After a damp morning, it cleared up at lunchtime for a nice dry walk. It was pretty clear outside with good long-range visibility.
This was the usual lunchtime long loop so not a lot of time for dawdling.
It was an enjoyable walk on the longer of the two loops.
Unusually we actually met somebody in the forest, right in the middle of one of the wilder parts. This is the first time in six months I’ve come across anybody up there.
142km
I got out for my usual unremarkable lunchtime look today. Not a lot of note really at all. It was a fairly decent day – did the longer of the two loops
137.5km
I had arranged to meet a guy in a nearby village who was setting up a walking group, so that was the initial plan for walking for the day. It was extremely misty so there wasn’t really much point with bothering with the camera. We did a pleasant enough little three 3km road loop in a little over half an hour.
When we got back, I decided to drag the children out for another walk as they wouldn’t have had any exercise over the weekend. So it was up to the forest loop for us.
It really was very misty but pleasant enough besides that. You can hear the faintest signs of life coming back to the forest – there are a lot more birds singing and quite a bit of rustling going on in various undergrowth. The gorse is beginning to come properly into flower.
We made reasonable progress around the loop and when we got done the mist was beginning to life. This year has been very strange for holly as there are still plenty of berries on the trees even though they would normally be gone a couple of weeks before Christmas.
I’ll call the two walks at 3km and 4.5 km each
133km
I went out for a lunchtime walk on a freezing day. Still, it was sunny, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was easy enough to wrap up against the cold.
There was a lot of ice about – large parts of the path had a nice thick layer which made the footing somewhat treacherous. Even the dogs were having trouble with it.
Further around the loop, it had thawed out quite a bit so it did get easier. I took the shorter of the two loops as I didn’t really fancy trying to cross the dodgy bridge when it was frozen.
125.5km
I had planned to go on a more dramatic walk for the day but circumstances intervened so it was back to the canal. Anyway, there was a section at the end that I hadn’t yet walked towards Dublin, so I set off for Condra for a relatively late departure of 10:20 or so.
It was a hard frosty morning and most of the canal was frozen but for all that it as a pleasant dry winter morning so was ideal weather for walking. I had forgotten my camera so was forced to revert to my phone for photographs. Anyway, it was a quick departure out of Clondra and there were quite a few other people out walking dogs, etc, although I didn’t see anyone geared up for a long haul.
The landscape quickly turns to wide open bog which looks fairly desolate at this time of year. This doesn’t last for long after crossing the bog railway and we quickly come across the strange lifting load bridge on the Killashee road which strikes me as such an incredible waste for such a minor road. I supposed I’d think differently if I lived in Killashee.
The weather remained fine for the duration of the walk but the frost never really left for the day and parts of the canal remained frozen over with a very thin layer of ice right until the end of my walk.
I came across this lock-keepers cottage near Killashee which is beginning to look the worse of wear and will need a bit of tender loving care in the next few years.
After getting passing the bridge just outside Killashee I kept to the right bank as the good path on the left bank only allows you turn left and head up the branch. A sign at Killashee probably wouldn’t go amiss as it would lead to an unpleasant little 2 km backtrack if you got it wrong.
This is about my fifth time passing this junction. The branch goes about 10km towards Longford but it is dry at the moment. There are no locks on the branch.
Anyway, I moved onwards for another couple of kilometres before making a pitstop for coffee and Fruit & Nut bar. Suitably refreshed I push on towards Kenagh. There is a nice little harbour in Kenagh with picnic benches but for some reason my breaks weren’t aligned at all with sitting facilities today so I pushed on past without stopping.
A few kilometres past Kenagh, the canal comes to what is one of its stranger features where it winds past Mullarwornia a few km outside Ballymahon. Amidst a quarry and on the side of the hill, the canal hugs contours for about 2 kilometres, desperately avoiding having to drop into the surrounding countryside which would have created a dip that would have made it impossible to feed the few locks on the Clondra side of the canal without resorting to pumps. This makes for rather fabulous views.
I was still making good time but starting to feel the effects of a rather over-enthusiastic start where I covered the first 6 km in 62 minutes. I stopped for a quick late lunch of soup and cheese roll about 20 minutes after leaving Mullawornia behind.
