Rothar Routes

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

Posts by Turlough

Wandering in Waterford

We were just talking in the family WhatsApp group about how understated County Waterford is – such a beautiful county with a fantastic coastline, mountains and interesting towns and villages.

One of my favourite cycle routes is an out and back jaunt. Parking at Horsewood GAA Club in Wexford, I cycle down by Dunbrody Abbey, over the hill into Ballyhack where I catch the Ferry to Passage East and journey on to Dunmore East. The ferry adds a bit of exotic to a bike trip and there’s always something exciting about getting on board! The route is deceptively hilly with fantastic coastal views and the great Hook Head Lighthouse off to the south.

I take a turn off the Passage – Dunmore road at Woodside beach onto a cul de sac which ends with a short and very narrow walking trail that connects with a local road on the Dunmore side of the headland, named on some maps as “the Black Woman’s Road”; I suspect its a mistranslation of possible Beann Gorm… cycling across the path is an experience as the branches of brambles and gorse bushes wallop your face!

Last week I wandered through the Iveagh Gardens where a gate between the National Museum for Literature and the Gardens bears a plaque with a quote from Maeve Binchey, so it was a coincidence that we ended up in Dunmore East this weekend, a place also associated with the writer, being the location of some scenes in the film of her book ‘Echoes’. We need to be better prepared – the sun was shining and we should have brought swimming gear with us!

Waterford is not too far away and there’s a lot more of it I want to explore so I took another trip on Sunday, this time parking up outside Cappoquinn Affane GAA Club! I’m trying to get miles and hills into the legs as I’ve big cycle coming up in Spain – Camino del Cid at the end of May and today was just perfect. I had only a rough idea of a route and I was delighted with how it worked out. The main road from Cappoquinn to Lismore is extremely busy but thankfully there’s a local road that is part of the beautiful St. Declans Way that I was able to take and avoid the dangerous main road.

St Declan’s Way is a 115km walking route linking the ancient ecclesiastical centres of Ardmore in County Waterford and Cashel in Tipperary passing through the Knockmealdown Mountains and the undulating farmland of south Tipperary and west Waterford. It has become very popular thanks to the efforts of travel book writer,John G O Dwyer .

St Declan’s Way Walk utilises the route of several ancient and medieval pilgrimage and trading routes such as the Rian Bo Phadraig (Track of St. Patrick’s Cow), Bothar na Naomh (Road of the Saints), Casan na Naomh (Path of the Saints) and St. Declan’s Road.

St Declan was a fifth century saint who brought Christianity to the southern part of Ireland and he is particularly associated with the Deise people. He established his monastery in Ardmore and his grave there remains an important place of pilgrimage. Cashel was the seat of the Kings of Munster and St. Declan’s Way follows the route he would have taken from Ardmore to Cashel.

Art deco Handball Alley in Lismore!

Lismore is a really beautiful historic town with a stunning castle over looking the famed River Blackwater. It’s a real West Waterford gem that I haven’t been in too often but I’ll be back as its great base to explore the Knockmealdown Mountains from.

Having stumbled on St Declans Way, I decided I would follow the path back up into the mountains. It’s a steep route out of Lismore but with beautiful views to distract from the effort involved. It wasn’t too long before I caught sight of impressive Mount Melleray Abbey up ahead in the distance.

Mount Melleray is a Cistercian Abbey located in the Knockmealdown Mountains. I was delighted to see a sign for a café where I had a very welcome snack! The Abbey was founded on 30 May 1832 by a colony of Irish and English monks, expelled from the abbey of Melleray after the French Revolution of 1830, and who had come to Ireland under the leadership of Fr. Vincent de Paul Ryan. It was called Mount Melleray in memory of the motherhouse. I had a great chat there with Father Denis Luke, Prior of the Abbey, about cycling and the Camino, a really nice man who had a kind word for everyone.

I left the Abbey and headed uphill again in the direction of Newcastle, County Tipperary but I turned off onto what has to be the roughest and steepest road in Ireland! It was a little local road, that has obviously fallen into disuse, along the side of Knockanask and Knocknascullogue which then linked me onto another loop which gave me a great downhill all the way back to Cappoquinn. A superb route with lots more to see in that area on future cycles.

