Welcome to the seventh Three Rock Books newsletter. Sorry for the massive delay since the last one, it’s being a busy time. I hope these monthly emails will offer some interesting insights into my plans for Three Rock Books.
Cycling in Ireland – Second Edition
The biggest news is that I finally finished the second edition of Cycling in Ireland! A few months later than planned. Ideally I would have had it ready for the start of the summer, but it wasn’t to be.
I’m very pleased with the book, the 16 new routes really are great and broaden the appeal and scope of the book in a really meaningful way. Most of the new additions are gravel routes, with a few rough road routes, MTB trail centres and one new Greenway. I also updated loads of the photos, with plenty of great drone shots.
I considered increasing the price as the page size went up 13% (from 240 pages to 272) and obviously print cost have been rising sharply for the last few years, however, in the end I decided not to. I believe that the book is now really great value at only €25 including free shipping in Ireland.
I went with a matte cover for a change and am delighted with how it turned out. I also added fancy French flaps with the table of contents on the front inside flap.
It’s great to have the book done and to move on to different projects. Updating book is essential but probably not quite as enjoyable as a completely new project.
Access issues
As I mentioned in the last newsletter issues came to light that limited the routes that I could add to the book. Specifically, I decided it would be wise to omit any routes that crossed Coillte land. Over the last months I have been involved in a few meetings with Coillte and other interested parties.
Unfortunately, it seems that any changes are going to extremely hard won. However, I haven’t given up and hopefully some progress can be made on this issue over the next few months.
The Summer
The Island
In August I got back to the island for a few days, made some small progress on the roof but more importantly got pretty much all the material required to finish the roof over to the island – no small task, involving a lot of lifting, carrying, loading and unloading. We enjoyed the late summer weather and elevated our culinary game slightly beyond great slabs of beef.
Thanks for Reading
If you have any thoughts, suggestions or feedback then don’t hesitate to get in touch, I would love to hear from you. Enter the code below to get a 20% discount on any orders you make over the next four weeks.
Dave