The idea was a very simple one ... get off the ferry, ride into the Wicklow Mountains national park and see where we ended up. A couple of hours after getting off the ferry we were sat outside a cafe in a lovely village eating cake. The road we were following out of the village was called Long Hill, so legs primed we set off only to discover that it wasn't really a long hill at all, more a steady undulation ... Dee was quite happy about that. I'd planned to spend the night somewhere in the forestry but everytime we reached a plantation there were very large warning signs. Each sign explaining in great detail all the things you couldn't do in the forests, after carefully studying the signs it became obvious that breathing was possibly the only thing you wouldn't get in trouble for. We took the only sensible course of action we could and spent the night in there anyway
Within half an hour the dormant midges made their presence felt, so we were very much at home.
Next morning we continued our quest in search of the stuff OS forgot to put on their maps and within 20 minutes came across a trail centre. Again, there was quite a long list of things you couldn't do on the trails and one of them was ride any bike that didn't have 26" wheels!
The day continued in the same vain ... riding on tarmac lanes and reading signs that told you ' NO YOU CAN'T - BUGGER OFF'. At one point I did think we'd struck gold ... a local bloke told us about 'The Green Road' which ran alongside a lake and would bypass a fairly busy stretch of main road. I found the start of it and was greeted by more big signs! Always believing that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission we set off down it. We were able to ride the entire 3 miles without killing anyone, stealing someones property or fly-tipping (something the Irish appear to have a real problem with).
At the end of this magical track was an old quarry and heading off up into the hills was a superb looking track, rocky, steep and steppy but guess what? More signs ... I decided I'd be taking the piss if I took a bike up it, so decided to walk up there instead ... how I wished I'd had a bike, I'm convinced that the same track anywhere in the UK would be a bridleway.
I'm sorry to say that nothing changed for the remainder of our time, it's as though the mountains are closed. Every gate I saw was chained (even if it just went into an empty field), every inch of open land had private/no entry signs and nearly all the mountains appear to have no tracks on them, not even private tracks ... it's as though the countryside is dead, there doesn't even appear to be much farming takes place. I know we all moan about access but we really don't know how lucky we are
