It was back to the Miners’ Way for me today and the plan was to get the southern section done. I had a slightly late start at 9AM and the plan was to get the train from Boyle at 6:30. So I started out at the the bottom of the hill from the Mining Experience.

From here, it was a quick climb up to the hills above Arigna and then heading south towards Keadew. The morning was still quite misty so Sliabh Anierin remain elusive as ever.

From here it was a couple of kilometres until the route branches off for the Kilronan mountain loop. I passed this and started heading down towards Keadew after passing the political cairn from my last visit.

I came across this odd little chamber under a communications mast on the way down the hill. I didn’t really have time to go poking around in it so I satisfied myself with a picture.

There is nothing on the map at this location but given the prevalence in the area it must be a sweat house.

After a steep and slippy descent down an old track, I got onto a local road and from here it was an easy walk in Keadew.

Keadew was really only just waking up. There were a couple of shops open and a bus arrived while I was walking through. A runner sneaked up on me and scared the bejesus out of me as I was walking through. I went up past the church and then down to Lough Meelagh.

It was at this point that I made a rather stupid navigation mistake which in fairness I had also planned. Because the walk is on two map sheets and the sheets are offset at this point, stupidly liked up the wrong parts of the walk and so headed off towards Ballyfarnon instead of turning left directly towards Keadew. I think this error ended up adding about 5 km to my route. Anyway, I headed on towards Kilronan Castle and entered through these rather fabulous gates.

I continued on merrily through the forest around the lake completely oblivious to my own stupidity and made good progress towards Ballyfarnon which is a lovely little village. After passing through Ballyfarnon, I headed up a hill and got ready to leave the roads behind me for a bit. It was at this stage that I started getting the niggles that something was wrong with my direction. Sure enough after getting both map sheets out I realised my error and turned around.

So after a rather fast 4 km hike back along through Ballyfarnon and down a road along the western side of Lough Meelagh, I got back on the correct route. This episode added about 6 km to my journey. Once back on the right route, I swapped out my map sheets and set out again.

The route followed minor roads for a couple of kilometres before switching back to muddy tracks and then going across fields for a while. As I was nearing the 20 km mark, I decided to stop for lunch at this stage.

After lunch, I continued across fields and got the first glimpse of Lough Key. Boyle, my destination is on the far side of the lake. I descended towards the lake and joined a busy regional road towards Knockvicar at an interesting crossroads which had two pubs – both closed due to Good Friday.

I made good time along the main road which was a bit unpleasant before I got to Knockvicar which is a nice little village with a rather substantial bridge across the Boyle river.

The route carried along the main road for another few hundred metres before turning off into a nice little amenity walk on a mostly cut-away bog.

There was some interesting fauna in a field along this route. I think these are alpacas which aren’t terribly common in Ireland

The route looped around through bogland, bluebell woods and along the shores of Lough Key and it was a very pleasant section. I stopped for a bit of a chat with a local walker for a couple of minutes.

I was looking out for a spot to sit down and have a coffee as I was starting to get quite tired. I found this nice spot with a view onto the lake so had a quick break.

The route meandered through forestry and we eventually ended up in what would have originally been land belonging to the Rockingham estate judging by the rather substantial walls and the odd castle in the forest.

Not long after this, the route emerged onto a minor road through open farmland that would have once been open parkland belonging to the estate. This was turning into a bit of a slog as I was noticing that I was getting very tight on time for making the 1830 train.

All of the bridges on the old estate have a very distinctive style. Once I was across this, I had a couple more km to go to make it to the forest park. I  entered the forest park through a back entrance into the carpark.

After going through the car-park, I got a nice view of the lake and stopped briefly to use the facilities before getting back on the trail. At this point, I was getting extremely tight for time and I didn’t know which route the waymarking would take me through the park.

Needless to say, it sent me on the most roundabout rote possible, and I wasn’t going to take a short-cut in case that ended up being even longer.

This castle in the middle of the lake is actually a folly and is built to about 70% scale of what it would actually be. I went out there on a boat a couple of summers ago and it is in a pretty bad state of repair.

I struggled on, making quite a good pace – I rattle off an 11 minute kilometre at one point but I really was feeling the pain of a long day’s walking and so regretfully had to call a halt to proceedings after passing through the rather dramatic entrance archway to the estate.

I made a total of 38 kilometres for the day, but I had to call a taxi at this stage as I had about 2.5 more kilometres and about 25 minutes to make the last train of the day.

380.5km