From there it was a quick push to Brannigan harbour near Ballymahon and it’s oddly named Chaigneau bridge – named after a director of the canal company. Oddly enough the bridges in this part of the canal have much more mundane names that those closer to Dublin which are invariably named after directors and investors. So around here we have names like Archie’s bridge, Guy’s bridge & Molly Ward’s bridge.
From Ballybrannigan, it was about 4 km more to my target for the day at the bridge near barry where the N55 crosses the canal but I ended pushing on another few kilometres as my lift wasn’t ready and it was too cold to stand around waiting. So I contented myself with the last of my coffee and Fruit & Nut and pushed on towards Molly Ward’s bridge.
I was game enough to push on for Abbeyshrule but I was rapidly losing daylight and as my lift was ready, I decided to call it quits just before Allnard’s bridge and left the canal to had towards the village of Taghshinney.
I didn’t quite make it to Taghshinney so had to call it a day with an elapsed distance for the day of 31.5 km.
121.5km
The weather is still pretty cold but there was very little snow left after our recent shower. So I got out for a fairly normal lunchtime walk on my own. I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to my surroundings or bother too much with the camera as I was using the walk as thinking time.
I took the shorter loop as I was a little late getting started but at least I got out of the house.
90km
It’s been snowing on-and-off for most of the morning but nothing has been sticking as it’s a bit warm. So we had a crisp day for the walk – the usual lunchtime loop.
Not a lot has changed since my last lap, there still isn’t much sign of life about the place. As the bottom part of the loop is under heavy forest cover, we had quite the surprise when we emerged into our bottom field in blizzard conditions – even if it doesn’t really show up in the picture.
So it was a pleasant walk, even it was a bit cold and I’ve even managed to complete my target for the month a few days early.
86km
We got ourselves sorted after a late Sunday breakfast and went for a walk despite drizzly misty conditions. Everybody was in a reasonably good mood for once and we had a grand time of it. Conditions weren’t the best for photography but I managed a few shots anyway.
The harsh weather of the past few has passed and it is now a lot milder even if it is a bit wet. This is kind of the pattern at this time of year – you can be either cold and dry or warm and wet.
The place looks quite bare at the moment but the moss is doing very well. This part of the forest looks entirely unmanaged and it is hard to see why it isn’t organised in a more productive manner. Still, it is a nice place to walk since it is so wild.
The moss always looks brilliant at a macro scale. The spore things are called devil’s matchsticks due to the fact that they develop a bright red tip for a few days of the year. Last year I managed to get a shot of them on one walk.
81.5km
As a bit of a change, we felt like driving up the other end of the county for a stroll around Derrycassan woods. This is a state forestry establish on the grounds of the ruins of the seat of Dopping-Hempingstalls. It is a nice amenity forest with plenty of trails and circular walks varying from about 3 to 6km or so. We took the longer option.
It is quite a mature forest mostly pretty much all conifer but it makes for pleasant walking and there are plenty of well-made gravel tracks.
This is the remains of a boathouse from the old estate. The main house was demolished in the 1930s for building materials after it was bought by a timber merchant. All that remains now are some concrete remains of the boathouse and an unusual curved section of the garden wall. As the whole site is quite hilly, the walled garden was constructed to follow the contours rather than the usual rectangular arrangement.
One of the remaining entrances into the garden is remarkable well-preserved. I always think it looks for forlorn in the middle of the woods.
This was a pleasant dry and non-mucky walk and we managed 6km.
77km
The cold weather remains and there is still some lingering snow from the fall on Monday night. It really only remains in the shade but with the sun so low in the sky there is a lot of shade.
It was dry though, so I had a pleasant walk being well wrapped up against the cold. It is very quiet up the Mountain at this time of year – there are very few birds about apart from the odd wood-pigeon making its presence felt. One species of gorse seems to be having a bit of a think about flowering despite the recent cold weather.
It was very pleasant to get out for a loop in such fine weather. I ended up taking the longer of the two loops. I didn’t see very much of the dogs after letting them off the lead but they must have come across something along the paved bit of the lane as they both came running back to me and were reluctant to continue on alone.
71km