New running route

Exactly 12 miles door to door

I like to vary my running routes. During the week this is not possible because of time constraints but at weekends and if I feel suitably motivated... Today the women folk were having a "shower" for a girl who is about to give birth, so I took the opportunity to explore.

I may have been trespassing a bit to start with - hard to tell in Ireland. At Poulaphouca I left the safety of the roads and skirted a field containing two horses, keeping just outside the fence and through the wooded area shown below. At the jiggle in the path I was obliged to enter the field for a few yards because the ESB well fenced area comes right up to where I was. I then followed a farm track that turned into what looked like an old railway embankment. Maybe there was a branch of the Poulaphouca tramway leading to the Woolen Mills, but I can find no record of this.

From road to field

Ruin and Water Works

The track leads to a farmyard in ruins (yellow square on the aerial view). Here was a foot-path sort of gate so I climbed over and jogged uphill but found a residence but no footpath (blue diversion). So I retraced my steps and continued along the "embankment". This led me to the Golden Falls ESB dam.

ESB Golden Falls dam

Here I was surprised to find the beginning of a well-trodden path, complete with rough steps cut into steep declines down to the new river level.  This path continued, with a proper small footbridge crossing the outflow from the Dublin Water Works until it met a new hardcore track coming down from the main road on my right. I followed this track which took me the derelict Woolen Mills and from here to Ballymore Eustace.

The existence of this footpath made me think that perhaps I was not trespassing, but who can tell? Rights of Way don't happen like they do in the UK. And the rule here is - never ask for permission because the land owner granting permission makes them liable so they must decline.

From Ballymore I kept to roads - to Boleybeg crossroads (on the way to Dunlavin), turn left here and back via Broadlees and Ballysize.

Stats: Total distance almost exactly 12 miles, average speed just over 6 m.p.h.  Barefoot of course.