Ciarán Cannon

Good afternoon, Brendan, to you and your listeners.

Brendan, will you ring me once a month from now on?

Because every time you call me, I'm on a greenway in France.

Oh, I'm in beautiful southeastern France, just south of Perpignan, almost on the Spanish border, about 10 kilometers from the Spanish border.

There's a greenway here that starts in Gibraltar, finishes in Athens, literally runs as a necklace all around the Mediterranean.

i've been on sections of that today and this is an area part of france very well served anyway by greenways connecting up all of the towns and villages here in the in the rusa on the eastern pyrenees where the kind of the pyrenees tumble down into the mediterranean so but as i say brandon you must miss politics terribly you'd prefer to spend your week arguing about the the uh maternity services and uh onish alumina

They certainly are, Brendan.

And as I say, you know, 750 kilometres of greenway in Ireland right now.

Incidentally, a book just published a couple of months ago, Greenways of Ireland, published by two extraordinary researchers, Richard Manton and David Flanagan.

You can find that on threerockbooks.com.

I've no interest in it.

I bought my own copy, but it's a phenomenal resource to explore that 750 kilometre network.

Do you remember that beautiful poem?

Maybe you're a little bit younger than me, but Paddy Cavanaugh, the bicycles go by in twos and threes from our evens way back then.

And it reminds us that, you know, cycling is about much more just from getting from A to B. What the secret about Greenways is, don't be intent on, I've got to start here, I've got to finish there, three or four hours later, enjoy the experience.

Because that poem was all about the sense of connection between probably our parents and our grandparents living

cycling to mass, cycling to GA games, cycling to a dance late at night, and that's what the Greenway network captures right now.

It's a chance to slow down, to travel safely, because they're completely segregated, there is no traffic, through beautiful landscapes, visit towns and communities and places you might never otherwise visit other than being on that Greenway network.

So it's for families looking for a day out, a couple planning a weekend away,

Somebody who just lives in a city and wants just to get a few hours of fresh air and exercise, thankfully.