Irish Gravel Routes (Check out my Gravel Tips)

Could someone post a link to a 90-120 min gravel loop around the standard trails on Hell Fire, Cruagh, Tibradden, ThreeRock ?

Something rideable on decent enough tracks without bike carry's and a decent portion of off road ?

Thanks Paul.

How about something like this?

Alternative options :

1. enter cruagh at the hairpin after viewing point instead of at the carpark, but a bit of hikeabike there.

2. Leaving cruagh go straight over into tibradden past zippit and out the far side, down mutton lane for a shorter spin.

3. Go into gap and up 3 rock instead of going around by foxes and up past the golf course towards the blue light pub - reduces amount of road but dunno if GAP get antsy with cyclists going up the Dublin mountain way - it's supposed to be right of way for walkers only.

If you're on Farcebook check out "Irish gravel cycling" or "gravel bike - routes ireland"

https://www.facebook.com/groups/IrishGravelCycling/permalink/1187976381871413/

This is a shame and a bit of a joke, given they are effectively public lands but the public can't cycle on them

I'm barely on it myself, my siblings and a friend from primary school are regular friend suggestions

From Dave Flanagan

"Hi All. As someone of you know I'm currently working on updating my book Cycling in Ireland. I have seen it mentioned a few times here in the context of gravel riding so I just wanted to update you all on the current situation with it.

In summary - I won't be adding any routes on Coillte land as I'm afraid there might be legal issues.

Some background. When I was working on the first edition I really wanted to add more off-road/easy MTB/gravel routes and I had multiple discussions with Coillte to see if it would be possible to do so. I was met with enthusiasm initially, but ultimately I was just left hanging. This seems to be a common occurrence when people try and interact with them. So I decided to omit the proposed routes.

This year the plan was to add 20 routes to the second edition, most of the 20 were going to be on gravel, on the basis that it would be easier to get forgiveness than permission. However, a recent post on here caused me to rethink this plan and after talking to a number of people close to the situation I have decided to omit the routes that use Coillte land.

This is disappointing on a number of levels: the routes are really great, some of the best spins of any sort I have ever done; as I had put a long of energy into them it represents a waste of my time; and most importantly we have this crazy situation where we aren't allowed cycle on these routes, yet we all do, we just can't tell anyone about it.

The fact of the matter is that there is a bye-law that prohibits cycling on Coillte land outside of designated areas. Effectively gravel cycling in Ireland is illegal.

Coillte owns about 10% of the country, well we the people do as Coillte is a state-owned company. They cite insurance problems as the reason. One aspect is that they seem to lump all forms of cycling together, for instance, we might understand the issue they have with people building massive jumps on their land, but gravel cycling can hardly be considered at the same level of risk. Other countries don't seem to have this insurance issue so it seems to me that it is just an excuse.

Anyway, sorry for the essay, I just wanted to share my thoughts and maybe get some discussion going on the situation. I have also posted this on the 'Gravel bike - routes Ireland' group.

I'd agree the "ban" is ridiculous on coillte lands, and a lot of dead ends are only a few 100m's from another dead end that could be linked (just call it a bloody greenway!).

However, my own experience which is mainly restricted to France is that the difference is a lot of what they have as "gravel" we have as tarmac. They haven't paved every boreen, so a lot of it is actually public "road".

I've emailed a link and text from David's post to my local carfree cycling-enthusiast green party councillor, asking him to bring it up the chain. Seems totally at odds with promotion of cycling, Greenways and so on, let alone the potential for tourism e.g rift race in Iceland, raidersgravel in Scotland etc

Just done exactly the same thing

The more you think about it, the more absurd it seems. There is literally nothing required other than deleting a line or a few words from some bylaws. The gravel trails already exist throughout the coillte network for logging anyway. Unlike the 6 "world class (?)" MTB centres which required building and upkeep.

Oh I like that, "no no no I'm not cycling, I'm hike-a-biking, keep up damnit"

bring a rifle when on the bike, got it!

The only time I've had access issues, is the signs for hunting. Which I'm ambivalent about, given Sika are non-native and the sheer population of them. I think the signs are fine.

It's a real pity that this growing area of the sport isn't being exploited more, for whatever legal issues. It's not just Coillte, our National Parks have the same no cycling rules too!

Coillte in this case. Not 100% sure if it's owned or leased though

My impression of Cycling Ireland is that if it’s not racing or collecting insurance money from sportives then they are not interested. I can’t see them chasing this up at all.

Deleted due to stupidity 😞

https://www.dilloneustace.com/legal-updates/changes-to-the-duty-of-care-owed-by-occupiers#:~:text=In%20considering%20whether%20an%20occupier,the%20vicinity%20of%20the%20danger.

I should have added in that

€60 early bird, €70 standard. No mention of camping options that I can see (which I thought would go hand in hand with night time events too).

http://gravelrideseries.ie/about/

No dates yet - I assume it'll be like the lakelander, timed and a race if you want it to be.

are these events happening this year or is there any confirmed dates?

I found this route but never got to try it out.

It’s starting in Cadamstown.

From Facebook

Can't post the link at the moment, but the Galway Gravel Grinder posted the below on Facebook yesterday...

No, just saw the post on Facebook. They do say in the comments they have the insurance via CI which has been enough previous years. If it's a blanket ban, that's effectively every gravel event (and MTB?) in the State gone.

That's crap.

I get the impression Coillte just might not be engaging or interested in doing so. When we were discussing this last summer, I was talking to one of my local TDs on it, who is receptive to the idea - at least in the MTB context. He shared a 2 pager with me the gist of which was that information sought from Coillte wasn't forthcoming (my apologies for the vagueness, but he specifically asked me not to share the doc so I'm treading carefully).

Whatever way you cut it, it's not encouraging