Rothar Routes

Cycle routes & pilgrim journeys in Ireland and Europe …..

Archive for ‘March, 2025’

Greenland Is Ours, JD Vance! – Ireland reclaims its Overseas Territories!

Yesterday, standing beside the ancient grave of Saint Brendan in Clonfert, I felt something stir—not just reverence, but revelation! As the wind moved through the trees and the moss-covered stones whispered of old voyages, it struck me with divine clarity: Greenland—and quite possibly all of North America—rightfully belongs to Ireland. Not through war or treaty, but through Brendan, who almost certainly discovered it a good 900 years before Columbus, and did so without enslaving anyone, planting flags, or raiding their gold and silver mines. And if that truth unsettles certain American senators with a penchant for lecturing the world, well… that’s just a bonus. We got there first but we were too humble to tell anyone!

According to the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, Saint Brendan and a group of monks sailed west in search of the “The Isle of the Blessed”—an allegorical tale filled with sea monsters, magical islands, and flaming mountains. Some people, especially in modern times, have speculated that this was actually a description of a transatlantic voyage, possibly to North America. It’s no accident he is patron saint of the U.S. Navy! Tim Severin’s 1970s expedition in a replica leather boat (The Brendan Voyage) showed such a journey was physically possible, using medieval technology. He successfully sailed from Ireland to Newfoundland via the Hebrides, Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. So hands off JD Vance, we’re laying claim to those rare minerals!

Joking aside, we’d a great cycle yesterday starting in Banagher and heading over to Clonfert along quiet country lanes. The ancient Romanesque doorway is a sight to behold with its intricate carvings. Clonfert Cathedral, in the tiny quiet village of Clonfert, County Galway, is a true gem of Irish history dating back to the 6th century. Founded by St. Brendan, it stands as a testament to ancient ecclesiastical prominence.

The beautiful round arched west doorway at Clonfert Cathedral is a lovely relic of Irish Romanesque decorative architecture built A.D. 563. Monasteries flourished as centres of learning and sent missionaries to many European countries, bringing with them the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Reports in the 9th century suggested that anyone who spoke Greek on the continent was an Irish person or had been taught by an Irish person. Truly, the Land of Saints and Scholars!

Clonfert Cathedral
Clonfert Romanesque Doorway

Places like Clonfert helped preserve Irish Catholic Identity after the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland,. immortalised in the awful phrase “To hell or to Connacht”. This was one of the most brutal and traumatic periods in Irish history with ten of thousands of Irish displaced from their home and something like 11 million acres of lands were confiscated from Catholics – by the end of the 1650’s 90% of the land was in Protestant hands. It was a form of ethnic and cultural cleansing that did untold damage to the Irish language.

We weren’t long before we were cycling past Brackloon Castle, one of Ireland’s oldest and smallest castles, now restored and lived in! Built in the 1500s by the O Madden Family, who too were dispossessed by the English… While St Brendan set sail west in search of heavenly peace but instead discovered America, Cromwell followed up a 1,000 years later sending our ancestors west into Connacht in search of survival. If Brendan discovered America, Cromwell helped us populate it with wave after wave or Irish migration! ICE are at the airports today to make sure no more get to follow ‘the American Dream’… mind you there’s many a Yank yearning for travel in the opposite direction today!

Meelick Church was the next stopping off point, reputedly the oldest church still in use in Ireland today! Meelick weir is a stone’s throw away, if you’re good at throwing stones and it’s a beautiful 300 metre curved walkway / cycleway. It’s part of the Hymany Way and the Beara-Breifne Way which we followed a few years ago on our Malin to Mizen cycle. I love coming down here!

Meelick weir walkway on the Shannon.

This links to an island in the Shannon river and Victoria Lock, which was constructed in the 1840s. Really picturesque views on it with the roar of the water deafening beneath you. A great place for a picnic!

Victoria Lock looking northwards
Victoria Lock
The River Shannon south of Victoria Lock.

Bikes can easily be walked across the Lock and that brings you into a lovely route close to the Shannon Callows – a great place to do some bird watching and a nice easy loop back though Lusmagh to Banagher.

You could say the landscape is flat and boring but there’s beauty in that too and there’s a real touch of the west of Ireland as soon as you cross the Shannon at Banagher. Worth noting too that the 3 provinces of Munster, Connacht and Leinster meet right here at this point on Victoria Lock!

Cycling through the countryside while mentally travelling through the centuries, wondering if St Brendan had quads like these! Another great day in the saddle!

