Tags
Atlantic Drive, butterfly bars, cycle touring, Downings, Horn Head, Letterkenny, Lough Salt, Lough Swilly, MTB, Shimano Alfine 8, Steel mountain bike, Tra na Rossan, wild atlantic way
As mentioned before on this blog, I had built an old mountain bike with a Shimano hub gear and I had finally got round to sorting it out properly with a single chainset and matching sealed bottom bracket. I had put quite a few miles on this over the winter but the original cup and cone Shimano bottom bracket seemed to collapse and become very noisy so I had stopped using it until recently. Further inspection showed the cage holding the ball bearings had collapsed on one side allowing the ball bearings to move out of position. I normally always assembled this type of bearing with loose bearings and this highlights the reasons I do this. I don’t like cages, they make assembly easier but have no other advantages and several disadvantages. On this occasion I had used the cages as it was only a temporary measure and was easier! But a new sealed unit has now been installed which will cut maintenance in future.
Of course with the bike back on the road, my thoughts immediately returned to it’s suitability for touring. Running a 2:1 chainwheel/rear sprocket gear ratio, the 8 speed hub provides a range of gears from 27 to 83 inches on 26 x 2“ wheels so on paper it the gear range is more than wide enough and gives lower gearing than I have on my normal touring bike. I decided on a weekend tour to test it all out. In many ways older steel framed mountain bikes make the perfect touring bike on a budget as the wide tyres opens up roads and paths that are tricky on narrower higher pressure road tyres and the frames are strong and robust and usually came with mountings for mudguards and racks. The upright riding position is also excellent for leisurely riding and sightseeing. Cantilever brakes are a pain to set up but once done, they do provide more powerful braking than road callipers. I prefer hub gears to derailleurs which was the reason for building this bike in the first place as although I love the good old AW3 and probably use one for the majority of my cycling, the gear range doesn’t quite hack it for the sorts of places I like to tour. I was interested to see how the Shimano hub would preform.
I planned a weekend tour to Carrigart, riding there via Churchill and Creeslough and taking a different road back via Glen village and Lough Salt, an area that I had never cycled before but the whole route takes in some tough climbs and would be a good test.
On all my previous tours, I was mostly very lucky with the weather but it had to happen eventually. The weather was not very promising looking but I had accommodation booked so went ahead anyway. I had a small package I had to pick up in Strabane so cycled there first before beginning my tour. Shortly after leaving Strabane, it began raining quite heavily and was to remain wet for the rest of the day although it did reduce to just a soft drizzle. I had intended to visit Glenveagh national park en-route but as it was wet, I decided to skip that to shorten the journey. I turned off onto minor roads before I reached Churchill and I didn’t bother with any photo stops either on the first day as it was so overcast. I arrived at the Trá na Rossan hostel earlier than I had planned due to the shorter route and no scenic stops. I had covered fifty-five miles for the day and I found the bike comfortable and the gearing worked well on the hills of which there were many.
Typically the weather cleared up to a beautiful summer’s evening almost as soon as I had arrived! I got washed and changed and had something to eat. I love this hostel, it really is unique and full of history and character and the remote location at the almost hidden Trá na Rossan beach in the foothills of Melmore Head must surely be one of the most beautiful locations anywhere in the country. The hostel building was the work of the famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and was built as a hunting lodge by a rich Londoner (I think c1900). It was handed over to the State in 1937 to be used as a hostel and is now the second oldest youth hostel in Europe. The locals claim it is haunted but I have never experienced any ghosts on my stays there and I learned from locals that it is part of a long-running dispute about the ownership of the land and the building going back decades with a local family who claim it belongs to them and not to An Óige .
It has sadly suffered from falling numbers of guests in recent years and indeed despite being the beginning of the tourist season, the only other guests were a group of six Cork based Polish divers who had come to explore the wreck of the former White Star Liner, the S.S. Laurentic which went down of the north coast of Donegal after hitting mines in 1917 with a loss of over three hundred lives. This wreck has always attracted a lot of attention from divers over the years due to the cargo of forty-three tons of gold ingots. The cargo was valued by the British government of the time at five million pounds. Royal Navy divers recovered most of the gold in the years following WWI but twenty-two gold bars remain unaccounted for. I guess the people who dive to explore the wreck hope to find some of the missing gold! Many other items have been recovered from the Laurentic over the years including a magnificent six inch gun to be found on display at Downings Pier.
