Rode in a real Irish St Patricks Day parade here in tiny but mighty Castlebar yesterday, Sunday. I did so with the Castlebar Cycle Store (go to their web to see their bike and a clip of us on the evening news), a cutting edge bike shop that is one of four bike dealers in this small town of 10,000 people. Castlebar, the county seat for Mayo County (here in Ireland, they call it County Mayo) is able to support so many pedal machine purveyors because of the Great Western Greenway (GWG), regularly voted one of the best such systems in all of Europe, if not the best.

While connections to the heart of the GWG in Newport (see my visit to it) are still being built and Castlebar already has the epic Lake Lannagh cycling jewel, complete with it’s own Greenway Cafe, the large number of two wheel traders here also stand ready to take advantage of the beautiful bike path that will very soon connect their downtown with the Irish History Museum (my Eagle at its beautiful grounds) six miles of rolling hills away.

While today is the real St Patricks Day, Castlebar celebrated with its annual parade on a Sunday because its gaelic football team is in the All Ireland final today. As such, we may go out today and take in a smaller parade in one of the smaller towns not far away!

The amazing Larry Dunne came up and said hi!

Brian Cawley, Castlebar Cycle Owner on the four wheel bike he and Keith built for this parade. In front of our group, the local boxing club gave exhibitions in a portable ring that they towed along.

The parade itself was very well organized and was probably a mile in length. Every street we turned down was lined with people, sometimes five and six people deep.

Tho it was overcast, grey and cool, there were smiles everywhere – it was a fun event!