The Barrow Walk is a gentle discovery of geography, history, and nature both farmed and wild. The Grand Canal-Barrow line was added in 1791 as an extension linking Dublin with the Barrow River and the southeast. There are twenty-three locks between Lowtown-Roberstown in Kildare and St Mullins at the southern end. Each are impressive works of stone and wood, interspersed with humpbacked bridges. Usually, there is a parallel weir where rushing water churns up fleecy forth and a vigilant heron waits for a catch.
Swans, ducks, dragonflies, butterflies, and shrews were plentiful, with rolling fields of grain, ripe as well as harvested. We were rare enough walkers to attract the attention of grazing cattle. Despite dire weather warnings on the radio every morning, we were spared rain and enjoyed fleeting sunshine that regularly threw its magic over the landscape of water, trees, and hedgerows.
As my walking partner, my daughter appropriately taught me to recite Gerarld Manley Hopkins’ poem Inversnaid: appropriate because Hopkins often stayed at Monasterevin, our first overnight, and because the poem celebrates a river’s journey through untamed landscape. “….rollrock highroad roaring down…fleece of his foam…pool so pitchblack…wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern….What would the world be, one bereft/Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,/….Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
Athy is a busy hub around a nice town square. The Grand Canal-Barrow Line joins the River Barrow at the southern end of Athy, a lovely watery conjunction. We arrived just as a barge used the lock. This was the only time we actually saw a barge use the waterway. In fact, we saw no active boats or kayaks over the six days. We encountered only one other walker. It was nice to have the Barrow Way all to ourselves but also a puzzle that such a lovely facility was barely used at the height of summer.
Our next stop was Carlow town where its impressive stone castle reminds us of its founder, William Marshall. Marshall was the greatest knight in Christendom in the twelfth century, and Henry II’s chief man-at-arms. Because of his long service, Marshall was rewarded with marriage to Isabel, daughter of Strongbow and Aoife. During his lordship of Leinster, he built Hook Lighthouse and Tintern Abbey, practical and spiritual responses to surviving a near-foundering on the coast. Marshall established New Ross and added Carlow as a commercial stepping stone up the Barrow. Despite his widespread influence in the region, Marshall is barely known in Ireland, something that the Norman Millennium 2027 might address.
On we plodded, covering an average of over twenty kilometers day. The best accommodation was at the Lord Bagenal Inn in lovely Leighlinbridge. On the narrow old Main Street, it has what must be the smallest door into what also must be the coziest pub in Ireland. The premises then expands into a classy and capacious hotel at the back, now I suppose it’s front. It is a bizarre but very pleasing architectural conjuration. The dinner and pints were top notch.
Leighlinbridge converges the Barrow Way, the Columban Way, and the John Tyndall Way. Leighlinbridge native Tyndall, incidentally, was a great physicist who discovered the connection between CO2 and global warming. The Columban Way runs all the way to Bangor, commemorating our greatest international missionary who was born on the Carlow-Wexford border. The plan is to extend the route all the way to Bobbio in Italy where he founded a monastery and where he died. Old Leighlinbridge is a short distance west and was the centre of Leinster’s largest monastic settlement in the seventh century. Leighlinbridge is a great base to explore the prettiest parts of the Barrow Way, north and south.
On the Barrow Way at Bagenalstown, we came across the ruin of Rudkins Mill, founded by a Cromwellian soldier in the 17th century. Some of the Rudkins emigrated to the United States where Margaret Rudkin (nee Fogarty, second generation Irish family) started baking specialized bread for her asthmatic son in 1937, selling it to a grocery store in Fairfield Connecticut, and then establishing Pepperidge Farms. Impressed with Belgium’s chocolate biscuits, she produced her own under the Pepperidge Farm brand. She sold the company to Campbells Soups in 1961 and joined its board, the first woman to do so, but kept a controlling interest in Pepperidge Farms for another decade. Today, Pepperidge Farms is one of the largest American producers of biscuits (cookies), breads, and desserts with a revenue of $1.7bn. Margaret was literally the proverbial smart cookie! Throughout this period, the Rudkins kept a home in Carlow, their ancestral manor house.
Because we had stayed at Leighlinbridge, we had to cover over thirty kilometers to get to Graiguenamanagh, which suddenly appears around a bend, a very welcome sight by that stage! Time permitting, Duiske Abbey is well worth a visit with its carefully restored oak roof. It was founded by the busy William Marshall in 1204 and run by the Cistercians until it was suppressed by Henry VIII in 1536, its lands going to the resilient and cunning Butlers.
The last day was a morning stroll in glorious sunshine, crossing the impressive bridge at Graiguenamanagh (though it needs some pedestrian accommodation), and following the Barrow to St Mullin’s and the last lock. St Mullin’s marks the upper-most reach of the tidal influence on the Barrow which flows majestically to New Ross and out to the sea at Passage East (where Strongbow fatefully landed in 1170). St Moling founded a monastery here and the remains of its round tower remain visible. A steep cone of hill nearby is the remains of a mote-and-bailey built by Raymond ‘Le Gros’ FitzGerald, one of Strongbow’s greatest tactical warriors. In May 1170, Raymond landed near Wexford and seized the headland of Baginbun, ‘where Ireland was lost and won’ as the lament goes.
With the old graveyard at St Mullins containing the remains of rebels from the great rebellion of 1798, you can get a quick tour of Ireland’s history concentrated at St Mullin’s. It is also a delightful spot for lunch on the banks of the Barrow which marked the end of our adventure.
The one issue on the Barrow Way was the lack of facilities. To encourage greater use, it would be immeasurably improved with strategically placed sites with a toilet, tap, picknick area, and carpark.
Eamonn
28 August 2025
eamonncmckee 