As we were planning on spending a weekend in Mayo, I decided to head down on the morning of the first day to break the back of walking the Great Western Greenway which is advertised as running from Westport to Achill Sound along the route of the old narrow-gauge railway that ran until 1937.

So I found myself on the 7:35 Heuston – Westport train at Athlone at 9 am on Friday embarking on a rather roundabout way of getting myself to Mulranny for the night. We arrived into Westport on time at 11 am and I sorted myself out for the walk. After a few km of walking, I managed to find the trail which wasn’t terribly well signposted from the station. I say not terribly well as I didn’t see a sign although there may have been one.

I started my walk tracker on my phone after about 20 minutes walking as I had wanted to leave it until I started the trail properly but figured I had missed the very start by now.  Anyway, after walking a couple of kilometers through Westport and then out the Newport road I found the trail and settled into the walk. The first couple of kilometers were quite enjoyableand an easy way to settle into the journey. It was a fine off-road track with odd bit of old railway architecture to keep oneself interested.

 

The route passed through quite a few fine old bridges which seem to have been reasonably well maintained over the years. The same cannot be said for many of the bridges that the railway passed over as most of these have had to be replaced with modern steel structures. I’ll add a couple of pictures of these later.

 

There were a few lovely bits of planting along the line – a few people around here appear to have taken on to extend their gardens into the greenway which is nice to see.

Wild garlic appears to thrive in this area – at least this is what I think this is. There were lots of bluebells about as well but I didn’t think to take many pictures so don’t have a decent one.

I stopped for a break about 90 minutes in and sat down for five minutes to have a coffee, a few nuts and to refill the  bladder for my water tube.  It was good to have a break but not a terribly inspiring place.

Here is the first of the replacement steel bridges to fix the old work-out structures of the railway. I guess a lot of the old bridges were probably steel structures and were either sold for scrap or just rusted away.

Unfortunately the good route didn’t continue for long. We quickly ended up running alongside the N59 and there was a constant stream of traffic and the associated noise which didn’t make for a terribly peaceful walk at all. Indeed we had several long stretches right alongside the road with views like this.

 

It started getting ridiculous after about 7 km when we had a long run into Newport right alongside the main road with just a 20 cm fence separating us. I think that if I had been coming the other way I would have just given up and called a taxi at this stage.

 

However, there were signs of development of the trail around here with a couple of sections looking finished and read to take the trail off the road properly. I arrived into Newport after about 2 and half hours of proper walking and fervently hoped things would get better as we moved out onto the wilder country to the West.

It would have been so much better to walk into Newport across the old viaduct, but the main route takes us across the road bridge and right through the town. I was packed for the day but if I had wanted to lighten the load a bit, it would have been easy to get food and water for the second half of the walk in Newport.