Cycling the grand canal

I'm using the grand a bit recently for commuting. Starting at adamstown. is it completed to a smooth surface any earlier, coming from celbridge direction? Heading up to adamstown is a bit annoying.

It started to rain today when i was out for my Sunday spin, I was south of Athy so I reckoned that the best way home was along the Blueway, I was able to go the whole way from the centre of Athy to Monasterevin on it or for a very small section right beside it. Good work too being done on the road crossings at the various bridges and especially the tarmac works under the bridges.

Some of the permanent gates have been installed too and I reckon they are a big improvement on the kissing gates on the mainline Grand Canal

Still some works going on close to Milltown bridge but you can take the public road which is right beside the works in the pictures here for about a KM and access the section of Blueway which runs to the Stradbally road from there.

You can see Milltown bridge in the first photo, the road is just the other side of the trees. The road is a cul de sac, so almost no traffic.

Some works too north of the Motorway bridge, they seem to be putting in a blueway surface right next to the road there too, again that bit of road is a cul de sac.

The last big piece to be finished before the blueway is complete is the section on the Robertstown side of Glenaree bridge, it's to be tarmacked but there has been no progress there since the sections either side were completed more than 2 years ago, the surface is rough and potholed an a significant obstacle to anyone on a skinny wheeled road bike, hopefully it'll be done soon.

Not so much the house but the farm on the side road has land and buildings both sides of the canal so they have to drive machinery back and forth, tarmac is the best solution, just taking too long to do it.

we did a bit of the GC on a club spin yesterday. The section between Adamstown and The Hatch pub is single track, rocky in places, & quite overgrown. It's just about passable on a road bike in the dry but we were going at little more than walking pace. Fine on a MTB but not really usable for commuting.

https://www.waterwaysireland.org/Pages/Development-of-the-Grand-Canal-Greenway.aspx

Sorry Just realised I posted a royal canal journey in the Grand canal thread! Mod pls delete?

Ed has a few nice tweets about his journey. I was thinking about the train to longford (€20) and amble back to maynooth or if the day is nice all the way back to city centre.

It's really strange that that Waterways Ireland document mentions both the main line to the Shannon and the Kilbeggan branch but not the Barrow line, you'd wonder sometimes how the officials in those organisations think.

It looks as if the last dust section of the Barrow Blueway will open this weekend, at least the lads working on it thought so when I was talking to them yesterday morning, that will more or less complete the resurfacing works apart from a 1.3KM section east of Glenaree which is to be tarmacked. Another contractor is currently doing the road crossing works, working north from Athy and they are to do that when they get to it.

Someone is spreading fake news so 😏

I was down that way again this morning, the gates are still up but the surface seems to be finished, the pic below was taken through the wire, that surface runs right out to the road. All that seems to need doing now is to finish putting in the rest of the orange/white bollards and some tidying up where the roller is parked, the rest of the machines are perked off site.

Yeah. There's a section between Robertstown and Rathangan that's rough but rideable (Glenaree), otherwise gravel path the whole way. I'm heading down it myself as far as Athy today

Sallins to Edenderry would be even better😀

I can't for the life of me understand (even with Covid delays) why Kildare County Council have dragged their feet on their section of the mainline to the Shannon for so long. Even the Blueway is miles behind schedule with works stopping for months on end.

Apart from the headwind the whole way down, I got on fine 😂

The only part of the route I hadn't cycled before was from the Miltown bridge (basically the back of Bert House) into Athy itself. That section is almost complete, some machinery about, but easy to get access to it if you stay on the west bank (right hand side as you head for Athy). There's a switch to the left bank about halfway between there and Athy town.

The other sections are as have been previously discussed, with the possible exception that Ummeras to McCartney's lock should probably be opened at this stage 🙄.

Thanks nilhg. I should probably have mentioned that I switched sides because my final destination was Ardree lock, just outside the town, on the left bank