After a relatively dry morning, I set off for a quick loop at lunchtime. This time it didn’t even wait for me to get the dogs harnessed before the heavens opened with a mixture of hail and rain that continued for almost the entire walk. This was a typical view for the walk – not a great picture but my camera’s auto exposure had messed up which is the first time it had done that.
It was a bit of a quick dash due to the miserable weather so I didn’t really get a chance to take a lot of decent pictures. Some of the gorse is beginning to get a bit past its best. The most interesting thing I came across was this lichen which was “flowering”. It was all over the place which is a good sign for air quality.
It is a bit tiny so is hard to get a decent picture with a relatively cheep point and pray camera. This is known as Devil’s matchstick and it brought a lovely dash of colour to the place.
So after a thorough drenching I got back home from a quick loop relatively refreshed. It had been a few days since I managed to get out – a combination of busyness and bad weather kept me off the mountain for the weekend so it was nice to get out.
After a miserable wet morning, I decided to take a chance and get out at lunchtime for my usual quick loop. It was pretty nice when I left but about 10 minutes later the heavens opened. That lasted for about 5 minutes but I didn’t get too wet. I took a chance on taking off my fleece and jacket when I unhitched the dogs after the first 2 km but that wasn’t to last for long. After another 10 minutes it really started pelting it down and I had to dig out my coat again. This time, it kept it up for quite a bit longer and I had a right soaking for my troubles.
Aside from the rain, the place is looking very lush at the moment. Everything is growing furiously and that was part of why I ended up with such a soaking as the ground cover was well up past the level of my gaiters. The rain did stop about 10 minutes from the end and there was quite fabulous light coming through the trees in the sudden clearance.
I don’t think the camera quite does it justice but it was worth a try. This wasn’t the fastest of walks due to the amount of faffing about with raincoats and rucksacks but at least I got out.
It was a miserable morning when I got up and I wasn’t going to finish the trail just for the sake of it so we had a leisurely breakfast and pottered about for a couple of hours. By then it had cleared up enough that the walk would be a pleasure rather than a chore so I sorted myself out and set off.
The old station is at the back of the hotel and while the station building itself is in poor shape, this water tower has survived in a reasonable state. You can see the bike rack used by hotel guests here.
There is also a bit of the platform visible here.
I set off at a reasonable pace but not too hectic as I had a few aches and pains from yesterday. I quickly left the village behind and this section was properly set up on the old rail alignment so there were a few deep cuttings and over-bridges along the way.
There were some spectacular views of the countryside as we emerged from the cutting just outside Mulranny.
This bit of countryside is almost an island with only a kilometer or so attaching it to the mainland so the coastline comes in a long way. At this point we are about 8 kilometers from the open sea.
At this stage I was settling into the walk and making good progress. It was very enjoyable with a proper off-road track and interesting scenery. There were quite a few cyclists about – it being a Saturday on a bank holiday weekend, but I wasn’t seeing any walkers at all aside from one or two strolling a kilometer or two out of Mulranny. The going stayed good.
The heather was in fine form.
After about 4 km we headed inland for a bit with a trek across fairly desolate moorland and then came back to the sea.
At this point it all came kind of crashing to end. At about the 7km point, the route joined the main road into the Achill and it was a nasty kilometer or so right on the edge of the Achill road with no footpath. At one stage my hat was blown off by a truck thundering by about three feet away from me but I did recover it. The good news is that they are widening the road here so there will probably be a proper path in place by the end of the summer but that didn’t do me much good.
When that was over, I decided to take a short break to eat a sandwich. Although it was’t a long walk, it was lunchtime and I was getting a bit hungry. Shortly after getting started again, we left the main road behind and headed along the old route again.
For the next couple of kilometers it was sections like this alternated with short stretches of minor roads. At about the 10 km point we left the off-road sections altogether and the reset of the walk was on minor roads. There wasn’t any traffic though so it wasn’t really an imposition.
It was getting a bit of a trudge at this stage and I was counting down the kilometers. I started meeting a few walkers so it couldn’t be a lot longer. The path took a sharp turn to the left at about 13 km and we rejoined the main road. As I had somebody waiting for me in Achill and I didn’t really fancy trudging the 500m or so into Achill along the side of a main road, I bailed out at this stage as I had had enough of main roads.
