Rothar Routes

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

Posts tagged ‘Garden of Ireland’

Glen of Imaal Loop

There’s a road out of Rathdangan that pulls you gently upwards, wrapping around the shoulder of Slievemaan. It doesn’t shout for attention. No cafés, no car parks, no welcome signs. But beyond it lies one of the most storied and mysterious landscapes in Ireland – the Glen of Imaal.

On this particular spin, the sun was high and fierce – longest and hottest day of the year so far! As I pedalled into the wide glacial scoop of the Glen, Lugnaquilla loomed on my right like a sleeping giant, the North Prison cast in shadow. To my left, the softer hulk of Kaideen offered contrast – rounded, brooding, ancient.

The first stop was McAllister’s Cottage, beautifully whitewashed, where it clings to the hillside, it was once a safehouse and hiding place during the 1798 Rebellion. It was here that Michael Dwyer, the famed rebel leader from Imaal, spent a winter on the run with comrades including Sam McAllister. When Crown forces finally caught up with them in 1799, McAllister made his final stand – deliberately exposing himself to gunfire to draw attention away from Dwyer, allowing his commander to escape into the misty folds of the Wicklow hills. His sacrifice made him a folk hero, and the cottage remains a potent symbol of defiance, endurance, and tragic loyalty.

Onward, across the Glen. The road turned rough, and I followed it towards the edge of the Glen of Imaal Artillery Range, where live military exercises still take place. Signs warn you not to stray from the public track – this is still a working range. I forded the River Slaney, little more than a silver thread here, but rising proudly from the heights of Lugnaquilla before beginning its long journey down through Carlow and Wexford to the sea.

Past Fentons, the famous pub at the foot of “Lug,” the road curved through this beautiful and remote valley that tourists tend to overlook. I stopped to pay respects at a somber site: a memorial to 16 Irish soldiers, killed in 1941 during a tragic accidental explosion while training in the Glen. A quiet spot, beautifully kept, with names etched in stone. These were young men, preparing to defend their country in neutrality during a dangerous time for Europe. Their deaths were a devastating blow to the community and are still remembered here.

There’s an added dimension to my Saturday and Sunday cycles when GAA games are on the radio; today was an epic battle between Dublin and Clare hurlers while Cavan travelled to take on Kerry. Kudos to the commentators who paint such vivd word pictures that it’s like being there and sometimes I’d end up pulling over to the side when it got particularly exciting – there were a lot of stops today as the Dubs overcame that brilliant Limerick team! I was outside Fentons pub for the closing minutes chatting to a bus driver who was transporting climbers undertaking the 4 Peaks Challenge! I completed a similar challenge many years ago with Donal Nolan and John Wynne!

Curiously, hidden within the artillery range itself, there’s a civilian cemetery, its presence a mystery. Perhaps a relic from before the land was taken over by the Defence Forces. It’s these oddities – the half-remembered things – that give the Glen its haunting pull.

The next waypoint was a true rarity: the Knickeen Ogham Stone, a tall, lichen-covered standing stone etched with ancient script, probably from the 5th or 6th century. Ogham was Ireland’s first written language – a series of slashes and lines denoting sounds. The Ogham inscription on the North East corner reads ‘Maqi Nili’, which broadly means ‘Of the son of Niall’, standing here for over a thousand years in silent testimony. It’s easy misss this important heritage site as it is off the public road and to the side of a walking track and out of sight. Glad to have visited it today.

Then it was time to close the loop. The road climbed again after Knockanarrigan, the crossroads at the centre of the Glen, where Kaideen again loomed in front of me like a guardian angel guiding me home. After a bit of climbing, it was an easy glide down to Rathdangan, my water bottle drained and legs toasted, but mind and body satisfied with stories and scenery.

Distance: 38km

Total Ascent: 603m

Avoca to the Coast: Red Kites, Sea Air and the Castletimon Giant!

There’s a special satisfaction in linking up a series of bike loops. Each one feels like a jigsaw piece – this piece is a cycle from the wooded hills above Avoca to the Wicklow coast and back again, across undulating country, through ancient landmarks, moody skies, and the odd magical tale.

