The ninth Leitrim Cycling Festival held in the coastal village of Tullaghan on 23-25 May 2025 was an apt location for the latest instalment of our project Cycling Across Borders, supported by the Shared Island Civic Society Fund. A lively session about the project was held alongside children’s events, film screenings, workshops, community cycle rides, and much more. There was plenty of appetite for the conversation, with some 30 people in attendance from both sides of the border.

Festival organiser Jo Sachs-Eldridge welcomed those present, before handing over to National Cycling Coordinator Damien Ó Tuama (pictured below) who outlined the goals of the Shared Island Civic Society Fund which is enabling the project to be delivered.  He also gave an overview of the extensive and wide-ranging work done by cycling activists across the Republic of Ireland since the early 1990s.  The path to reaching our vision is neither straight nor smooth, but he named some of the major wins we have achieved along the way and stressed how  excited we were to formally launch the Irish Cycling Campaign in recent days.

Next up was Andrew McClean (pictured below) from Cycling UK in Northern Ireland. He explained that for various reasons, Northern Ireland has some of the lowest cycling rates of anywhere in Europe, and that advocating for cycling is very challenging in that context.  However, he was also able to point to some recent public policy changes that are very positive and said he was enthused by the on-the-ground momentum that appears to be building.  He further described how inspired he was by the work done by Irish Cycling Campaign and its Local Groups, and how pleased he was with our collaboration on this initiative.

The pace and noise levels changed with a speed-networking session in which attendees were encouraged to have brief chats with others in the room who they did not yet know, interspersed with the ringing of a (bicycle!) bell.  It was great fun, very informative, and undoubtedly the start of many ongoing conversations.

Rosemary Kerrigan (pictured below) then shared an inspiring tale of a local community coming together to envision, plan, fund and build a multi-use trail around the village of Dromahair.  A one kilometer section of this would act as a demonstration project showing that a cross-border greenway linking Cooleeney in Co. Sligo with Enniskillen in Co. Fermanagh could be made possible. 

And indeed, progress on this route has been made.  Brendan McKenna from Leitrim County Council concluded the session with an outline of the consultation processes for the Sligo, Leitrim, Northern Counties Railway Greenway. We look forward to the day when we will be able to cycle along this greenway as part of a future Leitrim Cycling Festival.

Left to right: Andrew McClean (Cycling UK NI), Steve McNally (CYCUL), Mairéad Forsythe (Irish Cycling Campaign), Damien Ó Tuama (Irish Cycling Campaign)