So...mini ride, as the weather didn't hold for two days...Northern Ireland 94 route Antrim to Portadown
Train from Belfast to Antrim, then cycle to Portadown.
A quiet route, with some nice spots and views of the lake, but not all the way. It's good if you want to eat some KM on quiet country roads instead of having to fight with traffic (unfortunately you always get at least one **** driver, we had 3 yesterday one in a lorry) so quiet roads are better for a bit of peace.
If you want to do route make sure you print a map, bring a compass as there's a few spots you can get lost. You can go all the way around the lake, that's 80 miles or thereabouts.
The 96 KM 4 hour + breaks cycle turned into a 5.5 hour + getting lost drag over 118 KM due to poor sign posting! First it took an hour to find the start, we ended up in the forest (hm this can't be right...) then turned out we need to be on the road for a mile (more signs plz!) to get to cycle lane. Then it was good going until we hit a loop that you can take the wrong way (which we did, as there's no direction on the signs...no north/south, or towns or anything!) so we lost at least two hours getting lost.
Once we got going the route is pretty fast. Some nice inclines but not too long. And a massive nice long dip in one road, going down at 50 KM an hour and power it up at the other end which was equally high, the kind of dip you can jump a car out of, so great fun.
No rain and Thorn XTC turned out to be as on the box, handles well and "sporty" enough (on continental sport contacts, dry weather) and happy on not very well surfaced roads, takes away a lot of buzz.
Some really nice NI routes are:
Towpath to Lisburn from Belfast, not a loop but you can take road back to Belfast. Very nice with Lagan river. Only 12 miles one way though.
Comber Greenway then to Castle Espie from Belfast, about 22 miles, a lot of cycle lane, then generally quiet roads. Castle Espie is a wetlands wild life reserve where you can go for a walk.
Belfast to Jordanstown (cycle lane) then the scenic route which you can take all the way up to Giant's Causeway. However, no cycle lanes, so avoid rush hour on the main roads, great views and beaches/camp sites near route.
People we talked too where really impressed (100 km???) even two cyclist we met with good road bikes which are much lighter to drag up a hill...not too mention the manfriend rode fixed 48/18 all the way!
Hopefully a more loaded 2 day tour next.
