Royal Canal on a Road Bike

3 of us did the Royal Canal 200 Audax as a permanent yesterday, the name is a little deceiving as about 56km is on the Old Rail Trail to Moate and back, we started/finished at Mary Lynches. I was a bit concerned that the surface might be poor in places given the recent weather and the fact that the last time I was up that way ( a couple of years ago) there was a good bit of deterioration in places. As it turned out it was fine, 2 of us were on road bikes, me with 32mm GP5000s and Brian on 28s while the other chap was on his Diverge with pathfinder pros, none of us had any hassle.

It was good to see areas being resurfaced with a new layer of grit, hopefully the rest of it will be done in due course, there are some sections with mini potholes that need watching for but you can still pick a safe path through.

We did a 2 and a half stop ride, the first 2 were planned, coffee and a sambo in Streamstown then soup in The Richmond Inn in Cloondara, the half came when Brian punctured right outside a Maxol in the centre of Mullingar so we had a late coffee to warm us up for the last 10km out to the van.

Great to get a 200km Audax in with no traffic to worry about, I think we had to give way to one car on one of the shared spaces and apart from that we had no interaction with traffic.