The route starts in the village, just after the Church and loops back around and above the village.

I began with a climb into Kilmagig Forest, drawn by the promise of wings above the treetops. This is the Red Kite Walk– a 2.5km waymarked trail beloved by hikers and bird watches alike. Since their reintroduction in 2009 by the Golden Eagle Trust (other locations were unsuccessful), Red Kites have made a dramatic return here, with over 30 breeding pairs now resident. Circling high over the canopy and the village of Avoca far below, their forked tails and effortless glide gave an otherworldly feeling to the morning. A local man told me the kites are not always so graceful in their habits – apparently they sometimes drop bones from scavenged meals onto cars below, occasionally causing dents and confusion among unsuspecting drivers! A modern twist on the age-old tension between humans and nature.

From here, I veered east through hill country where the place names are poetry themselves: Ballinastraw, Ballinabrannagh, Pollaphuca, Barranisky.

Somewhere on this backroad maze I paused at St Patrick’s Well, a peaceful spring with a long devotional history. The water was cold and clear, the kind of spot that invites silence, maybe a whispered hope or two.

Crossing the motorway was a rude reminder of modern life, but the reward came soon after – the smell of salt on the air, the Irish Sea stretched out before me from the lesser known Mizen Head, with off shore wind turbines barely visible in the misty sky. Headed due north then to Brittas Bay, that summer escape beloved of Dubliners.

A sudden cloudburst turned the world grey and dripping. I was soaked to the skin, but the road beneath me was still a joy – fast and sinuous, the kind that makes you laugh out loud even in the rain. Wicklow seems designed for these kinds of moments.

On the return leg, I almost passed the Castletimon Ogham Stone, carved sometime between 350 and 550 AD. Rediscovered in the 1800s, the stone carries Ogham script – Ireland’s earliest written language. Some say the Castletimon Giant hurled it down the hill, scratching it with his fingernails. Others speak of a man who stole it for his hearthstone, only to have the fairies wreak havoc on his kitchen, sending cutlery into a nightly jig. He returned it promptly.

From there it was a spin past Jack White’s Cross Roads, where the infamous pub still does a brisk trade beside the junction, and a winding loop past Redcross, before I finally swooped back down into Avoca, wet but content, my loop complete.

47km, 717 metres of climbing, and a little bit of everything – birds of prey, coast and legend, forest, folklore, and rolling tarmac. The Garden of Ireland keeps surprising me.

A Wheel Through Time: Cycling the Vale of Clara Loop, County Wicklow

Distance: 35 km

Elevation Gain: 690 m

Route Type: Looped

Terrain: Mix of quiet country roads, forest lanes, riverside valleys, and panoramic hill climbs.

There are days when the road doesn’t just stretch ahead—it opens like a storybook. One recent morning, I found myself parking up at Clara Church, not far from Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow to begin spinning the pedals above the enchanted Vale of Clara, a looped route that doesn’t just traverse landscape but travels deep into Ireland’s wooded memory.

Wicklow has forests aplenty, but the Vale of Clara is something else—an often missed delight among the heavenly delights of Glendalough and Avondale. Here, oak woods have stood since the last Ice Age, rooted in a silence deeper than memory. Hazel and rowan shiver gently in the wind. Jays flash like thoughts through the branches. The long-eared owl, the blackcap, even the shy woodcock—all dwell here under the protection of a Special Area of Conservation. It’s a place to look and to listen.

At the heart of this green cathedral lies the village of Clara, many claim it to be Ireland’s smallest village! Picture this: a narrow, six-arched stone bridge, the oldest in Wicklow, modest yet stoic, dating back to the 17th century. It creaks under single-lane traffic as if resisting the modern world. Beside it, the quiet dignity of St Patrick and St Killian’s church, standing since 1799. Even the old schoolhouse next door has its tale to tell – it arrived 100 years later in 1899. Once there was a post office, an inn, a shop—all now homes, like retired storytellers guarding secrets of a gentler time.

Not far from Clara, is the Millennium Forest at Ballygannon. Over 40,000 oak seedlings were planted here at the turn of the millennium.

