Before leaving home we booked a half day guided bicycle tour of the highlights of Dublin. We did this on the assumption that Ireland was an intelligent and educated society and being part of the European Union would have the sophisticated and mature attitude of Europeans to the peaceful co-existance of cyclists and motorists. Wrong!

The Irish have a total disdain toward traffiic rules, traffic lights, red man/green man, pedestrian crossings, one way streets and speed limits. When it rains everyone goes a bit faster. Afterall, you wouldn’t want to get wet would you? For every man woman and child in Dublin there is a huge yellow and blue double decker bus and these are all moving or parked on narrow medieval streets. There is a light rail transport system, DART, Dublin Area Rapid Transport. In Irish it is called Luas which means speed.  It is a silver serpent slitthering through the streets frightening the old and the young.

So two seniors from the quiet seaside village of Paraparaumu are going cycling in this. We awoke to steady rain again and the forecast was for showers all day. Many of the streets in the older parts of the city are paved with cobblestones which we haven’t ridden on much, especially when they are wet. We were talking ourselves into cancelling the ride but decided to go down and meet the guide anyway and see if we could postpone until another day. When we got to the meeting point we found that four people had cancelled but a lady from Perth (Barbara) and a couple from Melbourne (Sylvia and Gerald) were wanting to go. It had rained all the way from the hotel but when we met up it had stopped and was clearing so we decided to give it a go.

The guide was Brian, a 37 year old Dubliner and co-owner of the company. Man he could talk. He knew all the history and stories of every point of interest in the city. We were given a lesson on the long, complicated and brutal birth of the Republic of Ireland.

The riding itself wasn’t difficult and in the four hours we probably did less than 10 kilometres. The bikes were strange. Small wheels, heavy and only three gears on a twist grip on the handlebar. They did have bells though, which I used often. Brian had us lined up like ducks in a row and we just blindly followed him when ever he said go. Some was on cycle lanes and shared paths but we seemed to go through dozens of red lights. I didn’t dare look at the cars, buses and trams around us, I just concentrated on following his rear wheel. We were all competent cyclists so we could all stay as a tight group and keep up a steady pace.

We started at 10 and finished at 2, which included about a twenty minute stop in a pub for a drink. In that time it never rained a drop but as we pulled into his depot at the end, the rain started again and didn’t stop for about 2 hours. So we were lucky. We saw a huge amount of the inner city and it’s a good way to quickly get your bearings other than going in a bus.

Late in the afternoon between showers we went out to walk along some of the Grand Canal. This 132 km canal starts at the River Liffey in Dublin and ends at Shannon Harbour. It was started in 1757 and opened in 1804. It closed to commercial traffic in 1951 but is still used by pleasure craft today. There is 117km of walking trail along the canal and locks and lock-keepers cottages etc have been refurbished/restored. There is a sister canal going north out of Dublin called the Royal Canal. It is a beautful walk along a linear oasis untouched by modern agriculture.