Have you used a signed EuroVelo cycle route in Ireland? Were the signs easy to follow? How was the surface? Were there barriers?
There are two EuroVelo routes in Ireland — EV1 Atlantic Coast Route, which is nearly self-explained, and EV2 Capitals Route, which is due to start in Galway at some point in the future but currently starts in Athlone before going onto Dublin, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Minsk and Moscow.
The EuroVelo routes are a vision of cross-border routes from the European Cyclists’ Federation. In Ireland, the National EuroVelo Coordination Centre is hosted by Sport Ireland Outdoors, with input from Cyclist.ie, an umbrella group of most cycling campaigns in Ireland.
For the most part, EV2 uses the Royal Canal Greenway and the Old Rail Trail Greenway, while EV1 is currently mainly just a signposted route. EV1 includes the Great Western Greenway in Mayo, the Limerick Greenway, Waterford Greenway, and some smaller greenways but there are huge gaps between these off-road routes.
Low-traffic routes can be great without being fully off-road, but to what extent are the route mixed with heavy traffic or have poor surfacing?
Our survey is aiming to answer the question of what is the quality of those signposted routes and also if there are issues people want to raise about the greenways.
If you want to help, this is what you should do:
- Download the GPX map data from the EV1 or EV2 pages (or see the combined map below)
- Cycle the route or recall a recent experience.
- And then please fill out this survey.
The results will be published on IrishCycle.com and shared with the National EuroVelo Coordination Centre.
Please note that the map on the ECF’s website contains the following disclaimer: “While ECF and National EuroVelo Coordination Centers and Coordinators (NECC/Cs) make every effort to ensure the tracks and their levels of development are both current and accurate, errors or outdated information can occur. The user is fully responsible for his or her own safety when making use of the tracks and for following national traffic rules and signing. Please download and read the complete disclaimer before using the tracks.“
...That's the end of the article. Keep scrolling if you want to the comments, but IrishCycle.com *NEEDS* readers like you to keep it that way. It only requires a small percentage of readers to give a bit each month or every year to keep IrishCycle.com's journalism open to all. Thank you.