Athlone - Mullingar Greenway

Plastik

I'm looking to get out on the bike early in the morning for about 40km. Is the Athlone-Mullingar Greenway open all the way from Athlone and cycleable on a road bike without fear of puncture? From a few pics I've seen it looks to be smooth tarmac.

Are their junctions or can I motor on with the head down?:pac:

flazio

Plastik wrote: »

I'm looking to get out on the bike early in the morning for about 40km. Is the Athlone-Mullingar Greenway open all the way from Athlone and cycleable on a road bike without fear of puncture? From a few pics I've seen it looks to be smooth tarmac.

Are their junctions or can I motor on with the head down?:pac:

More designed for family leisure use so watch out for walkers and children especially around Moate . There's about 10 level crossings with roads with pretty tight kissing gates plus more animal crossing points so that'll slow you down. Best strech is just outside Moate to just before Streamstown. Pretty much arrow straight until a level crossing and very little use.

Plastik

Thanks. It'll be a 7am or earlier start so I wouldn't expect to meet much in the way of walkers or children. Not liking the sounds of the kissing gates & road crossings though. Better that I just stick to the road in that case. 20km from Athlone would take me to a few km past Moate on the greenway.

mr spuckler

bear in mind that the hard shoulder between castledaly turn and motorway bridge near moate on the old N6 is sh1te, both directions and disappears altogether as you enter moate.

i'd say if you haven't done the greenway before you should definitely give it a lash. the surface is really fantastic other than a short stretch shortly after it starts in athlone that is heavily compacted gravel rather than smooth tarmac but is absolutely fine for road bikes, i've seen plenty in the couple of times i've been out on it.

the gates etc mentioned above won't slow you down any more than the roundabouts / junctions you'd hit getting out of athlone and it's a real pleasure cycling so far away from traffic.

EC1000

The greenway is fine for road bikes and there is no where that you will need to dismount. I've done it on the TT bike several times and it's perfect. There are a few staggered gates to make you slow down as you are crossing roads but nothing to worry about. There is a section of about 1 or 2 km near the Athlone end where it is compacted sand as opposed to smooth tarmac but it's still fine for road tyres. Far better than the roads between Mullingar and Athlone anyway!

fat bloke

We're planning on doing this with the kids tomorrow Plastik! Be later in the afternoon though. It's supposed to be great. Apparently some clubs are using it as their 80km winter spin after dark, lit up and outside of pottering family hours.

Plastik

Great facility, didn't go far but Athlone to the first kissing gate was long enough for a 10-12min effort this morning. Out and back a few times. Oh to have something like that closer to Bray!

Donie75

It's a fantastic amenity. The surface is a specially sourced cycling surface from Germany apparently and it's very nice to cycle on. There seems to be a good management process in place too as a friend of mine reported that the train track gaps near the road crossings could cause falls if a wheel got stuck in them. We noticed that the track gaps were filled the next time we cycled it.
I'm hoping to start doing a regular 30km spin in the dark winter evenings. Need to get my lights and hi-vis sorted.

mr spuckler

as someone from Athlone but who lives in Dublin, it makes my occasional cycle home / back so much nicer than it had been previously. i must check again but i reckon at least 60km of ~125km is off-road between the canal cycle path from near kinnegad to mullingar and the greenway from mullingar to athlone.

any weekend i'm down with spuckler junior i tend to take him out for a spin on it in the bike trailer and my dad comes with us, makes for a lovely little family jaunt!

Carawaystick

There's about 5 level crossings on the greenway and they have these gates to slow you
https://thewandererphotos.smugmug.com/keyword/greenway/i-GxjPP74/A

It's all baby smooth tarmac bar about 2km near Athlone which is tar&chip road surface.

surball

Carawaystick wrote: »

There's about 5 level crossings on the greenway and they have these gates to slow you
https://thewandererphotos.smugmug.com/keyword/greenway/i-GxjPP74/A

It's all baby smooth tarmac bar about 2km near Athlone which is tar&chip road surface.

