It's been a really wet summer, and so when I woke up to sunshine on Sunday morning, I wasted no time in jumping into my lycra, grabbing my GPS and phone, hopping onto my Pashley Moulton APB, and heading for the hills.
The area where I live is rural, 5km from Navan (population > 25,000). There are a number of national routes nearby.
My cycling playground is an area between the N2 to the east, the N3 to the west, the aforementioned N51 to the south. If I cross the relatively quiet N52 to the north, I have a free run all the way to the border.
With a little bit of planning, I can quite easily find routes of 100km or more without having to travel on a single national route or a busy road of any description. On my rides I encounter very few cars, perhaps as few as 10 per hour.
I usually plan my routes using a combination of Google Maps and the Ordnance Survey Discovery Series maps (usually 35, 36, 42 and 43). Google Maps is great for showing the roads I like to travel on. I avoid all roads that are blue (motorways), green (national routes) and yellow (busier regional roads) and I focus on the white roads (they look grey until you zoom in further).
Backroads in north Meath
Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com
The map above shows the route I took last Sunday. The profile looks like this
I consult the OS maps to find some hills or I use HeyWhatsThat Path Profiler. There are very few big hills near where I live. There are plenty of 100-150m climbs, and just a few in the 150-210m range. It's not too difficult to find a 10% incline, but they are mostly less than a kilometre long.
The "white roads" are usually very low traffic, and quite scenic. On occasion the road can be quite narrow with grass growing down the centre of the road!
These routes are perfect for a Moulton bicycle, with the suspension taking the edge off any imperfections in the surface, and making all descents exhilarating.
I usually travel without a map or GPS, unless I'm travelling a new route and I'm afraid I'll get lost, or find my self on a busy national route. Signposts cannot be relied upon in Ireland! Local youths seem to take sport in rotating the signpost to send you the wrong way. In recent years however, there seem to be lots more fixed (two pole) sign posts appearing, making them more reliable.