Anybody ever rend a cycle in Dublin, Ireland?

Looking for a good shop in Dublin. The wife wants to go to the Old
Country this summer, so... do I have a choice? (I wanted to go to
Madison.)

Actually, we need a tandem because she's handicapped; however, that's
asking much, IMO.

Jones

!Jones wrote:
Looking for a good shop in Dublin. The wife wants to go to the Old
Country this summer, so... do I have a choice? (I wanted to go to
Madison.)

Actually, we need a tandem because she's handicapped; however, that's
asking much, IMO.

Jones

Here is an article on cycling in Ireland for tourists I wrote for the
magazine Inside Ireland a
few years ago:
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...20Ireland.html
It also list shops that will rent you a bike and a direct link to the
biggest bicycle tour operator in Ireland.

Now for some inside gen. Pay close attention to what I say about our
major roads. Traffic moves at least 20mph faster than in the States,
and on far narrower roads, and some drivers have never seen a
cyclist.

Your best bet if you really want a *tour* is probably to buy a package
(bikes and accommodation) cycling holiday from experienced tour
operators like Celtic, net address in the article. If a tandem is
available, they will be able to get it for you. (Be sure your wife
will make the daily distance; there are no flat roads in Ireland; the
riders on the recent Tour of Ireland bitched bitterly about the
hills.)

That list of bike rental places I refer you to is no doubt optimistic;
my local LBS is on it and anytime he has offered me a courtesy bike
I've preferred to walk rather than ride some POS off his scrapheap;
you can forget about renting a tandem unless you get very lucky
indeed. The rental costs in the article has not been updated...

In Ireland, incidentally, unless travelling on expenses, one doesn't
as a first choice book into hotels but into the government-approved
guest houses (you find them in a book you buy as you come off the
plane, or on the net); they're cheaper and friendlier and very helpful
indeed. (One of my pedalpals runs the best one locally; she knows
which roads are good and safe and which aren't.) Forget camping; the
weather is so changeable, a camping holiday will be one long misery;
nobody does it; there are no campsites for cyclists and it is even
rare to see a motorhome or caravan.

Unless your wife has some kind of a schedule already (tracing her
roots?), or unless you want to take in the major cultural institutions
which essentially means Dublin, I would advise you not to try and
cover the country but instead to choose some pretty little country
town outside the major cities and book in for a few days, ride the
lanes around the town to the historical or picturesque sites, eat in
the restaurants and bars, spend your evenings listening to music in
the bars, then move on to the next little town for another few days;
often people who take this advice just decide to extend their stay in
the first little town. That way you get a feeling for Ireland and its
people which you don't from the rush of images and fleeting contacts
of a "tour". That's what I do for my holiday, though it isn't a
cycling holiday: I go stay in a town only an hour's drive away and go
to a music festival, and take walks in the lanes thereabouts. I'd
suggest my own town, Bandon, but it's a popular place, so you probably
have to book well in advance.

Here are a couple of photo essays about a ride from Bandon to
Kilmacsimon Quay and back again by a different route:
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...simon%201.html
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...simon%202.html

If I were in your shoes, I'd try find some little town with good
cycling on the lanes (don't worry about getting there -- we have
superb train and bus services, and information about taking a bike on
them is in the article referenced above) and book into a good guest
house for three or four days with an option to extend in case you
decide you like it too much to move on. Then try to rent known bikes;
if good bikes aren't for rent, I'd just cut a deal with an LBS to buy
a couple of new Trek mountain bikes with a guaranteed repurchase deal
for say halfprice after the holiday, something like that; you would
need to order the bikes in advance of arriving to be sure they're the
right bikes, as the stock at the big city dealers is horridly
expensive and the LBS in small towns may not have a huge selection of
styles and sizes. You need to have your second little town picked out
as either reachable by back roads or on the bus route but that isn't
difficult. From Bandon for instance there is a big ring of pretty
towns down the coast to Bantry and back up to Bandon that could
consume a fortnight; there's a smaller ring the other way, to Kinsale.
The same applies to virtually any other tourist center. Bandon is so
popular among other reasons because it is only half an hour from the
international airport at Cork; there is no need to waste time going to
Dublin or Shannon (which is literally in the middle of nowhere; a very
expensive place to get to and from).

To reach my private mailbox, lose the prime digit from my visible
spambuster e-mail address.

Andre Jute
Not speaking for the Tourist Board here!

On 7 nov, 02:34, !Jones wrote:
Looking for a good shop in Dublin. *The wife wants to go to the Old
Country this summer, so... do I have a choice? *(I wanted to go to
Madison.)

Actually, we need a tandem because she's handicapped; however, that's
asking much, IMO.

Jones

Renting a tandem will be impossible I think in Dublin, in 5 years
living there I have never seen one.
For renting bicycles Cycleways, http://www.cycleways.com/ They are a
decent shop close to the citycentre of Dublin.

Paul

On Nov 6, 6:34*pm, !Jones wrote:
Looking for a good shop in Dublin. *The wife wants to go to the Old
Country this summer, so... do I have a choice? *(I wanted to go to
Madison.)

Actually, we need a tandem because she's handicapped; however, that's
asking much, IMO.

