There’s a sense of freedom that comes from starting an adventure on foot, from your own front door.
I crave mountains but find myself settled in the flatlands of north Tipperary. Each day the hills south of here – the Devil’s Bit, Slieve Felim, and Silvermines – sing to me from a distance, their height accentuated by the flatness all around, so that in my mind they could be Kilimanjaro or Aconcagua.
I want to explore this landscape slowly, to see it on foot. And so, eager to be a tourist in my own home, a plan forms in my mind: to walk from my home in Cloughjordan in Tipperary south into the Slieve Felim hills, and finish at one of my favourite pubs, Jim of the Mills in Upperchurch, a distance of around 35km.
I leave on a still, mildly lit afternoon, following the Beara-Breifne Way south towards Toomevara, the musical cadence of that village’s name rolling around in my head.
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The Beara-Breifne Way is Ireland’s longest walking trail, starting from the tip of the Beara Peninsula in west Cork and finishing in Blacklion, Co Cavan. It commemorates the march of the beleaguered chieftain Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beara, who in the winter of 1602-1603 attempted to lead his men north to Ulster, desperate to find allies.
This section through north Tipperary is known as the Ormond Way. Heading south from Cloughjordan, it mostly follows quiet roads lined with lush hedges. Every house is decorated in Tipp gold-and-blue, and the verges are full of the colours of high summer: the white of yarrow, purple thistle, and cream of meadowsweet. It is softly raining, blurring the hills I am walking towards.
But after the trail goes down a farm track, I find it blocked by an electric fence, and have to find an alternative route to regain the trail, eventually landing at the edge of the mountains, with the scent of meadowsweet on the breeze. I stop for refreshment at the Tipperary Inn in Toomevara, a classy old-time pub, all brass railings and wood-panelled walls decorated in hurling memorabilia. A father is proudly showing his son pictures of old hurling teams on the wall.
I catch the Local Link bus home, then back to Toomevara the next morning, when the hills above the village are webbed in a damp haze.
The name Slieve Felim seems to have arisen from a medieval confusion with the name Eibhlinne, according to the language researcher Paul Tempan. These hills are even named in ancient Irish texts like The Annals of Inisfallen and Lebor Gabála Érenn. Eibhlinne is Ébliu or Éblenn in old Irish, says Tempan. The linguist TF O’Rahilly suggested that Ébliu was the name of an Irish ancient Irish sun-goddess.
The sun-goddess is with me as I climb a quiet road towards these hills, the rain clearing and the day warming. Honeysuckle and wild strawberry grow in the verges. Higher up, I hear a sparrowhawk calling from forestry.
If you follow this stretch of the Beara-Breifne Way, you will see signs for both a walking route and a cycling route. Where the two diverge, I sometimes follow the cycling route, because the walking route was overgrown. In some places I use Google Maps to find my way. The roads are mostly quiet, though a few stretches have more traffic and are less comfortable.
But here’s another idea: if you don’t fancy this, come visit the area and tackle some of its fine looped walks, and visit pleasant villages such as Upperchurch, Templederry, Kilcommon, Silvermines and Kiloscully. In Hogan’s shop in Templederry, the friendly shopkeeper gives me a Camino-style stamp for this stage of the Beara-Breifne Way (two oak leaves, two acorns), asks me to sign his logbook and showers me with advice about the best route to take.
Then I climb steeply towards Upperchurch. The sun beats down and my water runs low, but the blackberries along the verges are sweet and cooling. By a quiet bridge over a wooded river, a car slows down and stops beside me. A man rolls down the window and promptly welcomes me to the hills of Upperchurch. He introduces himself as the parish priest. We muse on local and national hurling results before he wishes me well.
From above Upperchurch looks like a mountain outpost, its church spire set deeply amid hills. In the village, marquees are going up for the Hoolie in the Hills festival.
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I have arranged to meet Greta Ní Riain here, whose family own Jim of the Mills pub, and who will be my guide to the local landscape. “You can feel a different energy up here,” she says, and I know what she means: the feral hills and old hawthorn trees give a feeling of land that has not been altered much in centuries. Though the dark blocks of forestry break the spell a bit.
Something of these hills has obviously seeped into her bones, because as well as being a teacher, Ní Riain became a herbalist, and started her own forest school.
“Haws are for the heart,” she says, good for cardiovascular health, as we eye the ripening hawthorn berries. Meadowsweet is a natural form of aspirin, she says, and yarrow good for stopping bleeding.
We are walking the Eamonn a Chnoic loop, named for a Robin Hood-type figure said to have roamed these hills in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the summit she points out the remains of a ring barrow, a pre-Christian enclosure probably used as a burial site, or for important ceremonies, the view from here stretching south to the Comeraghs and west across Slieve Felim.
This is one of the last parts of Tipperary where Irish was spoken as a daily language, she says, and there is a rich history of music in these valleys too. On our way down we pass through quiet back fields, and she tells me the story of her family’s famous pub, which had once been a corn mill on the Abhainn Bheag river. When her father inherited the pub he didn’t want to be a full-time publican, so he opens it just one night a week, Thursdays, when its various lovely rooms fill with music and song.
And of course, it is Thursday. So after I refresh myself with a dip in a cool, shady pool in the Abhainn Bheag, it is down to the Mill, as locals call it, as the crowds arrive and the singing begins. I duck into one room to listen and receive a sharp admonishment for talking too loudly.
Later, the tunes start in the yard outside too, where bunting is up for a birthday party by the Abhainn Bheag. Ní Riain is on the accordion, and the bazouki and bodhrán are going beautifully. Ébliu is hiding behind the clouds but casting a pleasant light on everything as the tunes stretch out towards night.
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Trails of Tipperary
The region of mid-Tipperary roughly south of Nenagh and north of Cashel is home to the Slieve Felim, Devil’s Bit and Silvermines hills. It’s full of walking trails of all distances.
The long-distance Beara-Breifne Way traverses this region. The local section is known as the Ormond Way. Most people walk it south to north. It features lots of road walking (mostly quiet roads, but some with more traffic, so take care) and suffers from maintenance and signposting issues, so requires a good map and some determination.
An alternative idea would be to visit for a few days and tackle the region’s many looped walks, including the Eamonn a Chnoic loops (6.6km/7.6km) and Knockalough loop (8.4km) near Upperchurch, the Devil’s Bit Loop near Templemore (3.7km) and the Kilcommon Pilgrim Loop (6.1km). sportireland.ie/outdoors/find-your-trails
