Events: Good old Rally of the Lakes... - Juiceboxforyou

You could write forever about Killarney, everyone knows just how infamous the whole rally of the lakes is amongst the car scene; mostly it’s a bad vibe, if you ever plan on going down to the lakes, and you may as well leave your car enthusiasm at home. Now that’s not a bad thing, this whole little feature was never planned, the lakes is infamous for messing, it’s pretty much why most people make the trip down to Kerry from around the country.

The entire weekend is split down the middle, well sort of… the small town gets completely overloaded with cars from around Ireland, mostly people down to get drunk meet up with friends and have the craic… with a splash of rallying on the side. There are many others who go down and make sure to hit most of the stages, unfortunately as much as we intended to do such things, we failed miserably.

We didn’t get into fights like these guys, instead we immersed ourselves in what pretty much makes Killarney infamous amongst the Irish car scene. Things just get out of hand and it’s pretty damn funny, now you could say that it’s not right and this that and the other, but holy shit it’s a good weekend.

I really wish I had brought the camera the first night, the usual scutting and rooting had taken place and it was chaos, I don’t know what is in the air in Killarney but everything was out of hand, you really do get infected by what is around you and suddenly want more. Everyone who has been to the lakes knows what I mean, the more you get into it… the worse it gets.

Being turned upside down was never so much fun, especially with a hangover…

After the upside down madness, we jumped into the weapon of choice, a 93 BB h22 prelude. We decided to tackle the mountains in true sham fashion pretending we were 17 in a robbed car. Luckily the driver was no stranger to a good back road. It wasn’t going to end up being a road safety campaign ad.

After reaching the halfway mark, we were greeted by a collection of rather nice Hondas….

And a view that makes Ireland look somewhat appealing….

Not to worry, just when you think you are out of the clear, something will ease past reminding you that you are at the Rally of the Lakes, most of the time it wont be rally car related and somehow it makes you smile….

We decided to head back down for Today, it was too late and we missed most of the stages… We had crossed over to the other side, there was no turning back…

Back down in Killarney it was tough to capture cars as most of the time the idea is to just aimlessly drive around and laugh at everything. Every now and again we would make an exception, this 15 was stunning, but I will be forever baffled as to why it had mud flaps.

A sneaky s12 lurked passed a McDonalds window…

This year the lakes had every single Altezza in the country in attendance; this was one of the more appealing ones rolling around.

This Datsun was rather nice.

After a trip to the upside down car again we decided to go on the trail…

The smell of 13 inch Nankang was fresh… we knew we were close….

So in true Lakes fashion we set sailed…

We stumbled upon some pretty amazing roads with even more enjoyable backdrops.

You’re never too far from a Japanese car at the lakes, it was sort of nice as over the last few months most of the decent cars on the road have been replaced by felt spec nonsense.

The roads themselves became a sight to behold.

After a few hours we came across some actual rallying. At the end of the day this is why the whole weekend exists.

Its comical how the entire event has two separate collections of people, I couldn’t help but think about how funny it is that most people never even make it to a stage… but it’s what makes the weekend worthwhile.. The atmosphere of both ends comes together every night.

Rallying is so impressive that most of us Irish take it all for granted, and not in a bad way.

It’s still one of the most impressive motorsports at grass roots level…it doesn’t take us on this website to tell you that… for those few hours we sat there in awe as usual at the cars and skill level.. laughing about RPM on UTV and stuff, as many of us who grew up on rallying have ventured other ways and got into other areas we talked about how easy you can forget about the effort that goes into rally driving. I know there will be many of you who will think what the fuck… but for the others you know what we mean.

A surprise to see an EVO II lurking close to a stage.

Followed by this truly impressive Ferio, kitted out in full Mugen attire, this car oozes potential. I’m still gob smacked that it too had a set of mud flaps. It has all the right parts.

Some more shamtastic action followed, with the addition of some of Clonmels finest beverages. We had soon set sailed on a trip across Molls Gap and the ring of Kerry….

The scenery was so intense..

So we added this human to take the look off of things.

At the bottom of the mountain we were graced with this limited edition Proton. What a sight!

It’s almost impossible to describe the Rally of the lakes on a website, it’s pretty much the most Irish thing ever mixed with good and bad cars, shams and rallying, I wish we had more photos but unfortunately no one could operate the camera as we took part in the weekend. I guess it’s the most Irish car event you will ever experience if you go without the intention of seeing any type of rallying…. and somehow that makes it a seriously fun time.