My conclusions on the greenway were a bit mixed. It is a bit over-hyped and it would certainly not be worth making the journey to walk it. For the non-serious cyclist, it makes a lovely outing with relatively little interaction with traffic. The section between Newport and Mulranny is the best followed by Mulranny to Achill but I really wouldn’t be bothered with Westport to Newport again unless I determined to complete the whole route.
The canal route is a far preferable journey for walkers and I’ll be returning to that next month with the long section from Mullingar to Enfield although I may need to review my footwear situation before then.
This followed straight on from the previous section and I didn’t even stop in Newport as I was hoping to get half the total 31 km done before stopping for lunch. So I pushed on another few kilometers. The picture didn’t immediately improved with the route following the N59 for another couple of kilometers but at least it was properly separated. There were some fine views over some rather convoluted sea inlets along this section.
However, we quickly got to the point of leaving the main road behind altogether as the route took a detour off across this fine old bridge
After a quick tango with the main road for 50 metres, the route left the road behind for good for the rest of the day so I decided to call a halt to proceedings a few hundred metres early after coming across a nice picnic bench to have my lunch
I ate well of tuna sandwich and soup and had a nice sit down for about 15 minutes. Suitably refreshed, topped up my water bladder, packed up my bag and set off again. I was still keeping a reasonable pace, taking about 11 and a half minutes to do a kilometer. However, my overly stiff hiking boots and some incredibly expensive and ultimately useless summer hiking socks were starting to take their toll on my feet. I had to stop and adjust the lacing on one boot a couple of times.
The countryside here stated to turn spectacular and we were really into the wilds and on a proper wild greenway walk. There were very few people about, I was being passed by a cyclist maybe every half hour or so and it was a fantastic wild experience. I heard a cuckoo around here which is something that has gotten pretty rare in the midlands. The countryside alternated between exposed wild moorland the odd sheltered little pocket.
There were some fabulous pockets of bluebells about.
The greenway has quite a few quirky pieces of art installed to keep one’s interest I’m not quite sure what the idea was as the countryside in this section is quite enough to keep me interested
At this point, I was close to the 25 km mark for the day and with it all being on hard surface my feet were really starting to hurt. However, the distance was winding down and I was on the home stretch with a bit over an hour remaining and the promise of a hotel with a hot-tub and a sauna to sort my aching muscles out.
This is a typical scene from a river crossing with the whin bushes in fine form. The smell was powerful at times. There was another cuckoo on the go in this area.
Somebody had gone to a lot of effort putting together this fine dry stone wall. It was in fine shape but doesn’t have the appearance of a typical railway structure.
Finally after over six hours on the move, Mulranny came into sight. I got a message to say that my family were coming to meet me and walk with me on the last mile or so to the hotel. It was nice to have an excuse to slow down to match the pace of my children.
I arrived into the hotel just short of 7 hours after getting off the train with probably about 40 minutes of stops along the way having walked around 33 kilometers. So not a bad day’s work for me. I decided to play it by ear regarding completing the walk on the next day as I wasn’t going to get myself into a state of being useless for the weekend.
I’ve dropped in my Endomondo log for the walk but it has a bit lopped off each end due to me not starting it at the station in Westport and my phone crashing 5 minutes from the end of the walk. I was lucky not to lose the log altogether.
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.
This was another quick lunchtime loop but there was a real highlight today. The bluebell is probably the most iconic spring flower in Ireland and they made an appearance today. The first sign of them was on the lane into our house where there is a small clump of them under a big ash tree than normally flowers a few days before the ones in the forest.
There had been a recent rain-shower so everything was a bit wet. I had foolishly not bothered with gaiters so my trousers were quickly soaked once I went off the road. That’ll larn me. The tadpoles up the top are doing well and the recent rain will have been appreciated.
There aren’t any bluebells for the first half of the walk but when I got into the deepest part, the first couple of flowers had started to make their appearance. There isn’t an abundance of bluebells in the forest but give them another 20 or 30 years and they should have started to take over properly.
As a final snapshot, although not strictly of the forest, the apple trees are now in flower and looking well.
This is going to be a quick post as I need to get ready for the weekend’s walking as I have planned to do the Great Western Greenway from Westport to Achill. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while and should get it written up over the weekend.
I managed to get home from work a bit early so decided to do a quick evening walk as the weather was reasonable.
