A Galway daredevil celebrated her 83rd birthday in advance last week – by demonstrating that she hasn’t a notion of slowing down.

Because Maeve Keane from Craughwell marked her big day early, by ticking off another item from her bucket list – flying around Mondello Park in a big red Ferrari F430 Spider.

Her only gripe about a day she thoroughly enjoyed was that the shorter straight stretches on the iconic track didn’t give her enough time to build up to an even faster speed!

“I loved it,” she said. “I’ve always had a thing about speed, and this was my only chance to do it.”

Indeed such is her love of fast cars that she admits she has to put her own car on cruise control to keep her speed down!!

Maeve, a native of Drumcondra in Dublin but living in Seefin, Craughwell, since she married Paddy Keane in 1983, describes herself as ‘very sensible’ – although she admits that her friends have another word for her. “They think I’m cracked.”

Her visit to Mondello – which was planned by her good friends Kathleen Raftery and Mary Carr to celebrate her 80th birthday in 2020 – first had to be postponed due to Covid.

It was postponed again last winter because of snow and ice – but when it finally happened last week, it proved well worth the wait.

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