Lingering in the Lingaun Valley

The Lingaun Valley is the valley you probably never heard of! It’s only a stones throw away in south Kilkenny and it’s a place I like to occasionally visit. I usually park up at Kells Priory and take the bike from there down some of the nicest and quietest back roads in the country. First port of call is always Kilree Monastic site, which is the location for one of Kilkenny’s FIVE round Towers! Behind the Tower in a field is a beautiful Celtic Cross. It could be said that like William Wordsworth “we were wandering lonely as a cloud when all at once we saw a host of golden daffodils fluttering and dancing in the breeze”, for there was a large field of daffodils just behind the cross! A beautiful site.

It’s uphill into Hugginstown, home of Carrickshock Hurlers – the club of the great Ritchie Power Snr and Jnr! We wheeled right in the village and we had a fair pull uphill for 6 kms with breathtaking views the reward for our efforts and a nice descent into the historic village of Tullahought. We were now entering the Lingaun Valley.

The Lingaun River Valley forms part of the border between those great hurling rivals, Kilkenny and Tipperary, with its source in the foothills of Slievenamon, it meanders through the townlands to enter the Suir River at near Carrick on Suir.

It’s a very remote and rural area with numerous ancient and historic sites scattered across the Valley. We headed back towards Pilltown direction to visit the wonderful Kilkieran High Crosses and Holy Well.

There’s a bullaun stone with holy water that is reputedly a cure for headaches. Throw away those Aspirins and get yourself down here!

For a small area, there’s an abundance of Celtic Crosses and we travelled just a few kilometres back the road to our next port of call – the Ahenny High Crosses. These are truly stunning examples of carved Celtic Crosses. Well worth a visit to view them and they have weathered very well. One of them unfortunately is damaged and there’s a local legend about the misfortune the perpetrator of the deed had visited upon him!

There’s a beautiful row of stone cottages in the tiny village of Ahenny, which you can see in the accompanying video. These were built for the workers in the local Slate Quarries. The workers originally came from Wales.

It’s just a couple of more kilometres to the ancient Knockroe Passage Tomb, known locally as ‘The Cashel’ constructed more than 5000 years ago with its unique alignment to the sunrise and the sunset on the day of the Winter Solstice each year. The passage tomb is aligned with the mound on the summit of nearby Slievenamon, Co. Tipperary.

The Lingaun Valley is a truly special place and you should come see and feel for yourself how the Lingaun River flows though time, how it connects the enchantment and mysteries of Ireland’s historic and pre-historic past coupled with the beauty of nature all around you.

Cycling Carlow’s Heartland

Killoughternane Church

The backroads are my routes for exploring the nooks and crannies of the countryside and cycling these bóithríns (cow paths) lets me slip out of this modern world for a few hours of exploring! With my ordnance survey maps loaded on my phone I’m constantly seeing little red dots and red writing indicating an ancient landmark, forgotten places that are impossible to see from the comfort of a car but which I can easily spot from my bike and explore. The ordnance survey maps carry the poetic placenames of the county. Long before maps and the written word, places had names which were memorised and were important reference points committed to memory. My good friend Uinsíonn Mac Graith (former Rathvilly goalkeeper 1980s) explained this to me on a cliffside walk along the north Mayo coast a couple of years ago. Every inlet, cave, reef, rock, hill, headland, stream had it’s own special name which were used to pinpoint a location, to tell a tale about the area and give meaning to the landscape. In his publication, ‘Logainmneacha agus Oidhreacht Dhún Chaocháin (The Placenames and Heritage of Dún Chaocháin)‘ he collected and listed an incredible 1,500 placenames of this tiny area and he mapped them all! It’s a beautiful and important publication. Many of these placenames were not written down beforehand, but were carried by word of mouth from one generation to the next. Carlow is no different; it would be nice to have our Logainmneacha recorded. For now the Ordnance Survey Maps are a good starting point, as is my father’s copy of ‘Placenames of County Carlow’ by Edward O Toole, a little publication that I treasure.

My route today was to take my down to Killoughternane and Rathnageeragh:

Sticking to the back roads provides me with safe quiet cycle paths; virtually traffic free. First stop off today was at Clonmelsh graveyard, where Walt Disneys ancestors are buried!

Ancestral burial place of the Disney family is located at Clonmelsh..

Just a few hundred metres beyond the graveyard is another very important site associated with St Willibrord, patron saint of Luxembourg. St Willibrord was born near York in England. He was trained and ordained at a religious site located in the townland of Garryhundon, Co Carlow commonly referred to as Killogan, Rath Melsigi (Rathmelsh) or Clonmelsh Graveyard.

