Campaign for Donegal biking facility starts today!
An ambitious campaign to develop a Co. Donegal downhill mountain biking trail that could attract 100,000 tourists to the county annually is being driven by the local community.
Speaking in Letterkenny last Friday, local TD Joe McHugh set out details of a campaign for a state-of-the-art downhill mountain biking trail on forestry lands owned by Coillte in Co. Donegal.
The organisers would like all MTB’ers to email Joe McHugh describing your interest in the project. It is needed for further evidence gathering. The address is:
They suggest the following wording in the email or something similar:
“Dear Joe,
As a mountain biking enthusiast, I am delighted to hear of the plans for a state of the art mountain biking centre in Donegal. I am currently living in [INSERT] and would consider such a centre in Donegal to be ideal to meet the needs of bikers from here and around Ireland. A centre of this nature would certainly attract myself and many of my friends to Donegal on a regular basis.Many thanks,”
Read the full detail here.
Coillte Projects
As you probably know Coillte the Irish Forestry Board in partnership with Failte Ireland and local community groups and developing a number of mountain bike facilities. They will see a total of €2 million euro being spent on over 100 km of designated mountain bike trails. The details of each are as follows:
| Site | Country | Trails | Km’s | Status | Completion Date | ||||||
| Ballyhoura | Limerick / Cork | 3 |
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December 07 | ||||||
| Ballinastoe | Wicklow | 1 | 25 | Maked Out | 15th December 07 | ||||||
| Oughterad | Galway | 1 | 12 | Planning underway | December 07 | ||||||
| Portumna | Galway | 1 | Family | Makred Out – Work to begin by end April | December 07 | ||||||
| Currachase | Limerick | 1 | Family | Marked out | December 07 |
Cork based club 021Racing report the Mallow DH track to be in a very dangerous state following some recent tree felling in the forest. Large trees have been cut and lie across the track every 15m – leaving the track un-ride able at this time!
Continue reading »
Cycling Ireland’s plans for the construction of a National Downhill centre in Hollywood county Wicklow are now well underway. A number of excellent bids for the design and oversight of the centre and after much deliberation it was decided that Phil Saxena would be the man to design Ireland first purpose build downhill track. Phil is probably better known as the builder of some of the world best 4 cross tracks, currently holding the contract for the construction of all of the world cup courses. Phil has also had a great deal of experience building downhill tracks and all agree that he will be able to come up with something special for the centre.
Phil has already inspected the site, and due to come over shortly to do a proper survey and draw up details plans. It is hoped to start work early in the New Year, and with luck be open for use during the summer.
While detailed plans are at an early stage, it is hoped that we can get a number of tracks into the site, ranging from two to three minutes. Whatever the final designs end up like, its guaranteed to be good.
