Waterford city trails

Today was Irish Bike to work day but with the torrential this morning I wendied out. Rime to put the balance right with an evening ride.



After a 4.5 hour Yugma conference with San Francisco finished at 20.30, I wanted to clear the head and taking advantage of the great long evenings, 40 minutes later I was on the bike. Trying to follow McG's example and get a weekly evening ride in, I've been linking up trails I've been walking with Malie by the river and exploring more too. After 8 minutes on the road I'm tucking down into some gorgeous singletrack through Goffs Woods by the River Suir. This only lasts 2 or 3 minutes but leads onto a tasty paved track around the King's Channel peninsula. Past the spot where I recently had a picture taken with John Gormley.



I was promoting Waterford bringing the River Suir back to the people with local election green candidate, Maria Raftis-Kennedy, and she had an opportunity to show John Gormley one thing and decided to go with the river walk trail I was promoting.

However the proposed linear river walk is blocked in a number of places by private residences, including a jetty - e.g. at the west end of Goffs woods, where I started the singletrack tonight is a fence which has been erected for some time, completely blocking the trail.



Actually the Waterford City council have included in the last few city development plans, a riverside “corridor” from the Marina Hotel out to the far reaches of Waterford Castle island. Indeed looking at the current plan it lays out an objective in section 2.4.5 “ To provide for a riverside Walk and cycleway along the southern bank of the Suir from Canada Street to Blenheim”

But I digress. Onto some more nice track through the trees leads onto the approach road for the Waterford Castle Island ferry. I wave at the captain who waves back, for the first time I am the only one on board.

A short 100m off the ferry and I am onto a perfect trail through the trees, immediately on entering the birds are in full song and it reminds me of entering the rain forests in New Zealand, no birds there just an overriding sense of peace. A short section thought the trees on the south side of the island and then up on the west for a bit before it runs out at the golf course and I turn around. Back on the mainland I pass the road I went up last Wednesday night, and ended up with a bloody knee after going over the handlebars riding blind on a short steep bit of singletrack I came across.

I tried another road and this lead me into another section of the track I had walked with Malie. I was on dirt now and passed a short steep dirt drop coming out from some trees above. I kept going 'til the trail ran out in Bleinheim and checked the computer, 10K. Coming back I saw some kids disappear at the side of the fence and turned back to try that way. It lead me to the top of the drop off. I stopped for a look. It was too steep to walk down, bugger it, I'll drop it.....should have lowered my saddle, need to move the quick release off my hard tail. It was the weirdest endo ever. My back wheel was in the air, bike pointing vertically down and my shoe came out of the pedal and as the bike momentarily stopped my toes were in the spokes of the front wheel. Then I came forward and fell on my, now in ice, knee.

The kids must have heard something and appeared shouting down are you all right? I'm grand I said, I just hurt my goolies. Damn that crossbar. A couple of minutes later I was back on the bike and noticed the break lever was pointing straight up!

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