Now that the weather had improved, I went for a walk along the beach and continued along the strand and back onto the road. I walked the mile or so to An Sioin Ceoil (a small traditional rural thatched pub at Mervagh) and being Saturday night there was live traditional music which I enjoyed a lot for a few hours before walking back to the hostel. It was now a lovely clear night and the thirty minute walk along quiet rural roads with nothing but my footsteps and the gentle breaking waves on Trá na Rossan beach to break the silence. When I got back to the hostel the divers had returned but they hadn’t found the missing gold. They were good company though with many interesting stories to tell.
Saturday dawned very overcast and quite cold but with some blue sky and chinks of sunlight shining through the clouds giving the promise of clearing up to be a nice day. It did prove to be the case. After breakfast I went for an early morning walk along the beach and cliffs before returning to get my bike. I had unfinished business from a previous trip around these parts as I had meant to visit Horn Head near Dunfanaghy on my Donegal coastal tour in May but it didn’t work out at that time so that was my intended destination.
I made my way back along the Atlantic drive route and took the turn off for Creeslough. There was no traffic to be seen as it was still quite early on a Sunday morning. I stopped at Caisleán na dTuath (Doe Castle) for a quick look around but didn’t take the free guided tour offered to me as I didn’t have the time and there isn’t a huge amount to see although there is a lot of interesting history and it gives great views of Sheephaven Bay. Believed to date from 1425. the castle is built in a prominent position and surrounded on three sides by the waters of Sheephaven Bay so offered good protection from attack. It was mostly the home of the MacSweeney clan who ruled the Rosguil peninsula and surrounding areas from here including Tory Island although it often changed hands during many acts of war. It was held for over twenty years in the late seventeenth century by the English army but the Mac Sweeneys won it back again. It was sold to George Vaghen Harte in 1800 and was occupied as recently as 1909. It was bought by the Irish Land Commission in 1932 to be preserved as a National Monument and now in the possession of the Office Of Public Works, restoration work is being carried out to restore it to it’s former glory.
There is also a legend associated with the castle. Aileen, daughter of the MacSweeneys was madly in love with Turlough O’Boyle of Ballymore. The O’Boyles and MacSweeneys had a long-standing family feud and when the Mac Sweeneys found out about the love affair, Aileen was confined to an upper room of the castle. Turlough often went fishing on Lackagh River where he could see his beloved Aileen and he was captured from his boat and killed by the MacSweeneys and when Aileen looked out the window and saw her lover’s body lying dead in the courtyard, she jumped from the window to her death. The local legend claims that the ghost of Turlough and Aileen on their rowing boat can still be seen on Lackagh River although again, I can report no supernatural experiences.
After the visit to the castle I continued on my Creeslough and then on to Dunfanaghy. I stopped for lunch in Dunfanaghy and then took the turn off the main N56 for Horn Head. Horn Head (from the Irish Corrán Binne – hollow in the hills) is a small peninsula in Sheephaven Bay with cliffs that rise to approximately six hundred feet out of the sea and is an area rich in stone age monuments. There are also two old military lookout towers – one built during the Napoleonic wars and one built during WWII. McSwyne’s Gun is a blow hole on the western side from which seawater could be forced two hundred feet in the air and could be heard up to ten miles away during severe storms but in modern times it no longer works as well as it used to. Many people have died from getting too close to it. Horn Head house was designed by William Wray and built by Captain Charles Stewart in 1701. Stewart was a veteran of the Battle of Boyne in 1690 and had bought the Horn Head estate in 1700. Stewart was to become the High Sheriff of Donegal and his descendants lived in the house until 1935. It is now just a ruin.
As might be expected given the six-hundred foot high cliffs, to ride a bike around Horn Head is not particularly easy but it is well worth the effort. The Alfine hub provided me with adequate gearing for the task but it was still tough in places. I found it perfectly doable although on the first major climb I stood on the pedals and the rear wheel slipped forward in the dropouts. With the left-hand side of the tyre tight against the chainstay and a loose chain in danger of slipping or coming off and no rear mech to keep it tight, I had to stop and re-position it and make sure I did the wheel nuts up nice and tight this time. I obviously hadn’t had my Weetabix when I fitted the rear wheel in the first place! Unlike a Sturmey hub, there was no need to adjust the gear cable after the wheel moved as the adjustment is contained in the cassette joint which stays attached to the axle. This is why I like to carry tools when going for long rides – I can make adjustments or repairs if required even in a remote area. The real problem with this route is the incredibly narrow road which loops the peninsula means having to stop and pull off the road if you meet a car and if that happens on one of the climbs it can be difficult to get going again. The scenery is nothing short of spectacular though and it needs more exploration. I only really rode around the perimeter road and didn’t do very much proper exploring.
