Cycle Tour of Ireland

Ciaran OHara

Hi

My name is Ciaran and along with my partner Amy we have decided to cycle around Ireland in September 2013. We have lived in Perth, Australia for over two years now and often get asked if we have been to particular places in Ireland to which our answer is often no. As serious cyclists we have been keen to do a lengthy tour for quite a while and our beautiful country has now offered us this opportunity.

We are undertaking this cycle not only for personal achievement but also as an opportunity to raise money and awareness for two worthy charities, The Foyle Hospice & Macmillan Cancer Support. Both these charities mean alot to us as Amy works as an oncology nurse, dealing with cancer patients on a daily basis, and the Foyle Hospice is a local charity that has cared for many family and friends over the years.

We plan to cover 1500km in 9/10 days and our proposed route plan can be viewed here with a day to day breakdown and further information on our facebook page. This route has not yet been set in stone and we are open to suggestions for places that we must visit along the way and also particular stretches of road that we should avoid for any reason.

We will be travelling extremely light as we will not be camping or cooking. We plan to stay with friends, family, friends of friends, strangers, friends of strangers and anyone else who can offer us a bed for the night along the way. We will not have a support vehicle and 100% of money raised is going direct to our chosen charities via our donate pages, The Foyle Hospice & MacMillan Cancer Support.

We realise how big an undertaking this is and are planning for every eventuality however we are keen to receive any information and advice anyone has to offer in regards to route, equipment, accommodation, possible problems and anything else you may think is relevant to our cause.

Thank you for reading and we appreciate your support.

Mochara

nilhg

Ciaran, firstly fair play to yourself and Amy and the best of luck with your undertaking.

I would make a general comment on the route though, for a cycling tour of Ireland it does seem to avoid many of the best cycling bits of the country, others will add more but I'd suggest to you that you are missing out by avoiding West Mayo, Connemara, The Burren, all the peninsulas in the South West, the Wicklow Mountains, The Mournes and even the Slieve Blooms though they are hard to include in a lap of Ireland.

I know that including some or most of the above makes the logistics of getting round the country harder/slower but on a cycling tour of the country I think it'd be a pity to leave all of them out.

Ciaran OHara

Thanks for the reply and info. Our current route is simply a work in progress to give people an idea of what we want to do. We are relying on people like yourself who have experience cycling in these areas to provide advice so that our journey can be as rewarding as possible and also challenging.

Based on recent advice we are looking into including the west coast of Clare and taking the ferry across to Kerry. Climbing the Wicklow mountains and navigating around Dublin are two routes that we are also investigating as we do not know much about the category of the climbs yet.

We do want to see everywhere we can and although we have no real time frame or distance limit this is our first tour (of significant length) and we do not want to over do it first time around and not be able to finish. Ireland is our stepping stone to something bigger and we want to find out how our bodys and bikes will cope with cycling 10 hours per day for 10 days.

We really appreciate any info you have to offer in regards to road conditions, elevations and any other route advice to make this a great journey for us.

nilhg

Ciaran, I know that you could spend a month just going down the west coast so you have to pick and choose. You've set yourselves a significant physical challenge so adding in extra mountains might not be a great idea but if ye get the balance right I'm sure ye will be fine.

have a look at the Race around Ireland route, I'm not suggesting you follow it but it does give you an idea of the places the cycling community would consider worth including.

http://www.racearoundireland.com/race-route.asp

Ciaran OHara

This time around we are going to have to pick and choose with the idea being to visit anywhere we miss in the future. Emmet Roche, one of the race around Ireland organisers, has been in touch with us already offering route advice so we shouldn't have too much trouble but we will still be keen to receive information from anyone offering.

Road surface conditions worry me more than hills as I am a pretty strong climber and travelling light but obviously climbing day after day compounds the difficulty and they get tougher and tougher as the tour progresses.

Have sometime today so I am going to have a look at your suggestions and adjust the section of our route through Mayo.