Colm O'Regan: Passage West is heading for something — when and what remains to be seen
The upgraded Marina Promenade which has now reopened following works by contractor Ward & Burke. Pic Larry Cummins.
Sometimes you just want to get to another town by bike. Like a weirdo.
We hired bikes in the Marina Market. Easily the best located bike hire place ever. It’s great when you arrive back and can get a slice of pizza without dismounting.
The Cork-Passage West greenway starts with the new Marina Promenade. If I wasn’t actually from Cork, I’d swear I’d never seen anything like it.
There are plazas and parks and a stadium and a waterfront. It’s like being out foreign. An artists impression that actually got built.
I think back to that little boy I was, nose pressed against a photo of Saarbrucken in , the First Year German text book, wondering if we too could have some human-friendly urban infrastructure in Ireland one day.
We take the Blackrock route on the way out and hug the coast.
I’m absolutely determined the family should know EXACTLY when we are over the Jack Lynch tunnel.
What can I say? Ring roads roads are my love language, okay?
Speaking of which, it’s weird to cycle along in waterside peace with the South Ring roaring away on our right.
What’s the hurry? I shout at over the ditch at the capitalists getting their hustle on, while we amble along pretending we are in our own musical.
Rounding Jacob’s Island, exactly the kind of placename you should encounter on a leisurely cycle, crossing a footbridge, and out along more coast to Passage West.
I went into a pub and asked where we could get lunch. The answer was “Monkstown”. Not the name of a restaurant – an entirely different village.
It’s very 1980s, to be sent down the coast to find somewhere to eat. In a way, almost refreshing. We’re so used to convenience.
But while I am nostalgic for a time of No, if I could make a small suggestion: I think the town at the end of one of the best greenways in the country, could have a place to have lunch.
While it doesn’t have lunch, Passage has an excellent maritime museum, crowded with interesting things and facts.
The kind of museum where serendipity means you just learn a random fact. Apparently the Vikings in Cork farmed kittens for fur. Vikings, never not (c)at it.
Mark my words, Passage West is heading for something. When and what, remains to be seen. Like a lot of Irish villages and towns, it has its Massive Derelict Site For No Good Reason.
There is apparently some progress on the MDSFNGR. But once again it shows that in Ireland, there’s money to be made from doing sweet FA with a site and no punishment for not.
The kind of nonsensical inertia that makes you briefly wish for Chinese government-style appropriation of land to get things going.
On the way back it’s the direct route, partially along the old Cork Passage West Railway. It’s bittersweet cycling through the defunct Blackrock station.
A greenway along an old railway line is like eating a burger off fine china. You feel like this container was built for finer things.
But lookit, we’d have a train to Mars before we’d have a new railway line opened in Ireland. So I’ll take the greenway for now.
And then before you know it, we’re back at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, promenading with the best of them. I feel like we should be cycling with a parasol in a candy-stripe suit. Like in a musical.
There’s always moaning about greenways – some of it for good reasons: it’s not always good for wildlife, it should have been a train, etc.
And then moaning for moaning’s sake or a fear that Bill Gates is microchipping the helmets.
But, whizzing along with children to an Irish town from its nearby city, whether by coast or down a leafy once-forgotten railway line, it’s a pleasing cycle of life.