The return journey to the hostel was relatively uneventful. I stopped with a stranded cyclist on the way out of Dunfanaghy and with a bit of patience, I was able to retrieve his chain which had over-shifted the largest cassette sprocket and got wedged between the spoke protector and the cassette. He was very grateful and I felt happy I was able to be of assistance despite gaining oily hands in the process. I am just surprised that this happened on what looked to be an almost new bike of decent quality as the bike shop who sold it really should have set the thing up properly so it wouldn’t happen like that. The mech or the hanger didn’t look bent either so it was clearly a set up issue. Luckily there was a spoke protector fitted on the wheel or it could have got expensive. I set the limit screw properly so it shouldn’t happen again.
When I returned to the hostel, I had covered fifty-seven miles for the day and a new guest was able to solve a little mystery – the frame of this bike came to me in the this explosion in a paint factory colour scheme and lacking any decals or identifying badges. I always knew it was something a bit more special than the average supermarket cheap mountain bike as it’s well made traditional lugged construction with neat but plain lug work and quite light for a frame of it’s type but couldn’t work out what it was. The new English guest took one look when I arrived back and identified it as a Muddyfox Courier – he has one himself from new and has used it for touring for many years including completing Land’s End to John O’Groats on it in the late 1990s. Sadly he can’t currently cycle due to health reasons. Early Muddyfox Mountain bikes were quite highly regarded and mine is built from Tange tubing. Looking at pictures on the net of Muddyfox Couriers and close ups of the lugs, it does appear to be the correct identification. It makes no functional difference whatsoever but sadly mine isn’t one of the very earliest ones with the little Muddyfox logo on the top of the chainstays. It was a nice styling touch.
It was very wet the following morning. This was the day I was due to cycle home. I awoke at 7am to rain battering of the window panes and the slate roof. Not a good start really but I was in no particular hurry so I decided after breakfast to wait for a while before leaving in the hope it would clear like the forecast promised it would. I had never intended to leave first thing in the morning anyway but there was to be no early morning coastal walk this time due to the weather. A morning spent sitting looking out the window drinking tea and chatting to the other people there but the weather did improve. It changed from being very wet to merely wet! By 11:30am I felt it was as good as it was going to get and I wanted to be on my way.
I did consider taking a direct route home to reduce the distance and time but I decided to complete my route and although raining, it was no longer a torrential downpour and it was warm enough. I set of for Creeslough once again towards only this time turned off for Glen Village near Caisleán na dTuath. This route was new to me and would take me past Lough Salt and Glen Lough and eventually to Kilmacrennan but I knew it involved climbing through the Derryveagh mountains so it wasn’t going to be easy and was always going to be prone to sudden weather changes due to altitude and closeness to the Atlantic. This is wild territory with little shelter.
From the turn off on the main road, it is only a few miles with no great climbing so far to reach Glen Village. It is only a tiny village at a crossroads really and I was surprised to see the old Irish road signs marked in miles still in place at the crossroads – Letterkenny 16, Milford 8 3/4. I thought these had all been replaced with new Metric road signs by now. Time stands still in places like this I guess. The unit of measurement is largely irrelevant, they still point a stranger in the right direction. There was also a small cafe in the village and I decided to have an early lunch. I can strongly recommend “The Glen Cafe” as the food was excellent and prices very reasonable and the staff didn’t object to me dripping water all over the floor.
I wrung the water out of my gloves before getting back on the bike. An elderly woman with a Terrier on a lead stopped with me.
“You got wet too?” she enquired.
“Just a bit!” I replied.
“All I did was take the dog for a walk and I’m completely drowned!”
“Not much like summer, is it.”
“Naw. And I’m popping into the pub now for a hot whiskey afore I go home or else I’ll get the ‘flu! You can’t beat a wee hot whiskey to keep the ‘flu at away!” she said knowingly and she marched off in the direction of the pub with the little dog on tow looking like a drowned rat.
Hot whiskey – the traditional Irish cure-all for all conditions. Maybe she had the right idea but I had to keep going. But something had happened while I had been in the cafe – it had genuinely stopped raining although no blue skies were to be seen.
It’s just after Glen that the real climbing starts. The low hanging cloud and mist couldn’t obscure the beauty of the area though. As the road winds upwards through High Glen, Glen Lough first comes into view just after you pass a very pretty and well kept thatched cottage. As the road climbs the high hawthorn hedges and whatever shelter they provide disappear and you are left with exposed mountain side and clear views of Glen Lough and you can still see Sheephaven Bay if you look back. The hill gets steeper, I think the highest point is almost seven hundred feet above sea level. It is a long and tough climb which varies in severity and continues for about three miles. It is definitely very tough and I needed my lowest gear for the majority of it.
