Post up your cycle routes

mikemac

I didn't see any threads like this and maybe a mod can make this a sticky.
If you know good cycle routes, then post them up and give some helpful info as well. It'll help your fellow cyclists if they want to try to something different on a Sunday afternoon perhaps.

I'll start and maybe people can use this format.

Alfie Byre Rd -> Sutton -> Lap of Howth Hill and return
Distance: 34km
Good Points: Mostly flat, good cycle lane, pretty high speed.
Bad Points: Often strong winds, no cycle lane at Bull Island,
Howth Hill is tough, dodge the rollerbladers

Chips Lovell

I live in town so I know that route well. Handy for a quick spin after work, especially in the dark evenings. I never bother with the cycle path though. Way too many pedestrians, dogs, rollerbladers, etc. A good way of extending the ride is pushing on to Malahide after Howth and coming back down the Malahide Road, as outlined here.

Most of the routes I've done regularly are on my Routeslip page. It's a handy resource, but the site can be a bit buggy as its maintained by just one guy who has lots of other commitments.

Robin1982

Great link (routeslip) el_tonto, I've been looking for a site like that for a while. Cheers!

Chips Lovell

Yeah, it's pretty useful for plotting rides and the elevation feature is a nice addition.

oobydooby

yeah super link el_tonto. Tell me, to input your routes did you just painstakingly enter lots of dots to fill in the route, or did the computer fill it in along the road for you? Are there any shortcuts for this? And then I'm guessing that google maps has the height recorded at each point on the map to calculate the cumulative climb?

I guess you could faithfully input off-road tracks if that's the case. Brilliant piece of software and very decent of the programmer to make it available.

kincsem

I bought a book "leisure Cycling Near Dublin" by Hugh Halpin, in Dubray bookshop in Stillorgan last week. Strangely it was in the Irish Interest section, not in Sports, or Travel.

It lists 40 routes (11 in Wicklow, my interest). 206 pages. €9.99 pbk.

Its one of those little books that will sell out and not be seen again. Each route has Distance; Cycling Time; Terrain; Roads; Attractions. e.g 30 km; 4 1/2 hours; Mountainous; Half regional and half third-class;

blorg

Some other sites along the lines of routeslip (hadn't seen that before) include MapMyRide and Bikely:

http://www.mapmyride.com/user_profile?username=blorg
http://www.bikely.com/listpaths/by/blorg

www.bikeroutetoaster.com is good for creating courses you haven't done before; it does auto-routing but only on main roads outside Dublin.

Chips Lovell

oobydooby wrote:

Tell me, to input your routes did you just painstakingly enter lots of dots to fill in the route, or did the computer fill it in along the road for you? Are there any shortcuts for this?

Well, it just got a lot easier recently. You just enter waypoints and it follows the road for you. Before that it you had to do it all yourself. Was also a pain in the ass before Google updated its Ireland maps. You had to use the satellite image to follow the road.

oobydooby wrote:

And then I'm guessing that google maps has the height recorded at each point on the map to calculate the cumulative climb?

I think the elevation data comes from another service, which can integrate with Google.

oobydooby wrote:

I guess you could faithfully input off-road tracks if that's the case. Brilliant piece of software and very decent of the programmer to make it available.

I've never done off-road stuff, but I'm guessing you could just use the satellite image.