Secret Garden

I was a very proud husband last Sunday attending a fabulous concert in the National Concert Hall, Dublin at which my wife Mary was conducting some very personal music and compositions. The Concert was part of New Music Dublins 2024 Programme called “Everyday Wonders”. It was very personal to Mary, to her sisters Eleanor and Patricia and to the wider Amond family who travelled from all over the country to support it.

As in all things musical, Mary brings so much deeper understanding to the words and compositions and on this occasion there was a wonderful piece premiered called ‘Today is Here’. The music was composed by a former Cór Linn choir member, Ferdia Ó Cairbre in which he delicately wove some beautiful advice Mary’s Mam, Lena had given to Ronan and his fiancée Hannah into another note that Mrs A had kept in one of her recipe books, originally written by Father Eddie Fitzgerald. A special moment and I bet Mrs Amond never expected to have her words put to music and premiered in the National Concert Hall! The main feature of the Concert was Cecilia MacDowell’s haunting Everyday Wonders – The Girl from Aleppo which tells the incredible true story of Nujeen Mustafa, a disabled Kurdish teenager who suffered with cerebral palsy, who fled from Aleppo with her sister, Nasrine, who pushed Nujeen in her wheelchair from Aleppo to start a new life in Germany, an incredible distance of 5,782 kms. That piece combined with the other marvellous compositions sent out a powerful message to all who attended and is a clarion call to the good people of this country about how we treat refugees who have endured such horrific treatment on their journeys to the Emerald Isle.

I travelled up early on a surprisingly nice Sunday morning and went for a ramble that took me into Dublin’s Secret Garden, the beautiful tranquil Iveagh Gardens. The Gardens are hidden behind the streetscape and you’d never know they were there. It’s worth seeking them out as they truly are an oasis of calm at the heart of the city. I had a lovely ramble back and forth through this green wonderland that was gifted to the Nation in 1937.

One of the entrances to the Garden is from the Museum of Irish Literature, another little gem to visit in this special part of the city. I’m not very literary but I found it inspiring to pop in for a while – its another gem!

I exited through the front door to pay a visit next door to the beautiful Newman University Church, a stunning small Place of Worship adjacent to St Stephens Green.

It was time to head back to the NCH for the Concert and I thought it was so appropriate, given the heart of the Concert was the The Girl from Aleppo, that I then came upon a lovely memorial to Human Rights Defenders from around the World who had given their lives bravely defending human rights.

Here are a few of the quotations from those who gave their lives:

‘People who can’t even read English and therefore have never read anything I’ve written, know that they are meant to hate me.. and react on that basis’. Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by a car bomb, Malta, 16 October 2017.

‘Our impact may be large, may be small, and may be nothing. But we must try. It is our duty to the dispossessed and it is the right of civil society’. Cao Shunli was denied medical treatment and was left to die in detention, China, 14 March 2014.

‘We have decided to guide our future and our destiny with our own hands. Revolutions are ideas and ideas cannot be killed by weapons. If society is strong enough, then tyranny has no chance’. Raed Fares, shot dead, Syria, 23 November 2018.

‘We have one goal, which is to save lives and evacuate people. I came here to give care, not get care. I want to continue until the last day’. Razan al-Najjar, shot dead while delivering medical aid, Gaza, 1 June 2018.

Mrs Amond’s words of advice to Ronan and Hannah never meant more than after visiting this memorial…

‘Be kind, be good, be nice to everyone’. Lena Amond.

Gone to Pot

The Shannon. Ireland’s largest river, at a magnificent 360kms, comes bubbling out of the ground close to the border between Cavan and Fermanagh in the Cuilcagh Mountains, at a place quaintly called The Shannon Pot or Log na Sionna as Gaeilge “The Hollow of the Shannon”. It’s a large pool of golden brown water about 16 metres in diameter and at least 9 metres deep. The water reaches the Pot through a network of underground streams and many say that it actually starts in County Fermanagh at a place called the Pigeon Pot. An experiment saw some green dye poured into the Pigeon Pot and observing that it eventually travelled underground to reach the Shannon Pot! In truth there are probably multiple streams feeding into it. This area is full of extensive cave networks and Marble Arch Caves, on the other side of the Mountain, are worth a visit.

