Westport to Italy, the Smarter Travel way: It begins 😊

So I finally hit the road on June 26th. It took a good lot of planning to get this far, a few headaches and some nerves but once I got on the bike they all disappeared and now I'm free, just me, my bike and a rough idea of where I'm going!

My neighbours, the Westport Smarter travel team & my clann have given me great send offs so far.

I cycled from Westport to Castlebar yesterday, it's a cycle I'm well used to but not going to miss, especially not the trucks and buses over taking me. I'm also hoping that on the rest of the trip I won't have to encounter as many roundabouts - 5 in 20km is a lot.

I'm on the train to Dublin now, first time with bike & it's super. I had to deal with a few train companys to get across the UK & for the Eurostar and I can definitely say Iarnrod Eireann were the easiest to deal with.
You can book the bike online, pay €6 and the station master even helped me load the bike. With all other train companies I've dealt with you can book your ticket online but you've to call the company to see if they can take your bike. In the UK it's free to take your bike on board but I think I would have been happier to pay a little and not spend so many hours on the phone trying to figure out if there was space or not. Arriva trains Wales were very difficult to deal with but Virgin trains were great. The Eurostar was good to deal with too but it does cost £30 to bring a bike on the Eurostar!