Gregory is back on his bike - this time for the homeless!

An adventurous Virginia grandfather is preparing to embark on a gruelling 165km cycle later this week to raise funds for a homeless charity.

Young at heart Gregory O’Reilly will take on the National Famine Way, an epic cycle from Roscommon to Dublin, on his 1960 Vintage Raleigh Bike on April 29 for Help Our Homeless , an organisation based in Kingscourt that was set up to support and improve the lives of those who are experiencing homelessness.

The trail that Gregory will be following traces the footsteps of the Strokestown tenants, men, women and children who were marched from Roscommon to Dublin in 1847 after they failed to pay their rent. In Dublin, they boarded a ship to Liverpool before journeying to North America on board some of the worst coffin ships of the time. Not all of them made it alive. They became known as the ‘Missing 1490’.

The grandad who previously stated that age was “just a state of mind” also cycled the full length of the Boyne Valley to Lakelands Greenway in July on his 1960 Vintage Raleigh Bike to raise funds for a new minibus for the the Holy Family Special School, Cootehill, which his grandson attends.

It was also a novel way to celebrate his and wife Mary’s 61st wedding anniversary. No stranger to charity endeavours, inspirational Gregory celebrated his 80th birthday by cycling from his home in Virginia to Bailieboro, raising over €3,000 for the Holy Family Special School.

For his 79th birthday, the octogenarian undertook a 20km charity cycle from Virginia to Mullagh for Virginia Cancer Care.

“I have done a lot of things for charity and I thought I’m coming 83 I’m not going to be able to do much more so I may as well go out with a bang” said Gregory.

“I was up in Dublin one day and saw so many homeless people and I said if it’s the last thing I do now I will try to make a few bob for a homeless charity and Help our Homeless are a fantastic local charity,” he added.

“Mind you, I think this will be my last adventure before I hang up my bike!”

The Virginia man said Jim Callery, who founded the National Famine Museum at Strokestown Park and walked the 165km trail for his 90th birthday last year raising more than €50,000, inspired him to go the same route albeit with a set of wheels underneath him!

“I thought if that man is 90 and he walked it surely I can ride it on a bicycle!

“I will be going from Strokestown Park at the National Famine Museum to the Famine statues in Dublin Docklands, close to EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.

“I will be staying in my son’s van on the way overnight, wherever I finish he will leave the van there for me and I will be able to get up in the morning and head off nice and early. I hope I can do it in three days, that’s the plan!”

Although now a seasoned cyclist, there was no suggestion the Bailieboro native would be the maestro he has become.

“I had a bicycle at home as a teenager and I went to England when I was 19, I was 10 years there and I was 35 years in Dublin but during that time I never was on a bicycle at all,” recalls Gregory.

“We retired down here in Virginia and one day I was looking around and there was an old bicycle without wheels or a saddle that once belonged to my neighbour in Corravilla in Shercock, Tommy Lynch, and I had a saddle with me for about 40 years that I bought in Dublin in 1979,” he added.

“Don’t ask me why I bought it because I had no bicycle! I was at a charity event and I saw this Brooks saddle and everybody always talked about the Brooks saddle, it was the best saddle you could have on a bike. I just bought it for the look of it, came home and put it up on the wall in the house and it remained there all those years.”