As you crest the climb, first Lough Reelan and then Lough Salt come into view and you can still see Glen Lough further down the valley. Lough Salt is actually the main drinking water supply for the Letterkenny area. It is also a very picturesque lake, and the road runs right along the water’s edge. I couldn’t help thinking the views are actually very similar to Lough Beagh in Glenveagh National Park which is located just on the other side of the mountain. The difference, of course is that even on a bad weather day, Glenveagh would be mobbed with tourists at this time of year whereas I had Lough Salt all to myself. The landscape is more natural here too as it hasn’t been interfered with to create the gardens and the hunting reserve that Glenveagh originally was.
After climbing a mountain I was expecting a nice high speed descent on the other side but it never really happened. There are a few short, sharp descents on the road to Kilmacrennan but the descent is quite gradual really and for the first time I suddenly realised just how mountainous the Letterkenny/Churchill/Kilmacrennan area actually is. It had started drizzling rain again as I reached Kilmacrennan. It’s a small village a few miles along the N56 from Letterkenny and was one of the stops on the old Letterkenny to Burtonport railway ran by Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railways until the 1940s. It is quite a nice little town with a preserved 150 year old thatched cottage and a few other recent thatched buildings which were built around the old one to create a small museum. I didn’t go in to any of the cottages but did look around the assorted old farm implements around the yards and gardens.
Rather than bother with the busy N56, I took a selection of minor roads to bring me back to Letterkenny. I was following signposts for Letterkenny and had no idea whereabouts in Letterkenny I would arrive. These roads also involved some tough climbs. The Letterkenny area is not an easy one to ride a bike. Eventually I arrived in Glencar and then the long descent down past the hospital and what was once the famous Oatfield Sweets factory back to an area I was familiar with. I think it was a shame that the Oatfield factory, a famous landmark in Letterkenny for decades has been demolished but apparently the town needs yet more supermarkets but it’s now an empty site while the supermarket giants battle about planning permission with the town council. The factory was opened in 1930 by William McKinney (as a replacement for a previous cottage industry behind his sweet shop in the town) and in it’s heyday produced up to sixty-five tons of confectionery per week which was exported all over the world.
I have fond memories from childhood of the smell of glucose and molten sugars which used to hang in the air around the factory but like the other famous Letterkenny landmark – the fleet of old Leyland Leopard buses in the distinctive Lough Swilly Bus livery, it is now gone for good although the name lives on but Oatfield Sweets are now made elsewhere. The Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Company was in operation from the 1850s before changing to road transport in the mid twentieth century and was the oldest privately owned public transport company in the world until going into receivership in 2014 leaving much of the north of Donegal with no public transport system.
I made one final stop on my journey home at the new park area at the side of the Port Bridge. They have put up a tourist information board telling the history of the Ballyraine Port and the old quayside on the other side of the bridge opposite to where Charles Kelly’s 19th century warehouses once stood (another Letterkenny landmark which got flattened in 2001). It’s hard to believe now but this was once a busy port on the Swilly with imports of timber, coal and iron and exports of argricultural products from the local area. I believe many of the huge consignment of Norweigan poles used during the electrification of rural Ireland following the formation of the ESB by the Free State government in the ‘20s and ‘30s were unloaded here and transported by train to wherever they were needed. The final train left Letterkenny in 1953 and the final ship to unload at Ballyraine in 1980 was a Scottish ship called the Polarlight which had a cargo of salt. This part of the Swilly is not a viable port in the modern era as it’s too shallow and difficult to navigate due to build ups of silt which needed regular dredging.
The bike performed well too with around 160 very hilly miles covered over three days and I love the clean reliable gear shifts from the Shimano hub gear although I don’t think I will ever grow to love the gear shifter it does the job. As with any hub gear or single speed bike, there is no need to de-gunk the derailleur following a wet and mucky ride. The cantilever brakes provided strong braking in the wet. It works very well as a touring bike and the range of gears provided by the hub are adequate for most purposes. If I had one small complaint about the hub, I feel the gear ratios are slightly odd as I would prefer the higher gears closer together and larger gaps at the lower end. I have read some people complain about too much drag from these hubs but I’ve found it feels more efficient after a few hundred miles. It probably doesn’t feel as efficient as a derailleur system but I still climbed the hills with it. I doubt it makes any noticeable difference in normal riding and nobody will ever fit a heavy thing like this to a race bike.