Cycling Mullingar to Athlone Old Rail Trail greenway & the Eurovelo2 road to Galway

There's a 43km cycleway that runs from just west of Mullingar all the way to the River Shannon at Athlone and in fact it even crosses the Shannon on a purpose build cycleway bridge. This is the old Midland Great Western Railway line which closed in 1987.

This video is full Timelapse video of the old rail trail greenway followed after crossing the Shannon by following I route I built on Cycle dot Travel to Galway using quiet local roads whenever reasonable. This is because there is meant to be a Dublin–Galway Greenway as either the start or end of a 5000km long EuroVelo 2 route linking Galway through many European capitals to Moscow. I regularly see people ask for GPX maps of this route on cycle forums so I made this one and tested it out almost all the way to Galway.

This video is day 2 of that test, on day 1 I cycle from Dublin to a point a bit west of Mullingar where I wild camped. This video starts around 7am the following morning as I cycled onto the top of the Old Rail Trail

Map of 2 day route on Cycle Travel https://cycle.travel/map/journey/613190

Instagram post for day with 10 photos https://www.instagram.com/p/C9h4LH5tQ...

Day 1 - Dublin to Mullingar    • Royal canal cycling Dublin to Mulling...  

Dublin to Galway on missing #Eurovelo 3 day 2. (Insta post)

My #wildcamp location by the canal outside Mullingar turned out to have one major problem, very close by there was a busy road on a hill. Lorries using this at night made a lot of noise so I woke up a lot & figure I only got 3 hours sleep which affected my intended goal.

I packed up early, 2nd photo to demonstrate #LeaveNoTrace and swing onto the #Greenway that runs from Mullingar to Athlone along the old rail line for 43km. A couple of the old stations are now cafes but it was too early for them to be open. There are some possible camping locations including at the various trailheads all of which I checked had at least one campervan parked up.

As you reach Athlone it connects to a town cycle lane at the ruins of an Abbey which then brings you to the pedestrian/cyclist bridge across the Shannon. After Athlone I was testing the route suggested by cycle.travel which as usual made excellent use of the network of local roads. In the 45km I travelled on there was only 5km on regional roads.

The lack of sleep meant I abandoned my plan to get to Galway city and then turn back to my destination of Loughrea. Over an energy drink & bag of crisps at Agascraigh I decided to split off that route and head directly to my destination instead. However as the rest of the route is in L roads to the outskirts of Galway where it joins Eurovelo1 I’m happy enough that it’s a good substitute while we wait for #Eurovelo2 to be finalized. Indeed if you are in a hurry you may still be the best route, the plan for EV2 from Athlone very much takes the scenic road & is probably twice my proposed distance