Cycling Across Beautiful Rural Landscapes of the city of Galway

Every cloud has a silver lining. The sudden but inevitable demise of the building boom-based Celtic Tiger has meant that the greedy property speculators and so-called 'developers', supported by friends amongst the political and civil service hierarchy, thankfully did not have the time required to bulldoze all of the Irish countryside and cover it with tarmac and concrete! Hence there is still much to enjoy in our famed natural heritage even in the urban sprawl suburbia of Galway city.So once again, I am organising, as a joint Galway City Council/ Galway City Community Forum venture, a cycle tour of the stunning beautiful rural countryside of Galway City as part of Ireland's National Cycle Week.
Entitled 'Off the Beaten Path' it will commence at 11am sharp on Sunday June 20th from the Centra Foodstore on Bóthar na Choiste, Headford Road.

The event will be a 4 hour leisurely cycle stroll through some of the most interesting historical scenic landscapes on the east side of the city. It will I hope be a journey of discovery for many of its participants.We will ignore the hustle and bustle of housing estates, shopping centres and highways.Instead we will travel along secondary roads to enjoy the sights and sounds of an increasingly threatened but none-the-less vibrant countryside dominated by small farms and natural features such as lakes and bogs.Commencing on Bóthar na Choiste (Irish = Coach Road), I will bring participants through townlands whose ancient names reflect the respect that Irish people once had for Nature -Ballinfoile (Town of the ridge), Ballindooley (Town of the black lake), Killoughter (High Wood), Menlo (Small Lake), Coolough (Hollow at the base of the cliff)...

We will journey over hills, along botharins, past abandoned farm buildings, ruined castles, karst outcrops, bogs, lakes, dykes, turloughs and meadows.
We will stop off in Menlo to enjoy a picnic along the banks of the River Corrib.
To liven the journey up, I will recount tales of headless horsemen, ancient battles, haunted ruins, tragic drownings, lost gardens and of the great forests and the once proud wolves that once roamed the area.

Though I have ongoing battles with City Hall over a myriad of community and environmental issues, nevertheless I can only heap praise on the city officials who contributed to the success of this event, particularly Cathy Joyce.
So I hope that Galwegians will take to their bicycles on Sun June 20th and enjoy the remaining vestiges of our once glorious natural environment, with its rich native flora and fauna

Horse-Drawn Cart on a Busy City Road!

On Sunday afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to see a man standing up on an open cart steering its horse through a Kirwan Roundabout populated by speeding cars driven by aggressive drivers.
I just had to take this brave man's (& horse's) photo! So I flagged him down & got talking to him.
A true gentleman, his name is Michael Cunniss & he has worked with horses all his life.
Only a few decades ago, a sight of a horse-drawn cart would have been a common everyday occurrence in Irish towns. Now, our modern roads are just too dangerous not only for horses, but for pedestrians & cyclists. So much for progress!!

Galway NGOs To Lobby Irish Transport Minister On 'Smarter Travel' Funding for Galway City

Window of Opportunity Now Exists to Put in Place a Pedestrian, Cycling & Public Transport Infrastructure for Galway City & End Car-Centred Roads Nightmare

A shorter version of the following article (written in my capacity as a Galway City Community Forum representative) appeared recently on the front page of the Galway City Tribune...

In an attempt to help solve Galway City’s growing traffic congestion and secure major state funding for the construction of a sustainable transport infrastructure, the Galway City Community Forum requested direct talks with the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey TD requesting on the issue.

According to Brendan Smith, a member of the Forum’s steering committee, “The quality of life in our city is being seriously eroded by the environmental, social, economic and health damage caused by over-reliance on private motorised vehicles as the primary mode of transport. Decades of bad planning in our developer-driven society has created a car dependency urban sprawl that will take at least a generation to rectify.
But there is now a window of opportunity being presented by the Government’s recent action plan entitled ‘ Smarter Travel – A Sustainable Transport Future’ which promises for the first time to put people rather than vehicles first with a firm commitment to invest in walking, cycling and public transport as primary modes of transport. The relevant government ministers have talked about giving funding priority to suitable applicant cities. So the onus is now on all local sectors of Galway society to lobby to ensure that it is our city that is a chosen urban location for this crucial state investment. Hence our decision to request an urgent meeting with the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey on this issue to convince him of the suitability of Galway for this investment and the benefits that it would bring to its inhabitants. We will also be meeting with local politicians and local election candidates to discuss our sustainable transport policies. For since its inception in 2000, Galway City Community Forum has played a crucial part in transforming city transport policy though its active membership of relevant partnership committees and we were for instance amongst the earliest advocates of light rail and quality bus corridors. However we are very concerned that key elements of these policies are being ignored. In early 2002, Galway City Council was a signatory to the Galway City Development Strategy that promised to make Galway a Safe, Child-friendly, Disability-friendly, Pedestrian-friendly, Cyclist-friendly City by 2012. It was agreed by all partners that one way of achieving this core objective was by carrying out a feasibility study into the development of a sustainable Galway Integrated Transport Strategy where pedestrians would be given priority in roads infrastructure followed by cyclists, then public transport users with car-users being at the lowest end of the hierarchy.
Yet seven years on, City Hall as the lead partner has still not carried out this foundation blueprint. Whilst initiatives such as Walking to School programme are to be applauded, nevertheless they will ultimately fail if the roads infrastructure is not radically altered to accommodate the safe ‘free-flow’ of pedestrians and cyclists. Sadly, the latest published programme of works from the Galway Transportation Unit (GTU) seems to belong to a discredited era as it once again gives priority to the old outmoded system of more roads for more cars through its emphasis on prioritising the construction of an Outer Bypass. It talks too of ‘improving’ cycling infrastructure, when in fact there is no city-wide infrastructure to being with. Likewise it makes no significant mention of pedestrians.
So the Forum is now publicly calling on City Hall to honour its transport commitments as signed off in 2002 which are supposed to be completed by 2012.
One way for City Council to make up for lost time and lost ground would be by immediately requesting the Irish government to consider Galway as a pilot scheme for the government’s Smarter Travel Action Plan as well as applying for funding under the EU CIVITAS programme. Whilst our university city is at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of providing a pedestrian-cycling infrastructure to that of comparable cities such as Oxford or Cambridge, nevertheless there is still a critical mass of local inhabitants that use transport alternatives to the private car and many others that could be enticed out of their cars should a safe suitable environment exist.