Is that the type of gate used along the full stretch? I have a trailer and would be great if I didn't have to take off to negotiate. Looks like those one should be ok.

mr spuckler

i can easily negotiate that one without dismounting anyway and my trailer is on the large side. i actually can't remember the gates further along as have only ridden through them without the trailer.

Carawaystick

Yeah, there's a metre gap or so for each of them. You might have to go onto the muck beside the greenway to get a straight line through with a trailer.

The greenway's 3m wide, but the alignment is wider, wide enough for a double track train line, which has topsoil and grass along the tarmac edges.

Andy Magic

Bring two spare tubes if you can as you can get punctures quite easily. The tarmac is smooth but it's not swept so it's got tree branches and leaves on it in parts. The last thing you want is a puncture in the middle of nowhere. It's a great cycleway though, but can be cold this time of year as you're in the same position constantly

mr spuckler

Bring spare tubes etc every time you hit out on the bike

benneca1

Great amenity couldnt really ask for better pity the rest of Dublin Galway route is up in the air. But credit where its due this is as good as youll find anywhere.

fat bloke

Well we did this today, myself, the wife and the two girls. Parked up in Mullingar at Newbrook. No signage whatsoever on the approach road, but we found it anyway thanks to Google maps. Weather was cold but dry. Within 20 km we had at least two people crying and at least one adult shouting, so, y'know, all in all a typical family day out really :rolleyes:

Cheese toasties and hot chocolate in Moate calmed hostilities a bit and that all pedaled away nicely the rest of the way to Athlone. We had another 5 km to go to our B&B, whereupon Daddy had to (got to) hightail it back in reverse to pick up the car and drive back to the B&B. So I experienced the "way" from two perspectives - the slower speed family spin and the higher speed solo training spin.

Verdict? It's fantastic of course, safe and flat and nice and there should be similar greenways all over the place. It's very leaf-covered at the moment and there's a section near Athlone that hasn't been tarmac'd yet.
On the downside, it's quite... boring. It's one step up from turbo training really in a way and I'd enjoy far more a twisty rolling backroad personally. Even for the kids, it can be quite demoralising seeing a dead straight road stretching out into infinity in front of you.

But it is marvellous that it exists and has been done well and seems to be sowing the seeds of a cycling culture all around it. Shops and cafés nearby advertising bike hire and toilets and track pumps and bike parking and tea 'n scone specials etc

loudymacloud

I agree with fat bloke in regards to it being a tad on the boring side.

Fantastic to have it, dont get me wrong, but i cycled it at the tailend of a 160km ride and by then the seemingly endless road ahead was a bit tough to take

Great amenity to have though, links up nicely with the canal cycleway in Mullingar.

mr spuckler

yip, agree with you both on the excitement factor. equally i cycled the westport to newport stretch of that greenway recently and didn't particularly enjoy it as much as i expected. i'd previously cycled achill to newport which was really amazing.

the surface is what makes the athlone to mullingar one really stand out imo. if in time they manage to link dublin to galway it might be one of the less interesting stretches but also one of the safest

the way things are going though athlone to galway may never happen. my view is that with the work longford are doing, a link up from mullingar to westport via longford might be just as likely...

mr spuckler

fat bloke wrote: »

Parked up in Mullingar at Newbrook. No signage whatsoever on the approach road, but we found it anyway thanks to Google maps.

this was my experience in mullingar before it officially opened but i was expecting them to have signage up by now!

Carawaystick

benneca1 wrote: »

Great amenity couldnt really ask for better pity the rest of Dublin Galway route is up in the air. But credit where its due this is as good as youll find anywhere.

The route to Dublin from Mullingar is decided, it's the Royal canal towpath. It's just that most of it east of the Meath Westmeath border to Castleknock is not done yet.

Planet X

@mr spuckler....
.....and how do you get on to The Hill Of Down section? Just hop on the canal towpath at Hill of D. and the Greenway links uo to it?

mr spuckler

Carawaystick wrote: »

The route to Dublin from Mullingar is decided, it's the Royal canal towpath. It's just that most of it east of the Meath Westmeath border to Castleknock is not done yet.

i expected he/she was referring to west of athlone tbf which is completely up in the air, with all funding having been pulled and rerouted to the dublin to meath/wh border.

mr spuckler

Planet X wrote: »

@mr spuckler....
.....and how do you get on to The Hill Of Down section? Just hop on the canal towpath at Hill of D. and the Greenway links uo to it?

i joined the towpath on the kinnegad to killucan road and left it in mullingar to cycle through the town to join the greenway. i think you should be able to stay on the towpath to loop right around the town though and join at the start of the greenway and if i was doing it again i'd do that.

