Top Gear Live

Top Gear Live, originally uploaded by magnum_lady.

So this weekend Top Gear Live was at the RDS in Dublin. Jono is a massive Top Gear fan (so am I), so when the tickets went on sale in July we got them.

We were going to travel up today, but the rail line is still closed from Carrick on Shannon to Longford due to the flooding and a bus transfer was operating between those stations but there have been delays. So rather then miss the show we went to Dublin yesterday and managed to book a room at Bewleys Hotel which is near the RDS.

We left Collooney just after 7pm and didn’t get to the hotel until almost 11pm. There was an old couple snogging most of the way during the bus journey (eww).
We were starving when we got to the hotel so luckily they were still serving bar food and we got something to eat. The hotel is in a lovely building although the rooms are basic enough but the beds were really comfortable.

Anyway back to Top Gear. We started queuing to get in at 9.30am and there were already lots of people in front of us. When we got in there was a line up of mini’s. Then inside the hall there were Movie motors, Hamleys, Playstation, Bose, Bulmers, Motor mouse (which we saw on the Dragons Den….and the people are lovely).
There were all sorts of cars and we spent almost two hours looking around.

Outside there were all kinds of events: Wall Climbing, Rally simulators, Dream rides, and the most brilliant thing of all we got to go in a Jeep and it took us over all kinds of ramps and up and down hills. I really didn’t know if we would like this but it was fantastic! Thankfully I wasn’t driving though. You can check the company out here: http://www.irelandxtreme.ie/

Then we made our way into the show. It was great to see James May, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and The Stig in the flesh. Richard really is tiny.
They had all sorts of things going on. There were fireworks, stunt drivers, a game of football played by cars (Ireland vs France…..luckily Ireland won).
Reliant Robin racing, everytime one went around the corner it flipped over!
I love the ‘garden item’ racing. Richard had made a vehicle out of a strimmer, James had made one out of a sun lounger and chainsaws!, Jeremy’s was made from leaf blowers.
It was really funny seeing Mr. Clarkson going all over the place. James won and really made the most of it.
The Stig came out at the end of the show and was battling against other cars and then did a ‘loop the loop’ (death wall), where he drove the car around a circle, which was cool.
Two things surprised me, one was that some people took very small children to the show. They couldn’t have been more then three years old. The one behind us talked the whole way through the show. I also couldn’t believe people in the bars at that time in the morning and people eating burgers at 9.30am.

I’ve done bits of video which I’ll post later. Photos are here. I’m shattered this evening. We got the 4pm train from Dublin (there were two teenager girls sitting opposite us, battering the hell out of eachother, luckily they got off at Mullingar), but when we got to Longford we had a bus to bring us to Collooney, we didn’t get there until after 7pm.

On other news we got a letter from the hospital yesterday confirming Jono’s date 🙂