Maps for Irish Cycle Touring

With the days getting longer and the weather getting warmer I have begun to think about the 2012 bicycle touring season. I've only ever cycle toured in Ireland and will do so again this year. I always plan tours and try to avoid busy main roads and very hilly routes. In the old days I would plan with paper maps, but now I use the Internet.

Inis More on the OS Website

The main website for this is Ordinance Survey Ireland (OS), which has all essential mapping information for the whole island. On the homepage click on the link “Explore Maps Using Our Free Viewer”. Then zoom in on the map of Ireland until the scale is 1:100000. At this scale the map shows every back road and lane. I screen grab the maps I want, load them into a graphics editor, crop them and print them out on A4 sheets. These print outs are the maps I take with me on the road, an A4 sheet is very convenient to work with on a windy day.

Ordinance Survey produce a set of 1:50,000 scale maps, which are sold in many Irish shops and online. They are superb maps for planning a cycle tour, but they are printed on big sheets and are not convenient to use on the road. They are also expensive selling at euro 8.25 on the OS website and there are over 100 sheets to cover the whole island. On a long tour the price and the weight of a large collection of these maps make them unsuitable for cycling. The OS also sell a 1:250000 scale map which covers the island with four sheets. Again they are unwieldy to use on the road and they do not show the very small back roads.

Inis More on Mapmyride

The main problem with the online OS maps is that they do not show elevations so I overcome this shortcoming with the website Mapmyride. I plot my potential route on their website and click on the elevation button to get data on elevations and gradients. Mapmyride also gives the distance of the route plotted. You must register to use it.

Another website I use is Google maps with Street View. Occasionally there is no convenient option but to use a busy main road. When this is the case I use Google street view to see how wide the road is and if it has a hard shoulder.

The Dingle Tralee road on Google Street View