Joe Harkin (right) was also a talented musician picuted here with Hughie McGovern.

THE ‘Cycling Man’ who clocked up thousands of kilometres without ever leaving Letterkenny’s Port Road is now attracting attention in Kilcar – 80 kilometres away!
Made out of a bike frame and the boxes that the bikes came in, the window display proved to be a very popular stop-off point for pedestrians as they made their way up the town over  many years.
It was located across the road from the old Scala cinema and former Robertson School, from where children watched him on his never-ending journey.
He was made back in 1927 by Joe Harkin who ran Harkin’s bike shop.
After the shop closed in the early 1980s, the Cycling Man spent some time behind a bar in Tamworth outside Birmingham before coming back to Donegal and Kilcar.
Debbie Harkin is Joe Harkin’s grand-daughter. She was happy to report this week that the Cycling Man is still going strong after 94 years.
Debbie is the daughter of Jack and Bebe Harkin. Her brother Tommy, who lives in the Mountain Top, copied his granddad’s idea and also made a bike.
“Granddad’s bike is still intact and I turn him on from time to time. Indeed he was peddling away in the window one night as my son was being left home by his friend’s mother and she wondered what I was doing on an exercise bike at that time of the night,” she laughed.
The Cycling Man was as much part of Letterkenny in the 1960s and ‘70s as the Polestar is now and people of a certain age can still remember watching him cycling away in the window of Harkin’s shop which was located close to the old Golden Grill premises.
“The motor was made from an old gramophone while he made the man out of the boxes that bikes came in.
“Granddad used to play the mandolin in the hotel across from the house (McCarry’s) every night with Hugh McGovern, the undertaker,” recalled Debbie.
“When the shop was open ‘he’ was cycling but then granddad would turn him off at night. People used to go up the Port Road just to stare in the window.
“My granny Kathleen also used to sell day-old chicks from the house. They would be put on the bus and delivered to all parts of the county. I was talking to an older person in Glencolmcille recently who remembered taking chicks off the bus and putting them in front of the range. It’s a small world,” she said.
After the shop closed, the Cycling Man was packed up and shipped over to Tamworth.
“He’s been in the UK where he was behind the counter in my uncle Dezy’s pub with a can of beer in his hand but I always thought that he belonged back here in Ireland so we took him home about 20 years ago.
“He’s now my in my window here in Kilcar cycling away the odd time but I wouldn’t want to wear him out. He’s 94-years-old after all,” Debbie pointed out.
“Tommy copied grandad’s idea and he brought his bike over when he was child-minding. With the lockdown and more families out walking it too has become a big hit. He decked it out in NHS colours as a thank you to the doctors and nurses and people have been coming from all over to take photos.”