It was a decidedly quick walk and I took a bit of a sort-cut to avoid the more remote parts of forest due to the approaching darkness. There wasn’t a lot new to photograph but I did take a couple of shots of another of the ruins in the forest.
This one is a bit odd as it would have been a fine farmhouse for its time rather than the simple shacks that other ruins were. It had at least two rooms, fine stone windowsills and outbuildings. I guess it must have once been the house of a relatively strong farmer before he sold up to the forestry. I must try to find somebody with some knowledge of the people who used to live up there.
There is an amazing cluster of wood-sorrel just after this ruin. They look particularly pretty in flower right now. There is something quite other-worldly about this I think. I should try to capture it in mist.
This was a quick walk and I was starving by the end of it due it being nearly 9 o’clock and me not having eaten since lunchtime.
After a good breakfast, I decided to get out for a walk early while the weather was still co-operating. After a good long dry stretch the weather is showing signs of breaking and returning back to normal. Unfortunately everybody else in the house was feeling a bit lazy so I was on my lonesome. I decided to christen a new pair of gaiters as the zip on my old ones had really had it.
Anyway, the rain more or less held off for the duration but it was quite windy. It was at a strange level though and was kind of whispering through the trees. The bilberries are coming along nicely – there might be a good harvest this year if the birds don’t get them first.
There are quite a few signs in the forest that it hasn’t been forested for all that long. In times past there were dozens if not hundreds of people living up on the mountain. Believe or not, this is the remains of a house. It looks a lot more house-like from the other side.
There are lots of fine old stone walls in the forest. The forestry people seem to be quite find of just driving through them with machinery when they are in the way but this one is surviving quite nicely. I’d like to see a concrete block wall last so well buried in a forest for 50 years.
It is getting close to the time for bluebells. Unfortunately, they aren’t that common in the forest. When I first started walking there, there were great carpets like this that I assumed were bluebell.
So as spring approached, I was really looking forward to the explosion of blue mist from the bluebells but unfortunately it never happened. I still haven’t managed to find out what the plant actually is but this is its extremely disappointing floral effort.
There are a few stands of bluebells and they are due out in the next week or two so I’ll post a couple of pictures when I get the chance. Bluebells apparently need hundreds of years to get properly established naturally and unfortunately not a lot of the forest is deciduous so they are never going to do particularly well.
I finished up my walk just as the rain was getting serious but not so bad that I needed to get my coat out.
It was another beautiful sunny day at lunchtime although it is still quite cold. So I set off for a quick lap with the gods in a fine mood. There aren’t many bare trees left, but this straggler is still struggling along with it.
There was a fabulously clear view from the top. The hazy hills in the background aren’t far from 40km away so that was how clear it was. The church is about 1.5 km from the point where the picture was taken.
The gorse (whin or furze if you prefer) is really in full flower right now and every now and then you get the most amazing blast of aroma from it. It really is a beautifully heady smell. I often wonder about the idea of adding it to beer as an aroma hop substitute but I guess there would be a bit of an infection risk.
I love this old tree that is deep in the forest. It is so twisted an gnarled that I reckon it has earned itself a reprieve from the forestry people due to being pretty useless for their purposes. I would think that it predates the planting of the forestry which can’t have been up on the mountain for more than 60 or 70 years.
After coming out onto the main forestry track, I had this little beauty to brighten up my day. If you keep an eye out there are loads of pretty little flowers coming out.
So I had a nice walk around the forest with a few more new things every day to keep things different. I’ll finish up with another tree texture.
I was out for a normal quick lunchtime walk today. It was another fine day although it was patchy. It was pretty nice during the walk anyway. Every day more things are bursting into flower. This birch tree caught my eye – obviously still suffering the ravages of the winter storms,
There is great variety in willow and sally trees and their flowers. I found a couple more flowering today
The sphagnum moss also seems to be doing its thing right now – whatever its thing is.
As part of the walk, I have to come out of one part of the forest (which isn’t very well grown at the moment), cross a local road and go back into another part of it. I spotted my first Lady’s Smock of the year growing on the edge of this road.
That is areal harbinger of early summer and was nice to see. I also took another shot that isn’t strictly of the forest but as I spent some time in Japan years ago, I am a sucker for Ohanami. They are such a beautiful flower.
Walking forests and trails in the midlands of Ireland
