Go Walk: Kilkenny to Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny

On cold stormy nights, I am cuddled up with a hot water bottle and a book describing the achievements of men and women of steel. They, in spite of extraordinary difficulties and impossible climatic conditions, have reached the summit of Mount Everest or plodded across the Gobi Desert with empty water bottles. The most agreeable fact is that it is NOT me undertaking these intrepid feats.

My idea of enjoyment is hiking at a moderate pace on terrain that does not challenge my lungs or muscles and fortunately, near where I live, a most delightful walk has just been opened. It goes from Kilkenny to Bennettsbridge along a bank of the River Nore, and the most physically testing excise is getting in and out of the tiger traps with which the authorities have bridged the streams and ditches along the way.

Ideally, one should have a car at each end, and there is a very convenient car park opposite the church in Bennettsbridge. To get to the walk from there, descend the steps by Tynan’s butchers’ shop and across the field to the river.

In Kilkenny city, the trail starts at the top of Maudlin Street on the Carlow Road, from where there is a splendid view of Kilkenny Castle. Here, there are steps for the Lacken Walk leading down past an old mill to the river’s edge. With trees dipping down into the water and conkers strewing the path one could be miles from civilisation even when one goes under the huge bridge that carries the city bypass – only the cars can be heard, while the swifts catch insects as they dive and swerve over the water.

The trail, at one point, joins the road for a kilometre and a half before turning right over a stile and crossing a field back to the river. At Maddoxtown there are the ruins of a mill used by William Colles for his marble works which literally changed the face of the city of Kilkenny, supplying stone to almost every building of note.

The marble is the local limestone which when polished becomes a handsome black, flecked with white fossil shells. Colles invented a way of boring through marble using waterpower, so that he could make water pipes and domestic artefacts such as mantelpieces and vases.

Further on, under a great cliff of limestone, are two more mills that were owned by Colles, who was a great entrepreneur and among other things undertook to build a canal. One can see where it was dug across a field and into Prim’s Wood; here there are the remnants of a lock. The plans for the canal show there was to be a charming, cut-stone circular lock-keeper’s house with a domed roof. Alas, the canal was never finished as the money ran out.

In the early spring, this beech wood is carpeted with golden celandines and later drifts of bluebells, while on other parts of the trail are dog roses, meadowsweet and, in the autumn, blackberries and pink-flowered balsam whose seedpods explode if touched.

There are herons, particularly one who stands hunched on a weir gloomily contemplating the state of the nation, and I have seen those chic, recent immigrants, white egrets. In the winter, there are the sinister cormorants hanging out their wings to dry, and an occasional flash of blue lifts the heart as a kingfisher whizzes past. Twice I have seen an otter and sometimes there is a fox out on early morning business.

The walk continues through ever-changing scenery; meadows, glades, boggy fields of yellow flags and goes beneath the motorway bridge, which is architecturally brutalistic compared to the elegant one at Bennettsbridge where the trail ends. Across the river, one can recharge the batteries at Nicholas Mosse’s Pottery where there is a cafe with home-made quiches and scones.