February 28, 2015
The Irish East Coast Continued: Counties Meath, Dublin, Wicklow And Wexford, To French Ferry.
I lay awake at night listening to rain drumming lightly on the tent. The forecasted rain has come. Eventually I sleep and next I know it's the grey light of dawn and feel relief that the rain has quit.
This morning the sky is almost clear, thin rafts of cloud remain giving a mix of sunshine and dull shade. A cold north west wind cuts like a knife anytime I stop to check the map.
I continue on the small road partly along the coast to Rush, where I can go no more, I have to head inland into a headwind. There's a big hold-up in the traffic ahead, cars and commercial vehicle are bumper-to-bumper, barely moving forward. One good thing, the cars shelter me from that stiff wind. I press on part way up the inside and partly on the outside when there isn't oncoming traffic. Getting to the head of the queue there's a chapel where a funeral is the cause of the hold-up. Then further on there's another slow line of traffic. This time road works with traffic-lights.
I make it through the town of Swords (where I should've had lunch, it would've been cheaper instead of Dublin city centre) then follow a cycle-path taking me safely around the airport and thought it would be a straightforward ride into Dublin. But the path takes me on a footbridge cross the motorway to a dead end at a big crescent of public housing. All I can think is everyone that lives in these houses are all keen cyclists in need of their own cycle-path. I double back over the bridge, back to the last roundabout and turn left up a long rise pass the airport terminal buildings, then downhill to a tee-junction village where a little confused, I stop to consult the map. The sign pointing right has "Ashbourne", which is nowhere near Dublin, so left mush be in the direction of the city centre. And it is, onto a long built-up thoroughfare that goes on and on, making me anxious as the road signage as usual indicates city centre parking and not much benefit for cycling into the centre. Eventually when it looks near I ask a local woman. She tells me to keep going to the third traffic-lights and turn left. This turning takes me along the river Liffey and into O Connell Street. The idea is a monumental lunch here. But I soon loose interest as there's a cornucopia of sandwich shops, Thai, Mexican, all extremely small raps and pricy that I settle for fish and chips. And finish off with a sit in in Starbucks, another three euros forty. I sit and watch the passers-by, a mix of tourist and people clearly Eastern European, African and Chinese that have made Ireland their home.
Picking up the N11 south out of the city, Dublin south side is clearly more effluent. Instead of the rundown Victorian terrace housing there was on the way in, there's cleaner streets and well maintained Georgian period houses. I press on with the flow of afternoon commuter traffic, eventually on a smooth shouldered trunk road, where I speed along trying to keep up with cycle-commuters homeward bound. This road becomes motorway after a roundabout, so I take a minor road onward to Bray, from which there's a steep long climb over a hill to descend to the seaside Greystones. It is gone dusk and on the way out of town there's wasteland with an open gate and track in around the back of heaps of old excavation spoil overgrown in gorse. The track continues to the rear of the plot where there's a fence, perfect to lean the bike against and alongside is ideal for the tent.
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I am awake early enough to hear a dawn chorus of crows squawking and a wood pigeon hooting before the traffic noise on the nearby road builds. The car park in the next plot is starting to fill as I take down the tent and the sun is beginning to break through the trees the other side of the fence.
I am on the road at eight-twenty: a long day ahead of me if I'm to make the ferry at Rosslare this evening. Yesterday I spent a little too long meandering and the first day I spent two hours in Newry. Today will have to be more direct and lunch kept short.
There's a hell of a lot of new roundabouts on the way out of Greystones with cycle-path on raised walkway. These bits of un-continuous cycleway have no-signage and more often than not have a bumpy surface. It seems the local road service people are saying "come along lads and lasses, keep out of the way so we don't have to slow down"
From Wicklow town I continue straight instead of the right turn for the more direct route and the small road follows the coast: the sea on my left a tropical green in this morning's sunshine and the inland, pasture fields rolling up gentle hillsides. But the road surface is patchy rough with embedded chips and cracked, looking like it hasn't been resurfaced in decades. Every time I increase the speedometer figure from fifteen to sixteen, the front wheel jars the bike almost to a halt on a bump. The final mile into Arklow is worse still; badly filled utilities digging and my front wheel jars into an unavoidable trench.
There's a long bridge into town, the river fanned out to estuary at this point. On the gable of the first house off the bridge on the right, there's a big sign "All Day Breakfast At The Riverside Café" I order the mega breakfast, which at 8.95 is only one euro dearer than the medium breakfast. I certainly have the appetite for the two bacon razers, two sausages, two fried eggs, beans and hash-brownies on the plate. It is a good find this café. The others seated gossiping local ladies talking about Jahadi John, the ISIS with an English accent, and which resort they where in on holidays. There is a stack of books on the windowsill with a notice "Book Exchange". I leaf through a coffee-table photo book titled "Spectacular Australia" by a Robin Smith. It is dated early nineties, so film photographs, and takes me on a pictorial tour from pastural New South Wales, beaches in Queensland, to Perth a continent away and back to the south. There's a lull in serving and the woman come out from behind the counter with a carrier-bag and goes outside across the street to a green on the riverbank, whereon she empties the carrier-bag of bread scrapes for two swans with heads craned to pick the last crumb from the bag. When she return back in, pigeons fly in and try stealing the bread as the sun shines in open daffodils. The woman passes the time when I get up to pay by remarking what a nice day it is for cycling. I agree, but once I ride up the steep main street and further uphill to leave town, it has already turned grey and like rain.
The highway N11 is motorway, so I'm on a white road to Gorey, thirteen kilometres on the sign. The map then has yellow road R751 direct to Wexford. When I get to town, there's a sign for a right-turn R752, going inland, and left-turn origin of R752 coming into town from behind. I don't see R751, thought see a town served by it on the left pointing sign, so turn left thinking the road I want is perhaps from a roundabout on the way out. It isn't. I've obviously misread the sign and have ridden a kilometre, gone too far to turn back. It is only five kilometres more to Courtown on the coast and another left-turn direct to Wexford town. Getting on this road it follows a little inland from the coast, descending down into every stream-valley at right-angles to road to climb steeply up and then sharply down into the next. Slow going to say the least. And the rain come on albeit it a brief half hour of drizzle. Inland it may've been raining all day as it is extremely dull that way.
Riding into Wexford I'm caught by a stiff breeze on the long bridge over the lough. Then on the quayside-street frontal to the town, I've to ask am I going right for Rosslare harbour, as it isn't signposted until out off town.
I reach the port with a couple of hours to spare, buy my ticket and ride back to SuperValu to buy provisions for the sailing.
Today's ride: 224 km (139 miles)
Total: 333 km (207 miles)
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