The first delay in this saga goes back to the late eighties, but this is not to be covered here, also the next try to launch the bypass about 6 or 7 years ago. Then, heavily advertised by Clare County Council last year, the "first phase" of the bypass was due to be opened before Christmas 2006, but adverse weather conditions were blamed for the last delay of nearly 5 weeks. Which is nothing compared to the 20 years some people might have waited for it in downtown...
Talking about the "First Phase" - I'm sure today many drivers coming from the Limerick/Shannon (south) direction were surprised that the shiny new bypass had a big joke for them at hand when they realized they had to go all the way to Barefield once they ended up on it! How is that? Well, in their unfailing wisdom the responsible people decided to leave out the exits on the new bypass and wait until the very end of the last phase to provide them to us poor motorists! Can you believe that? And there was no sign at the Dromoland interchange apart from the well disguised hint on the roadsigns that the Dromoland exit also leads to Ennis! You could watch the cars slowing down like sheep smelling food near the yet to be build western link (which will be opened in two phases, with the most important link to bypass Clarecastle being the last!) trying to find their first exit! Then again, when approaching the Tulla Road, where everybody was expecting the long lasting works at the link road to be finished, they realized here again that they were duped! So they kept on going towards Barefield. There, nearly everybody tried to get off, proofing that most of them were caught by surprise and were not heading towards Gort or beyond, which would be the only reason to use the new bypass at the moment!
Anyway, I took my first ride from work and also took a few photos:
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