I followed the winding roads and soon I found myself on a rough lane descending toward the Mottee Stone—a 150-ton granite boulder plucked by a glacier and misplaced like a forgotten thought. Some say Fionn Mac Cumhaill hurled it from Lugnaquilla as a hurling ball. Others claim it rolls down the hill once a year for a drink at the Meeting of the Waters. Another is the one where dispatch riders from Dublin to Wexford cried “moitié!” upon seeing it—French for “halfway.” A milestone of myth and mileage. Iron rungs embedded by miners let me climb atop the stone, where the panorama spilled out in all directions.

And then downhill—freewheeling joy through over grown hedgerows, wildflowers and sun-dappled lanes—until I came to the place where rivers embrace. The Meeting of the Waters, where the Avonmore and Avonbeg become the Avoca, is more than geography—it’s poetry. Thomas Moore stood here once, moved to verse:

“There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet!"

The loop was now turning back towards my starting point but first came Avondale and Rathdrum, a town with history stitched into every street. A Green and Red painted house in the centre of the village caught my eye; adorned with chants of Mayo, Mayo, Mayo…and hopeful slogans ‘Yes we can’ and ‘Is féidir linn’. Hope springs eternal, yet dashed again last Sunday. Odd I thought to see this is the middle of County Wicklow, until I remembered that Charles Stewart Parnell, Rathdrum’s native son, once led the charge to end landlordism across Ireland. It was he who inspired the movement that gave the English language the word “boycott,” after Irish tenants shunned a British land agent in County Mayo. Perhaps, I mused, that splash of Mayo red and green was more than football pride—maybe it was a silent homage to Parnell, to justice, to the Land League’s legacy.

As the loop closed and I rolled back over Clara’s 17th century bridge, it struck me: this wasn’t just a cycle. It was communion—with history, with forest, with story, and with silence.

The Vale of Clara doesn’t just show you where you are. It reminds you of where you come from.

Walking Back to Happiness

Helen Shapiro had a big hit with ‘Walking Back to Happiness’.

Going for a walk with my better half is always a day well spent! Saturday was equally joyful walking the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on Cuilcagh Mountain with my favourite son called Cian and then attending the Ulster SFC Preliminary Round of Fermanagh v Tyrone!

We had organised ourselves to be free today for a hike somewhere, destination weather dependent and we always like to do a new trail if at all possible when we have a few hours to complete it.

The bike is still under wraps and hill walking is back in vogue. we are fortunate that we have so many places on our doorstep – there are so may trails in the Blackstairs and across the county boundaries in Wicklow and Laois. It was a last minute decision – after checking the weather forecast to head to the Garden of Ireland for a ramble- with Lugnaquilla on the radar.

However squally showers were forecast and we decided instead to create our own loop walk. Our starting point was Drumgoff Gap.

The summit of Croaghanmoira

It may only be the 136th highest peak in Ireland but Croaghanmoira is situated perfectly to gain a view of so much of the Wicklow mountains from Kaideen to Lugnaquilla to the Sugar Loaf, out into the Irish Sea, all the way down the Wexford coast, to the Blackstairs and much farther south to Sliabh na mBan – not forgetting iconic Eagle Hill towering above Hacketstown.

The views were breathtaking. I mean breathtaking. If you aren’t much into hill walking and you had only one hill to climb, I would say the 2kms to the top is the one to take!

Mary just reaching the top.

As it was only 2kms from the road we decided to follow the route along the ridge of Fananierin and come across to the Wicklow Way to create our own loop back to our starting point. It was sublime. Underfoot conditions were very good along the ridge, bogland, nice and forgiving. This part of the walk is part of the Ballinacor Estate and is private land. Access is restricted as the area is preserved for the protection of the habitat of endangered grouse.

The loop was 11kms in length with 475 metres of climbing and took just under 2 hours. It is doable for anyone with a moderate level of fitness.

Crossing the heather
At the summit.
Easter Monday Loop!

Stairway to Heaven

The Stairway to Heaven, Cuilcagh Mountain, County Fermanagh

Stairway to Heaven, Cuilcagh Mountain
Cuilcagh Mountain and The Stairway to Heaven
Cian, just before I passed him on the way up….