When Eimear "Bridie" Browne rolled into Rosslare, Co Wexford, yesterday and took a boat out to the Tuskar Rock, she achieved her ambition to circle every lighthouse on the Irish coastline.
The Meath cyclist and Irish Ferries employee has raised almost €45,000 for Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, during her epic circumnavigation by bike and boat - or land and sea. In the two months since leaving Rosslare, she has cycled to 38 lighthouses on the mainland and travelled to 42 offshore. During that time she had just two punctures - one near Belmullet, Co Mayo, and one in Co Cork. "I was told by a local radio journalist that there is more tar in a packet of fags than on Mayo roads, and he was certainly right," she laughed.
Ms Browne, from Kiltale, near Trim, engaged the assistance of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) for her sea trips, and her main support crew was her aunt, Ms Rose Kettle.
"The RNLI was wonderful, and when their volunteers couldn't take me out during a lifeboat exercise, they organised angling boats or other local craft," she said. Her aunt "shook the bucket" in every village and town, and the cyclist had a Garda escort through Dublin from Dún Laoghaire to Skerries.
Other escorts were provided along the route - the Waterford Harley Davidson motorbike club cruised with her from Dunmore East to Waterford city on Friday. On Saturday, members of the New Ross Cycling Club accompanied her on her penultimate leg, and the final journey yesterday by road to Rosslare was made with many friends who had supported her effort throughout.
In spite of torrential rain on the west coast throughout the past week, Ms Browne said she was pleased with the weather. Highlights were her trips to the Skelligs off the Kerry coast, and an unscheduled swim with Fungi, the Dingle dolphin, during her return from Inishtearaght.
Ms Browne's 22-year-old cousin, Lee Cromwell, spent the last fortnight of his life in Beaumont Hospital last September after he was involved in a car crash. She took leave from her job on the MV Normandy to undertake the cycle in his memory.
