The Ireland Hornet Trip, 2026

Day one, and the camera already has me in Tipperary, pointed north and west with the whole of Ireland's Atlantic edge ahead. The line runs up through Limerick, into Clare, then Galway, and on into Mayo — coast, villages that arrive and leave before you've read the sign, and the odd overtake when the road opens up and the Hornet does its quiet, willing thing.

The 360 camera earns its keep here: forward road and a look back at the rider in the same shot, so you get the bends and the grin together. There's a second camera on the bars too, for the straight-ahead, phone-on-the-tank point of view. Between them, that's the day — Tipperary to Mayo, mostly in the dry, occasionally not.

Day two is the long way home, and Ireland sends me off properly: a sheep in Mayo giving the road serious thought, a level-crossing, one last run of west-coast before the country flattens toward Dublin.

Then the bit every island trip ends with — the ferry terminal, the queue, the long metal ramp, and the daft little thrill of riding a motorbike straight onto a boat. A few hours of Irish Sea, and then Holyhead: Wales, home soil, a station train rattling past, and the last miles back toward Pontesbury in the failing light.