A cold wet – chilly – day – but well worth it at the Belfast City Hall helping out the Island Trikers with their street collection – if only for the free hugs – as long as you put cash in the bucket – and great craic for the NI Cancer Fund for Children.
The street collection by the Island Trikers has now become an annual event in the front of Belfast City Hall, the front of Castle Court and round at the Europa, attracting other riders to help out. Especially at the City Hall with free hugs for those that donated their cash into the collecting tins and buckets.
There was the added bonus of the “real” Santa being there, I knew it was the real Santa because the small kids coming past looked in awe and wanting to come over and see him!
Along with Santa there was a bear, a tigger and a snowman, with a variety of other costumes and trike and bike lighting up displays.
Although it wasn’t the winter weather for snowmen, the day certainly threw every other type of weather our way, a weather bomb apparently.
It rained and it rained and it blew a gale at one point bending the marquee into a heap of uselessness or in other other words, a typical winter’s day in Northern Ireland.
Christmas Cheer
However there was a lot of Christmas cheer about, what more could you want on a day that, with hugs and even a visit on their way past from the effervescent kids of the African Children’s Choir.
There was even at one stage a protest rally of a dozen people or more about the water rates debacle down South. They wanted free water, “from the river to the sea”. I don’t think they got the irony of the rain chucking it down around them, there was plenty of free water available. Anyway they soon calmed down and dispersed unlike the continuing rain.
It was a soggy day in a bright yellow N.I Cancer Fund for Children t-shirt, with more layers on than an unpeeled onion to keep me warm, with a fantastic effort from the folk at Island Trikers and other riders that turned out to help.
The day was never going to surpass last year’s fantastic total of around £4,600 with £10,500 having been collected in the previous 4 years. The Island Trikers also have an annual run for the NI Cancer Fund for Children – Shimma Valley Ride Out which finishes at the NI Cancer Fund for Children, Daisy Lodge short break centre near Newcastle, County Down.
However this years total of £2,771 is not be sniffed at, unlike the runny nose I have appeared to have got from the day!
Island Trikers – On Facebook
Island Trikers – NI Cancer Fund for Children – December 2014
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