StormThoughts

This was a planned cycle by the Royal Canal and backroads to Mayo. Here are the links for each day’s cycle.

Day 1: Dublin Mullingar

Day2: Mullingar Strokestown

Day3: Strokestown Charlestown

Day4: Charlestown Newport

The trip was completed by Sinead McDermott, Alastair McDermott, Paul Morton, Bruce Ryan, Mike McCarthy, Mike Millar, Joe McDermott. Back up was by Pauline McDermott and Cepta Morton. Day 1 and 2 were bright and sunny overall. Day 3 was brutal, cycling into a hurricane, branches littering the road sides, driving rainshowers. Day 4 and the wind eased somewhat and it was dry. Personally I felt very good considering I had just had my appendix removed!!

view along the canal tow path

smooth cycling along the canal

This was a training trip. Sinead and I just doing another warm up for the September cross Ireland cycle with Paul Morton and friends.

There is a nice biking and hiking route from Castlebar and the National Museum at Turlough, to Bohola on grassy back roads, even linking up to Kiltamagh!!! Almost no traffic, forests, bogs and cattle grazing in fields of green. sorry no pics…. next time.

Castlebar Bohola Castlebar road biking at EveryTrail
EveryTrail

Official opening of The Great Western Greenway

Story:

Great day …this opening of The Great Western Green way. The Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Enda Kenny led the peloton as we set out from Westport, to Newport, Mulrany and into Achill Sound. It is wonderful to have a Taoiseach who can participate comfortably in such a cycle trip. Michael Ring, Minister for Tourism also did the entire trip. The sun shone and everybody was happy with the trip, not one for speed records though!!! This Taoiseach is very well liked and hundreds came out to see the peloton. That meant lots of stops and tapes to be cut etc. A hard core of 40 plus cyclists did the entire trip, while many locals joined us for short distances. It was enjoyable to spin along and chat with the Taoiseach, and for a few hours he had no cares to attend to, just the chat and banter that accompanies a peloton as it travels along. We all enjoyed ourselves. Well done everybody who played any part in putting this Great Western Greenway in place, especially the land owners whose generosity of spirit is to be acknowledged.

One of the most noticeable features of the Newport Landscape this summer was the appearance of bicycles. In all shapes and sizes, colours and designs. On bike racks attached to cars, on trailers, and stand alone they appeared.
Why? well, we all know thw answer, The Great Western Greenway attracted cyclists from far and near, from Ireland and abroad, experienced lycra clad veterns vied with first time grandmothers heading down the greenway toward Mallarranny. A bike fest!!!

New bike rental agencies emerged to do business. B/B’s experienced a new phenomenon – Bike Helmets – high tech pumps – instead of fishing rods.

We are on the cusp of a tourism paradigm shift here in West Mayo. Newport is poised to become the biking centre of Ireland. Remember Stradballey and steam, now Electric Picnic? We can do that too.

The Greenway has created a spinal column to which Newport can add the limbs of electric assisted bicycling, and off road intermediate mountain biking. And of course pure mountain biking …. the trail already exists in Letterkeen Wood, it just needs tweeking.

Such a route as the Achill Spur hiking trail would be an excellent intermediate mountain bike trail. The Western Way from Derry near Bellacorrick south through the forest is already in used by some. Srahmore and Letterkeen wood are a haven for such off road trails. With a little adjustment here and there they would be first class. There is physical challenge, wild wilderness, astounding scenery such as anything I have seen in Oregon or Washington state where such trail cycling is enjoyed.

So what do we need to do? Not a lot really, marketing certainly but the Greenway cannot have cost a lot in marketing? So get out and utilize the existing bog roads, forestry trails, signboard them! signpost them! map them! Make .gpx files available to users.

Encourage the RRO and Trails people to promote them. Educate the Tourism people to their existence and usability. The Great western Greenway is a great success, it can be an entree to other forms of off road biking.

There are other bikers out there who crave such experiences, I mountain biked in Moab Utah last year, slick rock cycling they called it. We could only go out at seven o’clock in the morning or late in the evening. They hankered after a drop of cool rain!!! Imagine that!

Imagine building on the concept of the Greenway … Rails to trails…. how about a cycling Museum in Newport, somewhere in my archive of old Newport photos there is one of two High Nellies leaning against a wall!!!

A sunny day on the Achill Spur Nephin Mountains Newport Mayo

Well it was almost inevitable, the Leinster pack were just to strong for Munster and Ronan just could’nt kick….. opting in the first half to look for attacking positions from penalties, positions that were extremely well defended by a mean Leinster defense….. and Johhny could and did kick his points…. one a lovely kick to convert a classic Leinster try by Rob Carney. Munster have problems but thats for them… Leinster just need to settle down and there will be silver again for the third year in a row. Ospreys looked good but really Glasgow were’nt a strong challenge.
It has been a nice few years and we will miss Micheal Cheika, but he has laid down a solid system and we have players coming through.

This was a great trip if not the greatest match. The boys in blue did enough to ensure a home draw against Clermont Auvergne in the quarter final of the European Heineken Cup. We had 7,500 supporters over from Ireland. The atmosphere was good even if we were in such a big stadium, [47,000] altogether I am told, in a 76,000 seater.

D’Arcy was magnificent as was Isa Nacewa.

Alastair and Anne Marie enjoyed themselves and we met Brian Dornan, Eoin and his girlfriend [name gone sorry] as well as Greg.

We march on !!!

For some time I had been thinking about this activity. I finally got around to joining the Geocaching community in January. It is great fun. Already I have found four local caches. I hope to “hide” one myself within the next few weeks. I enjoyed the caches where I had to hike in to the location, a bit of effort was needed!!! Reading the log entries and coming home to register my finds was exciting. Some of us are easily pleased.

One thing I have learned is that my Garmin Etrex HC Summit is a really good GPS. On each occasion it brought me to within a metre of the Cache.

Is it a sport or ? I go for the sport definition.