twenty five miles off our coast, and the scenery and culture would be familiar to anyone who lives here in Ireland.  This story was originally published way back in 2008 in Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly, a great magazine in its time.  I thought this was sufficiently far removed from the current Covid crisis to give us all a small reminder of better times. Enjoy. __________ My home in Northern Ireland provides scope for many good scenic runs on a bike.  One familiar and rightly popular local run follows the coast north through County Antrim from the narrow confines of the Irish Sea to the open Atlantic.  The two waters meet off Ballycastle, a harbour sheltered by the rugged cliffs of Rathlin Island 3 miles offshore.  Look west from here on a good day, and the coast winds off toward Donegal and the open ocean, look north and off Scotland’s coast, the horizon is broken by Islay, the first of the Hebridies islands, and by the h
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The Irish Rebellion of April 1916

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Happy Easter everyone.  I thought it would be good to post this since it is both timely, and has absolutely nothing to do with the current crisis..  It comes from one of a series of books published by The Times newspaper (The Times History of the War).  These were published as WW1 was still in progress, so give a good contemporary account of events that were still then withing Britain.  There is a lot of detail here. Enjoy.
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All dressed up and nowhere to go.

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I have to say that during this Covid lock down I am not missing my daily commute to work.   Even on a bike it is pretty hateful.   Still, the Suzuki needed a little TLC before I have to start weaving between the traffic to Belfast again, and the sunny weather that we were having was an excellent opportunity to do this maintenance. There were two linked things that needed to be done. Change the worn out rear tyre. Change the exhaust so that removal of the rear wheel would be much easier in the future. The Burgman with one lower panel removed.  you can see where the exhaust disappears up behind the bodywork and one of the frame tubes. I have complained about the inaccessibility of the Burgman’s rear wheel in a previous article.   Rear wheel removal on this bike should be easy since the scooters engine and drive train are in essence a single sided swinging arm, with three nuts holding the wheel onto this assembly.   Unfortunately, Suzuki’s designers then destroyed thi
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