On the Roads to Heaven
Paul Kimmage reveals his all-time favourite cycling routes in Ireland
Paul Kimmage on some of the iconic routes at home and abroad
PEOPLE are often curious about my stern facade and somewhat grumpy countenance. “Did you lose your wallet, Paul?” “Why the long face?” “Jaysus, you’re always giving out!”
“Why can’t you be more like Des Cahill?” I blame my mother. In August, 1962, when I was three months old, she abandoned me for a week with my aunt Lily in Finglas and took off with my father. They had been married exactly a year and decided to mark it by doing what had first brought them together — a shared love of cycling
They loaded their bikes with food and clothes, left their one-room flat in Eccles Street, Dublin, and headed north for 60km to the youth hostel in Clogherhead.
A day later they had reached the Mourne mountains and the Kinnahalla hostel near the Spelga Dam. On stage three they broke the budget at a B&B in Belfast and their fourth night was spent at a hostel in Ballygalley on the Antrim coast.
There were two German couples in the hostel. It was possibly the first time in her life my mother had encountered foreigners because she still talks of them as if they were Martians.
“They nearly freaked because your father didn’t have a pillow case,” she says. “But the warden had raced with Christy and just laughed it off.”
And for men and women — married or not — there were separate dorms.
“I was with the German women — and you should have seen them in the showers!” my mother recalls, mimicking clothes being flung with abandon and a crotch being vigorously scrubbed.
“Thanks mother, I get the picture,” I laugh.
“We weren’t a bit like that!” she insists. “I was like a mouse. But that coast road from Belfast to Cushendall was beautiful — you should put it on your list.”
The ‘list’ is a compilation of my favourite cycling routes.
It starts with a magic window at the bottom of the Kilbarrack Road that transported me from a grey housing estate in north Dublin to the glitter of the Howth peninsula, the playground of my youth.
There were two options for reaching The Summit from Sutton: straight-up past the graveyard on Carrickbrack Road, or (my favourite) via the Strand, St Fintan’s and the Windgate Road. And two options from Howth: right at the fork and up through the village, or (my favourite) left at the fork and up Thormanby Road.
If I had a pound for every time I went up that hill as a kid, I’d be a very wealthy man. It was the Alpe d’Huez of my boyhood. Today, despite the traffic, it’s still a buzz to go back, but the dreams are different now.
The Vico Road in Dalkey was another special place. We’d cross the Liffey at the Talbot Bridge, hug the coast road to Dalkey and imagine we were in Monaco as we tackled the climb. It was also our gateway to the big Wicklow climbs — Glenmalure, Sally Gap and Luggala.
One day, we had just crossed Sally Gap and were steaming towards Roundwood when we happened upon Seamus Shortall and a group of his Dublin Wheelers. We were racing men and went by them as if they were stopped, as they piddled along with their pannier bags.
“We’re only touring,” Seamus hollered.
“Yis bunch of Freds,” we laughed.
Freds were fucking eejits who stopped for coffee, admired the views and rode their bikes for enjoyment.
They were not fixated on winning. They were not driven by ambition. They had no desire to turn pro or ride the Tour de France. Some of us made it. And some of us were stars. But as I sit here trying to compile a list of favourite rides, there’s something I’ve just realised. The joke was on us. In the winter of ‘75, when I was 15 years old, I took off for the Wicklow Hills one weekend with two friends from Dundrum — Paul Smith and Stephen Roche.
Friday night was spent at a hostel in Baltyboys and the following morning we made tracks for Aghavannagh. Midway through the ride, on the slopes of Glenmalure, we found a small, dry ditch by the side of the road and stopped for lunch: tinned fruit salad, a chunk of my mother’s fruit cake and a can of coke.
I can see us now as clear as day — huddled against the spitting rain and laughing about how lucky we were — but most of what followed during our racing years is a blur.
Racers live by the creed ‘head down, arse up’, but the problem with that is obvious: you don’t see anything.
Thirteen years later, in the summer of 1988, a friend from Grenoble, Gerard Torres, asked if I would pace him in a sportive called La Marmotte. It was the first time in three seasons I had not been selected for the Tour de France and a time of much reflection as I spent the month at home.
The Marmotte started at first light in the town of Bourg d’Oisans. I threw a rucksack over my shoulder with some spares and provisions for Gerard, and we set off down the valley to the foot of the first climb. It felt odd being surrounded by Freds. They stopped to pee and took breaks and paused for rest.
And the view was different, too. I had raced over the day’s five mountains — Col du Glandon, Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Telegraphe, Col du Galibier and Alpe d’Huez — in the Tour, but had never truly seen them before.
We stopped for coffee in Saint-Sorlain, and lunch in Valloire, but it was the smile on Gerard’s face as we crossed the Galibier that stayed with me.
It was, and remains, perhaps my favourite ride of all time.