When route-planning goes wrong
Earlier in the week I came up with a gravel route in Wicklow that included a lap around the Sugar Loaf plus some interesting tracks and paths further south including a section of the trail around Vartry Reservoir. It all seemed great on paper, but the reality was that it was it just didn’t work.
It’s easy to click a few buttons and create a route on Komoot. It’s another thing to create a good route, one that makes sense – in this case the goal was to create a gravel route that was at least 50% off-road.
Ultimately, I had hoped to share this route and maybe include it in the next edition of Cycling in Ireland, instead, I’m warning you not to do this route!
Things started beautifully, following a recently developed route called the Sugar Loaf Way, up Glencap Road, before turning onto a lovely gravel path (photo on the left) that climbed, very steeply (up to 25% according to Komoot) over the shoulder of the Sugar Loaf (photo on the right).
From the Sugar Loaf carpark I followed this lovely quiet road south, wondering why so many cyclists choose the busy R755 when there are really nice, quiet roads either side of it?
The plan was to turn off this road and climb a laneway into the woods at Downs Hill. No dice. I couldn’t ignore the Private Property sign, plus they had dogs. So this was the first issue.
But things started to look up when I left the road and descended a forest track down to the Glanmoriertagh River (no, I had never heard of it either). It’s a magic spot, lovely woods and a small stream.
Note: the map on the Sport Ireland website shows a different route for this section, which I was planning to use on the return.
Continuing south, the next stretch was a rough track that climbed over a gentle hill. It was hardpacked stone, almost like cobbles and very unforgiving as the mud was like rock. Beautiful though, see photo below.
After descending the other side things really started to go wrong, Komoot was sending me through a farmer’s field, which wasn’t an option, so I re-routed around the side of Roundwood Golf Club in the hope of regaining the route through the forest on Mount Kennedy.
This started well, on a good fire road (see photo below left) which climbed over the summit before becoming a path, getting fainter and fainter (see photo below right).
I started to get confident, the route was really coming together. That’s when the path left the forest and the gorse started. Manageable at first it got thicker and thicker, until it became impenetrable. Nothing worse than gorse, beautiful, but just savage.
At this point I went in survival mode, I just wanted to get back to the car. The route was a bust. The photo below is from the point I gave up, looking back at what I came through!
So that was it; I limped back to the car and back to the drawing board. (the below is what I ended up doing)