Rivers and streams play important roles in Irish mythology as a boundary between this World and the Otherworld. Almost all Irish Rivers bear names associated with the Goddesses of the mysterious Tuatha Dé Danann. And so it came to pass that The Shannon was named after Sionann, granddaughter of the Manannán Mac Lir, the Irish Sea God. She visited the pool at the source of the river to catch the Salmon of Knowledge, just like Fiona Mac Cumhaill. That didn’t work out too well and the water rose up and drowned her!

There’s a great energy about the Pot and the setting is beautiful in an under appreciated corner of the country. Its good to see the Cuilcagh Lakelands now being promoted on both sides of the border – there’s lots to see up here that’s off the beaten track and is as good as anywhere in the country but without the mass tourism. Also well worth a visit is the Stairway to Heaven walkway up Cuilcagh Mountain.

The Shannon Pot

In The Kingdom of Kerry..

I’ve been itching to cycle again through the Gap of Dunloe and The Black Valley for some time but the weather hasn’t been kind. Until today. Everything fell into place; the weather was up and Kerry was playing Cork in Fitzgerald Stadium at 4pm. Two birds with one stone!

In the Kingdom of Kerry!

I parked the car in Fossa Church car park and was quickly passing by the famous Kate Kearney’s Cottage at the entrance to the Gap. The bauld Kate was known for her beauty and maybe more so for her famous ‘Mountain Dew’ which she distilled here illicitly for many a year! The Cottage is a family concern for over 170 years and is still going strong. It’s from here tourists have come for many years to travel by pony and trap along the 11kms mountain road to the head of the Upper Lake of Killarney from where the tour continues by boat.

The scenery is stunning. With the pony and traps trotting through the Gap its like stepping back in time – if only the cars could be banned from driving through because a lot of these tourists are not used to driving on such narrow winding roads and are a danger to one and all! The Gap divides the Purple Mountain from the MacGillicuddy Reeks and there’s a number of picturesque lakes and bridges that cross over the River Loe. It’s one of my favourite bike routes.

Today there were lots of tourists on hired bikes – a great way to explore one of natures most beautiful corners of the globe, never mind Ireland! The road passes over the Head of the Gap, down into the Black Valley. the last place in Ireland to be hooked up to the electricity grid in the 1970s. Many’s the time myself, Tommy Wogan and Declan Smyth camped down there on the banks of the wild Owenreagh River.

The road winds across the valley floor eventually rising up to Molls Gap on the Killarney to Kenmare road. The views from the Gap are stunning and the descent by bike towards Killarney is thrilling and dangerous because the views are so distracting! Today I was unfortunately under time pressure to get back to Fossa and into Killarney for the match. This route deserves more time to savour the outstanding beauty of The Gap and Killarney National Park.

Taking the Long Way Around

There’s more than 60,000 unique Townlands in Ireland, that stretch back to the Middle Ages or before. They remain the basis of rural addresses and provide a sense of identity. No where else in Europe has preserved their place names. Loyalty to the home place is so strong in Ireland, stretching back thousands of years – look at the rivalries between the tiniest of clubs! Most of these names were originally in our native tongue but were transposed into English after the Act of Union. Here’s the names of some of the Townlands I cycled through yesterday:

The Irish version of the names usually provides a clue as to the location – many names will include the likes of ‘Carraig’, Dún’, ‘Rath’ etc.

The Long Way Around

South Carlow is an area of outstanding natural beauty, it doesn’t attract big numbers of tourists but those that do stray in tend to like what they see and return again! I met a surprisingly big family group in Rathanna, probably staying in Osbornes Storehouse. The route I took is mainly in local roads with a few stretches of rough lanes and with plenty of hills – over 850 metres of climbing in 55kms. I must have crossed the disused route of the old railway line from Bagenalstown to Palas East four or five times; there are some beautiful bridges and it’s lovely to see the old station house at Ballyling beautifully refurbished since I last took a photo of it.

An area of outstanding natural beauty, bordered by the River Barrow on the West and the Blackstairs Mountains on the East. There are numerous heritage sites all over south Carlow with many great examples of rock art, which I’ve covered previously. Today was about fresh air and exercise – even if it was assisted…

River at Rosdelllig

I presume this warning is an old sign associated with the railway line. Saw this near Dranagh.