Rothar Routes

First Blog in a long time!

There are days when a walk is simply a walk, and there are others when it becomes something more.

This was one of the latter.

I met my brother, sisters and a niece in Avoca for what was, on paper at least, a day of walking in County Wicklow. We started with the Red Kite Walk above Avoca and later moved on to Clara Vale, walking beside the Avonmore River and eventually into Rathdrum.

But after the last few months, this was never going to be just about kilometres covered or places visited. They’ve been a tremendous support to me, and there was something quietly therapeutic about being out walking with them — talking, laughing, taking an interest in the things around us and, for a few hours, simply enjoying being together.

And Wicklow provided a wonderful backdrop.

Looking for Red Kites above Avoca.

We began in Avoca with the Red Kite Walk through Kilmagig Woods, a short woodland loop climbing above the village. The walk exists in large part because of one of Ireland’s great wildlife success stories.

Red Kites disappeared from Ireland more than two centuries ago. They were reintroduced to County Wicklow in 2009, and the wooded hills around Avoca have proved particularly suitable for them. Kilmagig Woods is now a nesting area, and red kites are regularly seen soaring above the valley.

We certainly weren’t disappointed.

We saw lots of them, sometimes circling high above us, their unmistakable forked tails making identification easy. Photographing them was another matter entirely. Every time we thought we had one lined up, it seemed to know exactly what we were attempting and promptly changed direction.

So there are occasions when the memory has to be better than the photograph!

The walk itself is only about 2 kilometres, climbing through the woods above Avoca with lovely views back towards the village. And then there is the Giant’s Chair — which provided more craic than perhaps its creators ever intended. Sometimes the daft moments on a walk are the ones you remember longest!

Avoca – a village built on copper

When I arrived in Avoca before the rest of the gang, I had time to browse around the Church of Saints Mary and Patrick. I hadn’t expected this little diversion to lead me into one of the most interesting parts of the day’s local history.

On the church wall is a large representation of the Cronebane Halfpenny, a copper token issued by the Associated Irish Mine Company in 1789. Avoca’s landscape was shaped by mining, and the token is a reminder that this quiet Wicklow valley was once an important industrial The front of the Halfpenny features on a plaque commemorating deceased members of Avoca O.N.E and the reverse of the halfpenny is part of a plaque erected by the parishioners in 1995 in Memory of The Avoca Miners who helped build this church and continued to support it throughout the years.

Mining was a massive industry here. At one stage in the 1700s there were 2,000 people employed in the copper mines leading to the establishment of Avoca – then known as Newbridge!

From Clara Bridge into the woods

Our second walk began at Clara Bridge, and it would be difficult to devise a prettier starting point.

There is the Avonmore flowing beneath you, the tiny old stone bridge squeezed across it – tricky to drive across, the church nearby and wooded slopes rising around the little settlement.

From there we joined a section of the Avonmore Way, following the river downstream towards Rathdrum.

The complete Avonmore Way links the Laragh/Trooperstown area with Rathdrum and runs for roughly 12–13.5 kilometres, depending on the precise endpoints used. Our section took us through what is undoubtedly one of its highlights — Clara Vale Nature Reserve, a flat 6.5kms walk, until the steep hill up in to Rathdrum!

The beauty of this forest walk is that it isn’t the usual commercial forest walk. The nature reserve covers about 220 hectares and contains the largest area of semi-natural woodland in County Wicklow. Parts of the area are believed to have remained wooded since the end of the Ice Age.

That gives the woods such a different atmosphere, one we can rarely experience in this country.

The great oaks are the stars, but beneath them is another world — mosses, lichens and ferns coating trunks and rocks, and I am sure early in the year lots of primroses and carpets of bluebells on the woodland floor. Like the great documentary recently on the Irish Atlantic Rain Forest on the Beara Peninsula, this is an extraordinary ecosystem: a mature tree can support a huge range of other life, while its acorns provide food for birds and mammals. Hard to spot anything with the chatter we were making.

Following the Avonmore

For much of the walk the constant companion is the Avonmore River.

The Avonmore begins its life up near Lough Dan before travelling south through this deeply wooded valley. Below Rathdrum and Avondale it eventually joins the Avonbeg at the famous Meeting of the Waters. From that meeting of the two rivers comes the Avoca, which continues eastwards to Arklow and the Irish Sea.

So there is a lovely continuity to the day’s walking. We began at Avoca and later found ourselves upstream beside one of the rivers that eventually creates the Avoca.

Walking beside a river is magical and soothing. Sometimes the Avonmore was almost beside our feet; at other times we were above it, hearing it through the trees. Water, woodland and autumn light made this section particularly beautiful.

Crossing the Samuel Hayes Bridge

Eventually we reached one of the newer landmarks on the route — the Samuel Hayes suspension bridge.

The bridge was opened in June 2021 to connect the Avonmore Way with the Jubilee Walk and Ballygannon Woods, making it possible to continue much more naturally towards Rathdrum.

The bridge is named in honour of Samuel Hayes, who built Avondale House in the 1700s and planted extensively on the estate.

Hayes himself once designed a wooden bridge across the Avonmore at Avondale. More than 200 years later, another bridge across the same river carries his name.

It is temporarily closed but we managed to sneak across!

An old Mass Path into Rathdrum

Across the bridge we gradually left the river and picked up part of Rathdrum’s Jubilee Walk, climbing towards the town along the old Mass Path.

Paths like this are easily passed without a second thought, but they are part of the hidden history of the Irish countryside. They preserve the routes generations of local people took on foot to attend Mass. Local folklore collected around Rathdrum in the 1930s actually records the name “Mass Path Brow”, explaining that it was so called because people passed that way going to Mass.

Near the end we passed St Michael’s Well, an old spring well. It appears on the 1839 Ordnance Survey map, and local tradition records people visiting it and using its water particularly in connection with skin complaints.

And then, after river, bridge, woods, Mass Path and holy well, we emerged into Rathdrum.

A therapy walk

Looking back, I think that is what I will remember most about the day.

Not how far we walked. Not whether we managed to get the perfect photograph of a red kite — we didn’t. Not even the history, interesting though it was.

I’ll remember being out with my brother and sisters.

The last few months have given me plenty of time to appreciate what family means. They have supported me enormously, and perhaps that is why this particular day felt so good. We walked. We talked. We laughed at the Giant’s Chair. We craned our necks looking for red kites. We stopped at old plaques and wondered about the people whose lives they commemorated. Then we followed a bubbling river through an ancient wood.

There is a lot written nowadays about the therapeutic benefits of walking and spending time in nature. I’m sure much of it is true.

A river beside you, a path ahead of you, and the people who have walked beside you when you needed them most.