Jones

Dear J,

"We offer a full range of bikes, from kiddies, tag-alongs, tandems,
mountain bikes, hybrids & racing bikes. Our bikes are all, 'Giant',
made in Holland, and perfect for a few hours or a day's biking. Our
fully experienced staff will guarantee you that your bike will be in
perfect working order and help you in any way they can to make your
biking experience with us a memorable one, for all the right reasons.
We have a total of 120 bikes to choose from."

Contact us at
www.phoenixparkbikehire.com

http://www.goireland.com/dublin/phoe...re-id44830.htm

Given your situation, the Irish dealer at this site might be helpful:

http://buddy2.site.aplus.net/Dealers.html

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

I have not yet rent a bicycle in Dublin. But I have rent a number of
bicycles. Some of them were completely sundered.

Chalo

On Fri, 6 Nov 2009 20:52:50 -0800 (PST), in rec.bicycles.tech Andre
Jute wrote:

Here is an article on cycling in Ireland for tourists I wrote for the
magazine Inside Ireland a
few years ago:
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...20Ireland.html

Thanks... got it bookmarked.

We're renting a microbus with a bed in it for most of the trip. We
don't like riding in groups and, no, my stoker isn't up to a full day
of hills.

We're just interested in a Dublin sight-seeing day trip.

But, thanks for the pointers.

Jones

On Sat, 7 Nov 2009 00:59:26 -0800 (PST), in rec.bicycles.tech Chalo
wrote:

I have not yet rent a bicycle in Dublin. But I have rent a number of
bicycles. Some of them were completely sundered.

Yes, I have had that experience. That issue is even greater when one
needs a tandem; we rented one in Bar Harbor, Maine a couple of years
ago that simply wasn't safe to ride.

Jones

"Andre Jute" wrote in message
...

you can forget about renting a tandem unless you get very lucky
indeed.

Friends rented a Dawes Galaxy tandem in Ireland, which both surprised and
impressed me. Unfortunately I don't know where from.

!Jones wrote:

Chalo wrote:

I have not yet rent a bicycle in Dublin. *But I have rent a number of
bicycles. *Some of them were completely sundered.

Yes, I have had that experience. *That issue is even greater when one
needs a tandem; we rented one in Bar Harbor, Maine a couple of years
ago that simply wasn't safe to ride.

I was making a play on words, based on your use of the word
"rend" (break apart) in the thread title. I read the title and
thought, "hey, I do that".

The only bike I ever rented was a BikeE, because it was the only one I
ever found for rent that could be adjusted to fit my size. It was
educational, in that it taught me to avoid BikeEs and other similarly
ill-conceived bikes from that time forward.

Chalo

On Nov 9, 2:49*pm, "Clive George" wrote:
"Andre Jute" wrote in message

...

you can forget about renting a tandem unless you get very lucky
indeed.

I simply misread the question; I thought Jones was using "Dublin"
generically for Ireland. In Dublin itself a tandem is possible -- for
instance from www.phoenixparkbikehire.com --but anywhere else it is
less likely. My remarks were predicated on the knowledge that Dublin
is a very tough city for a cyclist to escape onto friendlier roads
(more below), and Jones's stated family circumstances. But it seems
the tandem is for use in Dublin.

Repeat tourers that I meet on the road invariably put their bike on
the bus or the train for the first part of the journey out of Dublin,
and the really experienced fly in to Cork rather than Dublin or
Shannon (I'm not even sure it is legal anymore for a bicycle to go on
the road out of Shannon). Galway is another possibility; I met a
couple of very experienced Scots (hamstrings from Hell, as Simon
Schama said of the famous statue of William Wallace) on the road,
separately, not together, who always start their tours in Galway.
Actually, I find it odd that so few bicycle tourers -- I've never met
one anyway -- arrive by the ferries (to Cork and Rosslare) which are
easier to ship a bike by and which both decant cyclists in friendlier
cycling environments than Dublin and Shannon.

I know, I know, when you toured Ireland by bike thirty years ago, or
whatever, when even Krygo was young and Jesus was a teenager, you
could cruise out of Dublin and hardly ever see a tractor; that rural
Ireland was gone even before the Celtic Tiger. It's still very
beautiful in the lanes but the main roads are full of large cars with
drivers in a hurry and convoys of thundering trucks. The Garda
(police) Superintendent, on whose advise I depended when I wrote that
anyone but very experienced cyclists should stay the hell off the main
roads, was himself later killed while taking his exercise on his
bicycle, on a road I stopped cycling only six months or so before
after deciding it wasn't fun to have a continuous row of trucks
travelling 110kph twelve inches from your shoulder.

Friends rented a Dawes Galaxy tandem in Ireland, which both surprised and
impressed me. Unfortunately I don't know where from.

Celtic, net address in my article to which I referred Jones, supplies
Dawes bikes (apparently, now only to people who book tours with them;
when the article was written they listed bare-bike rentals as well; it
might still be worth a phone call). See near the bottom of
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...reland.htmlbut
note that Celtic isn't in Dublin. Nor do they advertise a tandem,
though they no doubt know where to find one if a customer insists.

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Bicycles at
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...20CYCLING.html