Rath Melsigi and its cross

I took the back road to Bagenalstown or Muinebheag. William Bagenal of Dunleckny House had planned to build a new town based on Versaille! As pretty and all as Bagenalstown may be, it ain’t no Versaille!

(From http://www.logainm.ie website)

Passing out of Bagenalstown, the skew bridge over the railway is bordered with the very unique Carlow granite fencing; found no where else in the country! The upright pillars have a V cut into the top and into which the lintel is set in place. Richie Kavanagh wrote a song about it!

Onwards through Donore, Corries Cross, Ballinree Cross and finally arriving after a pleasant traffic free cycle at Killoughternane (Cill Fhoirtchearnáin) – Church of St Fortchen, of which I’ve blogged recently. Also known as the ‘White Church’. It’s obvious why from this drone photo:

Killoughternane Church

My final destination for the day was another visit to Rathnageeragh (Ráth na gCaorach – The Fort/ Rath of the Sheep) to see the progress on the restoration of the old National School. What a treat. But first a big climb up the approach to Carlow’s highest village, Drumphea, before turning right and along the stone walled bordered bóithrín to the Edmond Spruhan restored school. The Schools Collection on the Dúchas website (www.dúchas.ie) contains literally thousands of handwritten stories collected in National Schools, all across the country. They collected stories from Rathnageeragh NS, here is one surprising story about the popularity of bowling and cricket in Drumphea!

I was at the southernmost end of today’s cycle route at Killoughternane and was heading home into the cold north wind. I always like to take a different route home and today was no different. I headed towards Cúl na Sneachta and then in the direction of Garryhill before turning right into the townland of Sheean (An Sían – The Fairy Mound). It was there I came upon a memorial to Volunteers Myles Carroll and Seamus O Toole. The Myshall and Drumpha Parish website is a great source of local history and there is great detail, including a ballad, commemorating the two men here

This is a road I was never on before and I soon passed the Carlow dog training club, I didn’t know such a place existed; there were half dozen dogs being put through their paces! I headed back by the shortest route possible, through Straduff, Clonee, Tailor’s Cross, Kilnock, Ballynunnery, Kellistown, Moyle, Ballycrogue and back into Carlow Town. A great day’s cycling with lots of glimpses into our historic past.

John Creedon of RTE has written some great books in recent years, one of which celebrates the placenames of Ireland ‘That Place We Call Home’, well worth a read as is his compendium ‘An Irish Folklore Treasury from the Schools Collection which is part of the National Folklore Collection, which I sometimes reference.

Rathnageeragh NS restored
Rathnageeragh NS in ruins..

65kms done today across the beautiful countryside of County Carlow!

Rathanna Cycle Hub ?

Looking for a place to plan some nice cycle routes from? The tiny village of Rathanna would make a great cycle hub for south Carlow, south east Kilkenny and Wexford around the Blackstairs. Located between Borris and the Blackstairs Rathanna is perfectly positioned for exploring the Blackstairs Mountains, using tiny traffic free local roads, where time seems to stand still.

Equip yourself with the absolutely brilliant ‘Blackstairs, Mount Leinster & The Barrow Valley’ map produced by East West Mapping (they are based in Clonegal, and produce a series of maps ideal for hiking and cycling activities) and you will have the complete picture to create a multitude of scenic and historically interesting routes that will have you coming back for more.

The history of Ireland and all our local communities is bound up in the richness of our original Irish place names. Every townland, hill and river has a name that tells a story – it might relate to the landscape, to the people who lived there, historical events or ancient mythology. This part of Carlow is rich in heritage. The place names reveal long forgotten aspects of our past – monasteries, churches, battle sites, folklore… they still live on and these connect us with our past despite the angliscation of our country which deliberately mistranslated their original meaning. That’s a pet hate of mine; I hate to see modern housing estates adopting typically English names such as … Tudor Downs or other such pretentious nonsense, when we have so many meaningful options in our original names and heritage to choose from.

In an era of rapid globalisation, preserving local placenames helps maintain a connection to the past. They are not just markers on a map; they are living records of the Irish language, our history, and our identity. For those interested in genealogy, researching placenames can reveal ancestral links and provide a deeper understanding of family roots.

