 Now over at the Carrigan Cycle Club they've had another busy year and well they're continuing to cycle but it's been busy on the fundraising front because it's not a formal cycling club as such started out with a few of them like to cycle back in 2013 and it took off from there and they've been raising money right the way through well pretty much 2014 was the first fundraiser they did a Mallon to Misen Cycle and raised 10,000 euro for that so then it took off from there and to date they have raised over 105,000 euro so that is phenomenal for one week club Gary Stewart is a member and joins us now and we're streaming as well on Facebook and on YouTube if you want to have a look Gary hello John how are you good good thanks for coming in thank you thanks for having me now tell me about the club 2013 seems like a long time ago well just to me but alright we started it was there was a couple of local guys that had motor neurons and we decided or we thought chatting on the pub as you do we would like to do something for them you know for the charity and there was a few people in the area cycling I wasn't cycling a lot of the other guys weren't cycling and somebody said one night one Sunday night we had made up why didn't we cycle from Misen de Mallon we all laughed of course well you're not a cyclist even if you're a cyclist you might laugh at that one so that was alright wasn't talked about much the following week I'd come up again and then we eventually says you know what let's do this and that's when the ball started to get rolling are we chatting fellas roughly the same age or that's just a complete you couldn't when I was coming on here today I decided did not mention any names because you just couldn't there's too many people we do cycles there's young guys there 17 18 19 there's guys 70 so it's just across the board I suppose over the years a fellas have come and go got gone people come and go we we are main area as karygans so we sort of base everything around the karygans and karygans so we have meetings and stuff there and then we we're sort of our area then will be kind of newton blugary run around millenon st johnson so you've that main area but then you have other people that has cycled with us from like convoy and refoe and different places so as you say people come they do maybe just one cycle and people go and then we have a sort of a we have a good sort of a core and the group and we didn't want to be a club because a club meant that we were going to have a chair man and we're going to have a secretary and we're going to be really official and we weren't that official we just were like a people that wanted the cycle so it's a group that's a group yeah that's a group group yeah so the the purpose really would be I suppose a two-fold one would be to you know get together regularly and do an activity in this case cycling and also to raise money for charity yeah uh the the board on your own thing came up and we said we would we would do something for it and then the the the musnty man come up and we started training so we were training all together for uh maybe on a tuesday night and a thursday night and then we were out on a big cycle on a sunday and everybody knew I mean when you're cycling on a big group like that I think there was 18 of us done the musnty man then we had people that cooked for us we had people that drove done traffic management we you know a sign in the front of a vehicle saying charity cycle the whole thing started to get very it wouldn't say professional but it started to get it started to get good people come on with different ideas they says why don't we get a a shirt printed I think we're on our fourth shirt now over the years we were we got a t-shirt done with the charity on the t-shirt so when we were on the cycle we were going on the pubs people was coming up to you and saying oh you sure doing that for motor neurons or neonatal or whatever you were doing it for and they were just handing you money so um over the various cycles and over the years you've raised money for for different charities yeah has it all been official charities or has it been for the for the community as well no there's been ones for the community there's a wee group there and carragans who does a carragans tidy town they actually had a wee event there on sunday and the pub and they had a wee auction and they actually raised £8,000 on sunday there uh so we would do we would help them out we we we don't know we uh run and we bought a defibrillator for outside the pub just in case anybody had too much stout and then uh but that went outside the pub so it's a great thing you know and we done that for the the the tidy towns kind of group you know uh but there's stuff going on all the time and it's great for your it's great for yourself mentally to you know you you could pull back the curtains and out sunday morning at eight o'clock and say you know what not going to bother the day i'll just lie on but you never regretted them when you go out no you don't i mean i've seen us come in uh been in carrandona one sunday and we were going over the whole road from carranday on kralla and the hillstone was bitten off the side of your face and you were saying to yourself why am i doing this sunday morning you know but when you when you hand over the check when you have the the when you see what you're doing i mean even to this day when i look at this plaque and this is one of the reasons that we had to do this plaque that's because we were forgetting yeah for those for those that aren't watching