The “Bulfin Heritage Cycle Rally” was first held in 2014 as a unique event aimed at showcasing the hidden heritage and tourism potential of the South Midlands area of Ireland. Gaining its inspiration from William Bulfin, who cycled around Ireland in 1902, the event is a valuable introduction to the heritage that inspired much of the history, culture, music and storytelling of Ancient Ireland.

“William Bulfin was by no means the usual tourist and his greatest enthusiasms were for places that the usual tourist had not yet penetrated” (Benedict Kiely, Capuchin Annual 1948)

From Laois People –

On his arrival back in Ireland in 1901, from Argentina, William Bulfin set about planning a unique journey across Ireland on a brand new steel framed bicycle that he had purchased from Pierce Engineering in Wexford. While on this journey William says he took notes, “more or less hurriedly, at irregular intervals, generally out of reach of books or references”. The outcome of this almost three thousand mile journey was the book entitled Rambles In Eirinn. Published in 1907. This book is a well-regarded account of his travels around the island of Ireland by bicycle. As well as great descriptions of scenery, chance meetings and encounters, William visits places of historic interest (places of battles, events and legends) and recounts these tales, his observations there; critiques of the history as well as thoughts on the lay of the land of that day (1902).

William Bulfin

William Bulfin was a man who loved everything about Ireland; its heritage, its landscape, its people. Nowhere was this more evident than in his writings, as he travelled around this beautiful land of ours on his High Nelly bicycle in 1902.

For him all Ireland was sacred ground, but in a particular way his heart was in North Munster and the soft melancholy Midlands, and it was in those places that his book of journeys began. In his book, “Rambles in Eirinn” William wrote …”You are higher than the grey peaks of the nearest ranges; you are on a level with the others. You are up in the blue air where only the eagle soars and the skylark sings.The rooks and daws and seafowl are winging their flight below you over lake and valley and hill. Only the clouds lie here when they are lazy or too full of rain to travel. It is the flower of bogs-the canavaun of the mountain tops of Eire.”

From everything that that passage meant to the soul of the man who wrote it. The ingredients of that passage are an eye for colour, a remembrance of things past, an ability to see and value the phenomena of social change.

Benedict Kiely from “The Capuchin Annual” 1948