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