And economically, for tourism and cultural heritage, the meanings behind placenames can enhance visitors’ appreciation of the landscape. Many tourists are fascinated by the poetic and descriptive nature of Irish placenames, which add depth to the country’s storytelling tradition. This quiet part of Carlow has its own unique charms, just waiting to be explored.

This is a great route with plenty of climbing featuring breath taking scenery and a magnificent narrow strip of tarmac with a huge drop down the mountain side if you get too distracted by the views! I started out at the car park opposite St Fortcherns Church in Rathanna and beside Osbornes tiny pub (which also has a hostel attached), it’s a gentle start, gliding downhill to Jack Carrolls bridge over the Killedmond river and on to the ‘Bull Ring – a unique little pentagonal piece of ground shaped by the surrounding network of roads and from where the climb starts to gently rise. It rapidly becomes very steep approaching Tomduff Crossroads and the approach road to Mount Leinster. Use the excuse of taking in the views to take a break from the fairly savage gradient as you head up towards the famous Nine Stones and the Columbanus Bell which marks the starting point of Turas Columbanus, a pilgrimage route, linking Carlow and Bangor in County Down.

The Nine Stones is a very popular spot for Sunday drives and the short walk up Slievebawn or the more challenging road to the TV transmitter on top of Mount Leinster.

I was delighted to bump into Carlow’s finest dual player ever, Paddy Quirke, here at the Columbanus Bell; he was out with the family for some fresh air and a ramble. Naomh Eoin’s finest played Railway Cup with Leinster and was a dual All Star Replacement. He looks as fit as ever!

The views across the patchwork of green fields of County Carlow stretch out before you as far as the eye can see; it’s not a road for the feint hearted and it’s always important to be cautious when meeting a car as it can be quite daunting to an inexperienced driver. If the pace uphill to this point was tortoise like, the descent down past the Head of the River Burren was an adrenalin rush!

The source of the River Burren. I was once inspired by a tale of the great Gus Merne who walked from here to Carlow following the path of the Burren and I undertook it many years ago but didn’t quite get back to Carlow town by dark!

My favourite place name in Carlow is ‘Cúl na Sneachta’. Situated at the base of Mount Leinster, the road follows the contour of the hill around in a sweeping arc and I noticed a memorial stone I hadn’t seen before. I pulled hard on the brakes and made out the inscription s best I could and it said ‘Cathal Goulding’ but I couldn’t really make out the rest of it. I looked to up when I got home and it transpires it was erected in memory of Republican, Cathal Goulding (1923-1998) who was ‘Chief of Staff’ of the IRA and the ‘Officials’. I hadn’t heard of his connection with the area but he had spent a lot of time in his cottage at Raheenleigh. Following his death, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered at the Nine Stones. You learn something new every day!

A bit further on I turned back left in the direction of Rathanna at a cross roads, where there’s a famous piece of rock art on display in the garden of a house at the cross roads. From there I headed up onto what I dubbed ‘The Hidden Sky Road’ some years ago and which Carlow County Council signposted as a local cycling route. I love this road that skirts the western side of Tomduff, towering over Rathnageeragh Castle and the former National School. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a car on this road – nor another bike either!

Rathnageeragh NS in ruins, I took this a good few years ago.

Now transformed!

It was another downhill by Seskinamadra – Seisceann na Madraí, the marsh of the dogs… where I swung right and stopped over to visit St Fortcherns Well and Killoughternane Church ruins.

Despite it association with miraculous cures, I wasn’t tempted to have a ‘cuppa’ but clearly, other brave souls do and if the presence of frogspawn is an indicator of clean water, then I’m sure it would have done me no harm at all! A famous chalice and patten were discovered here that date back to 1595; they were hidden during penal times. There’s great reading about the history of the well and the area in the Myshall and Drumphea parish website.

Killougternane Church is a beautiful example of an early ChristianChurch dating back to the 10th century. It’s a beautiful serene place to visit and the stone work is immaculate.

Also known as ‘The White Church’, this 10th century granite church is built on the remains of an earlier timber church founded by St Fortchen in the 5th Century. Local wisdom holds that Christianity was established here even before the arrival of St Patrick. Who knows for sure.. ‘Cill Uachtair Fhionáin’ meaning the ‘upper church of Finnian’ highlights its connection with St Finnian of Clonard (but really of Myshall!), one of the greatest monastic sites in the country where the ‘Irish Apostles’ were all educated.

I skirted around by Knocksquire and traced my way back to Rathanna via Killedmond after a terrific afternoon cycle, sightseeing and exploring our local heritage. Good to be able to do it!