Full house with the cycle to the Macroom parkrun - 1st Nov 2025

Over the last 18-months or so, both Grellan McGrath and myself have been cycling to the various 5k parkruns in Co Cork.

It started off as just going for a cycle to a parkrun but it kind of morphed over time into a challenge to see if we could do all eleven of them.

In July of 2025, we cycled to Glengarriff for number nine, post HERE.

In August of 2025, we made the long trip down to Bere Island for number ten, post HERE.

The last remaining one was Macroom for number eleven. The difficulty at this time of year is the early morning start in the dark and getting there before 9:30am.

To make it more interesting and a bit of a challenge, we planned a route where we would avoid using the national N roads or Regional R roads as much as possible. That of course meant lots of hills!

We waited for the clocks to change at the end of October so that we would have an extra hour of daylight in the morning. Even at that, the clock was literally ticking for when we could do it before it was too dark in the mornings so we decided on Saturday the 1st of November.

I left my place at 6:20am in the dark and it was bit like the previous trip to Glengarriff in that I was heading off when some people were still coming home from the night before.

After 2kms or so, I came across four young fellas walking along the road in the dark with one of them wearing a wizards hat! As you do.😄

I eventually got to Grellan's place in Ballincollig just before dawn and we set off on the journey west... Ballincollig - Kilumney - Aherla - Cloughduv - Crookstown - up the hill to Kilmurry - down by the Gearagh - back up another hill and down into Marcroom with about 10-minutes to spare.

Parkrun #93 for Grellan McGrath

I had done the Macroom parkrun once before in 2015 but that was traveling there by car, getting there by bike was a completely different proposition.

Macroom is probably the most technical of the parkruns in Co Cork in that it has multiple loops. It's a kind of course where the first timers briefing is a bit of a waste because it seems so confusing but once you do it, it's pretty obvious.

Last Saturday, there were plenty of stewards at the critical junctions so there wasn't much chance of going wrong.

There are a few pulls in the 5k course but nothing too bad. Overall, it's a nice 5k parkrun set in a woodland setting which happens to be part of the local golf course.

After finishing the parkrun, I took a few photos of some runners behind me... Album.

Anyway, we both finished and job done, number 11 of 11. It was a case of then going to Lynch's Café for a cuppa before heading home via Bealnamorive, the Model village and then cross country to Ballincollig.

At the end of the loop from Ballincollig, we were on the R618 for only 3kms and spent the other 67kms of the loop on quiet country roads.

After leaving Grellan in Ballincollig, I got home just over an hour later with a total of 113kms on the bike.

In conclusion... That's it, job done, we had cycled to all eleven of the 5k parkrun in Co Cork. It's probably safe to say that we're the only two to have done it as not too many people cycle to the parkruns let alone doing all of them in the county,

It raises an interesting question... I wonder how many people have completed all eleven parkruns in Co Cork regardless of transport? 50? 100?

As for what's next? First up, Grellan will be doing his 100th parkrun sometime around Christmas hopefully.

As for the bike and 2026??? The Kingdom looks interesting...