loughshore trail

On Saturday I had the pleasure of cycling around lough neagh in aid of both the Romania and Rwanda trips. I must say I actually thoroughly enjoyed the day out even though I found sitting down somewhat difficult by the time we returned home!!

The general route was Dollingstown to Portadown (as there is no earlier opportunity to cross the bann) to Tamnamore to Ballyronan to Toome to Randalstown to Crumlin to Gawleys Gate back to Dollingstown. We had only begun 20 mins and we had to stop at the bike repair shop in lurgan to have Luke's breaks amended! En route to said bike shop we almost ran over MEP candidate Alban Maginnes, I mean what were the chances? It would have been funny had we ran him over because we probably would have made the news!

After 10 miles boredom began to set in so we decided to play a little game called Zilch. It's a game taken from TV show 'How I Met Your Mother', where for everytime you spot a designated item you get one point. We noted that there was an unusual amount of roadkill on the roads so we played Zilch Roadkill! Phil thought he had struck gold when he had found 4 different dead animals on the road ardboe, much to his malaise when he discovered that those 4 pieces constituted the same animal! Thankfully there are no photos of this incident!

Cycling wise, we were putting in a good time up until ballyronan/toome. There we tackled some sharp hills at ballyronan which the legend that is Phil 'the Tank' McCabe powered up like they were flats. All was well until we hit the main road from toome to randalstown. It's a gradual uphill for 5 consecutive miles. With traffic speeding past you at 60mph, it was soul destroying.

We prodded on, and after tea in Randalstown we decided to give a big push down the east side of the lough to get home. We were flying down at points even reaching an average speed of 15mph (bare in mind this is on mountain bikes and we had already cycled 60 miles!), but the loughshore trail was to have the last laugh because after Gawleys gate it was hill after hill after hill for the last ten miles, and I have to say I found it tough going.

We were not to be undone however and we made it home slightly under 12 hours from departure. Definitely one of the hardest physical things I've ever done, but would also do it again.

Only 20 mins in!	River Bann @ Portadown
On the road to Palestine	River Bann @ Toome

Click here if you would like to examine our route!