Today was the first day of my preparation for the Wicklow Way bike ride. My friend Csaba is also very into the challange, so we have done the first half of the first stage of the long journey.
I am not too familiar with the Wicklow mountain trails and even the signposting is there, the first thing I have done: I bought a well detailed guide book and map. You can get it in any bigger bookstore, I got mine in Rathmines.
We met at the Yellow House Pub in Rathfarnham and cycled up towards the Marlay Park direction. If you look at the map, the first stage is starts from the Marlay Park and goes to Glencree river. We actually did start our spin from outside of the park becaue the park was still closed at that time when we left from there.
Well, even we've had couple of nice days in the last 2 weeks and the temperature is ok during the day, but... it is still not really spring just yet. I had to realize this when I left from home at 7:20am and it was still only -3°C temperature. So I did get all the proper winter gear on once again, I hope for the last time for a while. Enough from the winter, we deserve the spring now!
The morning was very cold but really nice and sunny. It was such a brilliant morning for a spin up in the mountains!
As you have seen in the title of this post, we have done only the first section of the first stage, from the Marlay Park to Glencullen River. I think because it was early morning on a cold day, we didn't see any hill walkers at all, everything was so quiet. The place was fully frozen, some of the puddles were actually solid ice, the didn't even cracked. The trails and the rocks were all right to ride, they haven't been covered with ice.
I had to get back to work in time so we couldn't get any further even we were tempted to do so. The distance of this small fraction of the Wicklow Way was 12km which was very short indeed but it was perfectly enough to get an idea what is waiting for us during the long way.
It was a very nice and early start of the training progress that is more like preparation for the ride. I am very happy with the sign posts up there: they are clear and well maintened. There is a + point already!
We have recorded some nice video footage also, please click here to watch it!
General information on the terrain:
- tarmac road
- fire road
- singletrack
- technical singletrack with rocks
- couple of wider gaps on the trail, most of them are rideable
- watch out for the drop that leads back to the road, it is STEEP!
Next time we will ride the exact same stage what we have done today but we will keep going further in to the Wicklow mountains as far as we can get to cover a good bit of the legendary Wicklow Way. Based on today, I am sure it will be long day on the bike but will be fantastic for sure!
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