The Cranks Cycling Club

	Welcome to the Cranks Website! The Cranks Cycling Club is a leisure club based in Cork, Ireland. We go for spins around Munster, particularly Kerry and Cork. Contact us if you have any questions about cycling around the South of Ireland.

Latest News

• We've just come back from a great trip to the French Pyrenees; we cycled the Col de Tourmalet and the Col du Soleur, and had a great few days, it was a breath-taking introduction to cycling on real mountains. We'll have a description and some photos on the site shortly.
  
• Having cycled the Tourmalet on Tuesday, Pat Walsh went back to his true vocation and ran the Cork City marathon the following Monday, this must be some kind of record!.
  
• Chris completed his first Wicklow 200 on June 10th, on the hottest day of the year so far. Tough but a great experience and a great way to meet other cycling fanatics!
  
• Tim has signed up to raise funds for the Kerry Mountain Rescue Service, by cycling the Ring of Kerry this year. If the bad weather keeps up he might have to bring his kayak instead!

History

When you reach your 40's, every few weeks brings an anniversary of something; first snog, first pint, first job. In 2004 Neil O'Keeffe was reminiscing on a cycle he and John Hodnett had done from Cork to Kenmare in the early 80's; he decided to organise a similar spin in late summer, and a lot of us in the office were enthused as it chimed nicely with our own mid-life crisises.

We organised a few training spins and realised how much fun was to be had in cycling and we knuckled down to more serious distances. In the end the Kenmare trip didn't happened due to work and family commitments; instead we had a great day out on the Sheep's Head peninsula in West Cork in September 2004.

Shortly after this Chris O'Donoghue circulated a half-thought out email suggesting a trip from Mizen Head to Malin Head, possibly for charity. This really caught the imagination and we ended up with 10 committed cyclists, 2 support people and a lot of enthusiasm from friends and family. We decided to form a club and registered with Cycling Ireland, this was mainly to get insurance and to gain access to the support available from the cycling organisations

	Our original logo demonstrated our single-mindedness; we've lightened up a lot since then.

 

Members

We still call ourselves the Cranks, but we're no longer a formal club, as we found the administration too much hassle. The original 10 who did the Mizen to Malin trip are still the core of the club, even though some haven't swang a leg over a crossbar in a over a year!

	We've since been joined by Mark O'Brien; Mark is an ex-club cyclist who came on the Algarve trip in May 2006, and has since come to the Pyrenees and local trips.

 

Future

We plan a few local spins around Munster during the summer, and may take part in the Ring of Kerry cycle in July. This is in aid of Enable Ireland and is well worth supporting; by all accounts it's a great day out.

We may do another trip to the Continent in September, we're still deciding on where and when.