@fat bloke - did you notice at the mullingar end if it joined straight onto the canal towpath?

fat bloke

mr spuckler wrote: »

@fat bloke - did you notice at the mullingar end if it joined straight onto the canal towpath?

It seemed like it yeah. Cos I accidentally turned left a touch early and it brought me up to the side of the canal

mr spuckler

fat bloke wrote: »

It seemed like it yeah. Cos I accidentally turned left a touch early and it brought me up to the side of the canal

thanks! yeah that means then that you can go the whole way from the county border or from the killucan road as i did to athlone without cycling on the road (couple of crossings excepted)

EC1000

mr spuckler wrote: »

i joined the towpath on the kinnegad to killucan road and left it in mullingar to cycle through the town to join the greenway. i think you should be able to stay on the towpath to loop right around the town though and join at the start of the greenway and if i was doing it again i'd do that.

@fat bloke - did you notice at the mullingar end if it joined straight onto the canal towpath?

You can cycle from the canal towpath directly onto the greenway. They meet just on the outskirts of the town at the very start of the greenway and run side by side for a couple of kms. There is also a designated carpark at the start of the greenway - not sure how well it is signposted though...

Redjeep!

The greenway and the cycle path link near the start of the greenway in Mullingar so you could easily jump onto the canal and head East. The Mullingar end doesn't seem to be very well signposted, but it's at the end of the Joe Dolan bridge.

The towpath is pretty good most of the way to Enfield, but there are a few places where you need to come off and cross road junctions, such as near Nanny Quinn's and Mary Lynch's. None of these are really a problem, but it's different to the greenway and you'll need to keep it in mind if you're doing it with kids.

There was also a stretch about halfway between Enfield and Killucan that was really thick mud when I did it about a year ago, but this has probably been fixed by now as they were doing a lot of work to the canal (not the greenway or the canal bank) at the time.

The only other spot that I can think would be a problem is by Fury's bar before Enfield as you need to come off the canal and there's a fairly steep climb up the embankment to cross the old N4.

The towpath after here is fairly narrow for a while and was rough grass last time I did it.

This may have all changed as it was probably 2 or 3 years since I've been as far as Furys (on a bike that is , I was actually in there for a meal and pint a couple of hours ago ) :-).

mr spuckler

last time i crossed the canal bridges up around enfield and furey's it didn't look road bike friendly down below by the canal! i think through that meath and kildare coucils now have funding to upgrade these paths to greenway standard but not sure what the timeline for this work is.

i was in athlone at the weekend and see they have cleared pretty much the whole way from garrycastle in as far as the white gates, with the hardcore foundation in place almost as far as the community college so this looks like it should open before too long

Carawaystick

Planet X wrote: »

@mr spuckler....
.....and how do you get on to The Hill Of Down section? Just hop on the canal towpath at Hill of D. and the Greenway links uo to it?

There's a boreen along the north side of the canal at the Hill of Down, then it crosses to the south side, where it's awful surface for 2-3km until you get into Co. Westmeath
I did this 2-3km section on skinny tyres and I wouldn't do it again on them.

loudymacloud

Carawaystick wrote: »

There's a boreen along the north side of the canal at the Hill of Down, then it crosses to the south side, where it's awful surface for 2-3km until you get into Co. Westmeath
I did this 2-3km section on skinny tyres and I wouldn't do it again on them.

I can second that, did it on Marathon Plus tyres during the summer and i was still rather worried.
not a great stretch of path, i then managed to fall off the bike going up the next little hill to cross over a bridge. Chain slipped off, could not unclip quick enough and over i went in slow motion.

There was a cow in the adjoining field stood there staring, and im convinced it had a smile on its face :-)