Ireland day 0922. Sunday 07 April 2024- Kilquade DWC *

Ireland day 0922. Sunday 07 April 2024- Kilquade DWC

Today’s summary	Val had a day at the Museum so while she was at work I joined a Club walk from Kilcoole rail station along the old “Mass Path” to Kilquade and back. Successfully managed to dodge the showers and had time to branch off the route to climb the Rock of Kilcoole and explore the ruins of the old walled garden at Darraghville convent. A great day out.
Today’s weather	Still very stormy but mostly dry and with some good long sunny intervals. Strong to gale force south westerly wind. Appx 12c

Today’s overview location (The grey mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Kilcoole to Kilquade

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

There hasn’t been a Walking Club outing for a few weeks, because of the Easter weekend. So it was nice to be able to get out again today and catch up with everyone.

Val was called in to do a shift at the museum so I travelled solo by train to our rendezvous point at Kilcoole station this morning. Kilcoole is on the line to Rosslare from Connolly and it’s the first stop after Greystones. Despite being on what you’d think would be a major strategic route, it’s quite a small station and the trains aren’t very frequent – especially on Sundays.

Anyway, we eventually made it – more than two hours after leaving Malahide – and met up with the rest of the walkers.

We only had a short distance to cover, so proceeded quite sedately. There’s a “Mass Path” leading from the station to Kilcoole town and on to the village of Kilquade, where there’s a church which was host to the eponymous masses. It’s a pleasant walk – a bit muddy in places, but nothing serious. It reminded me of some of the rights of way you get in the UK – a “proper” path through fields and woods, and well away from roads.

As we passed through Kilcoole village, we climbed up the Rock of Kilcoole – an outlying quartzite outcrop, presumably part of the same geological feature responsible for Bray Head and the Sugarloaves. It’s not very high but you get good views from the top.

We soon reached our destination at Kilquade, which is a small dispersed type of a village, completely dwarfed by the giant garden centre and National Garden Exhibition Centre which sits right in the middle of it. We found a decent spot to pause for lunch, supplemented by a cup of tea from the garden centre café.

After lunch, we had a look at the local church, which has an interesting ancient brass bell mounted in a frame in a flowerbed close by. Then a little further on, a couple of us ducked off the main path to explore the ruins of the old walled garden at Darraghville convent. Fascinating history, but not a lot left to see now.

Finally we made it back to the coast and Kilcoole station. We had almost an hour before the train back to Dublin, so waited on the beach finishing off the remains of our lunches whilst glancing anxiously over our shoulders at the gathering black clouds which threatened to give us a good soaking. In the end, we got lucky and stayed pretty dry, and the train duly arrived more or less on time at 16:20.

A straightforward journey back to Malahide with a quick-ish change at Connolly and I was in the flat again by 6pm. So it was quite a long day, but very enjoyable to see somewhere new. Now it’s time to relax a bit and catch up with Val’s news from the museum!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


*On the Mass Path alongside the ruins of the cottage where “The Ginger Man” author J. P. Donleavy lived in 1951*	Another illustrious resident lived just down the road (albeit a century earlier)

Approaching the top of the Rock of Kilcoole. It’s very easy to ascend, but worth it for the view	Returning on the Mass Path – taking the pious to church every Sunday

St Patrick’s Church Kilquade. Ireland’s new Taoiseach, Simon Harris, got married here in 2017	By the level crossing at Kilcoole. This is the east coast mainline from Dublin to Rosslare. It’s single track all the way south of Bray, and on Sundays there is one train each way every five hours or so.

Exploring the entrance to the Darraghville Convent walled garden. It’s very dilapidated now, and there isn’t very much to see inside. It was built in the early 1700s