We love Galway, as this video proves, but it's not without its drawbacks.
It turns out that the Tribal County is the worst city in the world for people who cycle to work, on account of the constant lashings of rain that come in from the Atlantic coast.
Shane Lynn has been doing a bit of research on the cities across the world that get their cyclists wet the most, and Galway has the most rain-soaked commuters on the planet.
Credit: shane_a_lynn/Twitter
Dublin fares a lot better, with one third of Galway's soaked commuters, and is the driest city in Ireland.
Shane used three criteria in his research from the
Wunderground personal weather stations (PWS) network.
- Your cycle to work happens between 8.15am and 9.00am and you cycle home between 5.15pm and 6.00pm.
- You only cycle to work on Monday-Friday.
- If it rains at any time during these periods, with any amount, that’s deemed a “wet cycling day."
While Dublin's cyclists enjoyed a lot of dry weather, the rest of Ireland's cities did not fare quite so well.
- Cyclists in Galway required mudguards for 115 working days in 2015, or 44% of their commuting cycles (total of 261 wet days in Galway!);
- Cork doesn’t fare much better, at 67 working days (27 %)*; and
- Belfast (Queens University) dripped on working cyclists 36 % of the time, or on 93 of their trips.
What do we ultimately take from all of this? It could be time to move to Madrid; the Spanish capital has great food, excellent football and the least rainfall of 19 major cities surveyed.