it's uh it's more than a plaque it's a it's a big it's a big board and it's got all the all the plaques from the various fundraisers on it good ideas he just decided to put each one up there as as you as you went along we had a job because we were forgetting what we were doing and when when we all sat down somebody would have said you know oh man we done that there uh we do different things we there's a there's a motorcycle run we we don't there's some of us bigger so we don't a motorcycle run for the r&la and all about it's not all about it's like we do tractor runs we do walks we climb mountains we do stupid things we one of the challenges we done was a big one now and we cycled from uh carragans on a saturday morning to westport i think it was 147 miles uh we climbed copatric on the sunday and then no no we cycled down on the friday we cycled down on the friday we climbed copatric on the saturday and then we cycled home on the sunday you know i see it relaxing again and where's that is that going on the bar that's on the on the bar yeah that stays in the bar all the time so there's actually three more runs there we done a spun on carragans there on saturday past uh and it's just amazing that i done from 10 o'clock to uh 11 and there's just a table there's buckets sitting out on it we done it for uh we done that one for there's that much stuff goes on uh i understand it'll be hard hard to keep track so we done that for the irish kidney association and on oncology unit and in letter kenny and that raised three thousand pounds there's that many there's a lust of people that wants to wants us to do things for them and we will get round to them all but just different things come in and you say i will do it for that and you know and i think it's just good if you're doing it for anything you know if you're well it's good on different levels you say good for your mental health um great that you're raising money for charity uh it's great that it's um it's you know it's the community it's the group coming together yeah and and you know just i suppose enjoying you yeah you will be doing these things if you weren't enjoying it along the way and even even the training that you know as long as not all hail showers is is a bit of fun the training's good crack the the crack and that's why it has a grip and people come and people go and new people join and and there's a core group there all the time but there's always a bit you know when things become when things start happening the lack of that spun at cairns on sunday uh i mean we don't the spun from nine in the morning the nine at night uh it takes a bit of organizing so it takes a bit of organizing but everybody pulls on together then you know when you have people that maybe have stop cycle and they'll come over and they'll do a wee button everybody does everybody knows what they do you know and that's the great thing about it and that's great for a community that that gels the community together yeah it is brilliant for the community and that's brilliant for the four cairns and the surrounding area and i think when people you know when i look at this plaque i don't believe and i don't everything on it and you're involved in all of those yeah and uh i just look at it and say god i i don't believe i don't believe that i've done that you know so it's guess when one's over you're just you're on to the next thing on the next thing kovat had us a wee bit there so kovat sort of knocked the one that air sales a bit uh because we couldn't train because you were meeting people on the road you were out training on your own you couldn't go too far you wanted to stick by the rules you couldn't go out in a group way where you're carrying us top on you and and you know you were breaking the rules obviously and so we just trained on our own round back roads but things have started to come around again there now took it away but they get going again but it is going again and that's good so what next do you know do you know what the next challenge is we're talking about now maybe next aster so we couldn't do an aster challenge this past couple of years so we're talking about maybe next aster uh cycling up maybe the androm coast lovely we looked at getting through belfast and we didn't we weren't unsure of how to get through belfast on a bicycle uh but then we researched a wee bit and we seen then that there was cycle pass right right through belfast and a friend of mine in belfast who cycles up there he sort of told us what to do and where they go so we're maybe looking at that now and it will be up the androm coast probably over a couple of days so we would stay away two nights and what we usually do is we have meetings up to the event yeah and we just the planet the planet yeah and we throw on a few pounds for a hotel and our food and along along the way yeah yeah so we you know you're not giving out no big money you're you're giving it as you go along and it's just it's good it's good to be a long way people you know and yeah see everybody working together and i suppose covid brought that into focus just how much we rely on one another and how much we we need a community and you know this is a great example of one that that's working really well in the form of carrigan's cycle club willison well done gary you and everybody that's currently in the club or that's helped on any any of those charity initiatives cycles or or other events it's it's a credit to everybody involved and and continued success thank you very much john thanks for helping me happy news from alde