Tipp Top…..
Two cycles through history in counties Tipperary and Waterford.
There are parts of Ireland where the landscape seems to carry its stories lightly. And then there are places like south Tipperary and west Waterford, where every hill and valley feels steeped in memory.
Two recent cycles brought that home to me — one circling the great bulk of Slievenamon, and another climbing a route favoured by local cyclists, The Vee, and eventually detouring to a lonely monument high on the mountainside.
My first cycle was 35kms approx and the second loop was a tasty 58kms with over 900 metres of climbing. But both were dense with history.
First Loop:
Around Slievenamon from Kilcash
My first spin was a modest 35 km loop around Slievenamon, starting in the quiet village of Kilcash.
Kilcash is the sort of place that quietly gathers centuries. Close to the village stand the ruins of Kilcash Castle, once home to a branch of the powerful Butler family, and nearby is the medieval Kilcash Church, whose origins go back to a monastic foundation associated with a 6th-century saint.
It is also famous throughout Ireland for a poem we all learned in secondary school — “Cill Cháis” (Kilcash) — one of the best-known laments in the Irish language. The poem mourns the decline of the old estate, the loss of the great woods, and the fading of a once-powerful household.
The opening line is one many Irish schoolchildren once knew by heart:
Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad? – What shall we do now without timber?
The poem remembers the cutting of the woods and the ruin of the castle — a metaphor for a whole fading world.
Leaving Kilcash, the bike ride begins gently enough, but the road soon reminds you that Slievenamon does not give up its views cheaply. (It’s much worse hiking up it). The climb out of Kilcash is steep, a tough start to what overall is a pleasant easy loop. Early questions asked and answered: I’m not fit!
Once the road rises high enough, the reward appears: the wide plains of south Tipperary stretching away below, the dark shoulder of Slievenamon rising above them.
Slievenamon itself — “Sliabh na mBan,” the Mountain of the Women — is woven deeply into Irish folklore and song. The mountain’s name is linked to legends of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, and in the 19th century the Tipperary nationalist and poet Charles Kickham wrote the famous ballad Slievenamon, a song that still echoes around GAA terraces and parish halls wherever Tipperary people gather.
For Tipp emigrants scattered across the world, the mountain is a symbol of home.
Second loop.
Up the Vee and Across the Knockmealdowns
Two whole days without rain, so I was up for a little longer adventure.
Starting in Clogheen, the road climbs surprisingly easy toward The Vee, one of the most famous cycling routes in the south-east. The ascent winds into the Knockmealdown Mountains, where the landscape suddenly opens into vast views across the counties.
The Vee itself feels special on a bike, with its two great switch backs. The road crests at a natural gap in the mountains, revealing the Bay Lough below to the right and the long sweep of the valley stretching westward to Galteemore.
From there I rolled down, into a cold headwind, toward Mount Melleray Abbey, once home to a community of Cistercian monks who had lived and prayed there since the 1830s. The monastery closed recently (and now acts as a hostel on the St Declan Pilgrim route), marking the end of nearly two centuries of monastic life in that quiet valley.
The mountains above the abbey tell another story — a much darker one.
A Detour to the Liam Lynch Memorial.
High on the slopes of the Knockmealdowns stands an impressive monument, almost hidden away: a tall round tower marking the spot where Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the IRA during the Civil War, was mortally wounded in April 1923.
I turned off the road and climbed along the forest fire break that leads to it, a climb of 4.5kms.
By early 1923 the Civil War had dragged on bitterly for months. Lynch was leading the anti-Treaty IRA and remained determined to continue the fight even as support was fading.
On 10 April 1923, Free State troops swept through the mountains searching for him. Lynch and a small group tried to escape, but ran into another National Army column approaching from the opposite direction. During the encounter he was struck by rifle fire.
He was carried down the mountain and brought to hospital in Clonmel, where he died later that evening at just 29 years of age. Ironically they say papers found upon him indicated he may have been preparing to end the conflict himself.
Historians often say that the shot that killed him effectively ended the Civil War. Within weeks, his successor Frank Aiken ordered IRA forces to cease operations.
Standing at the isolated memorial It feels impossible that such a decisive moment in Irish history unfolded in such a lonely place.
I retraced the route back down hill to the village of Newcastle and took a left for the final leg back to Clogheen.
Cycling back down from the monument and across the Vee, the thought lingered that these mountains have seen centuries of drama — from Gaelic lordships to monasteries, rebellions, and civil war.
Yet to the cyclist passing through on a quiet afternoon, they offer something simpler.
Good roads.
Huge skies.
And the sense that every climb in Ireland leads not only upward — but backward in time.
Feeling good about myself after a great day cycling I was joined by another cyclist on the wheel back into Clogheen. This sprightly man was a mere 90 years of age who only started cycling in 1984 by completing the famous and high profile Maracycle – Dublin to Belfast return as part of Co-operartion North, which he completed twice. Nowadays he likes to cycle a few times a week on quiet local roads!
