The Dungarvan-Waterford Greenway is the longest in Ireland, 46 kilometers of peaceful pedalling and pacing through the green south-east. Following the line of a now defunct railway, it moves through a surprising variety of landscapes: suburbs, tidal mudflats, pasture, bogs and vertiginous bridges. And every step of the way takes you further into the intriguing mists Irish history and myth.

Suburban Beginning

Starting in the Abbeyside part of Dungarvan, the Greenway starts out as an ordinary sidewalk but soon comes into its own as a cycleway and footpath leading between houses huddled together in the coal-smoke cold. Here the wildlife is strictly tame: tabbies, sparrows, blackbirds. The usual scrub and weeds on the verge: couch grass, deciduous shrubs, dandelions. This stretch was a popular walking spot for lockdown-weary mothers seeking some sanity, pushing strollers and urging their scooter-happy toddlers to hurry up. Dog walkers, joggers, couples and friend-hungry teens. It’s all..very ordinary. It recalls Eavan Boland’s poem “Ode to Suburbia”:

No magic here. Yet you encroach until
The shy countryside, fooled
By your plainness falls, then rises
From your bed changed, schooled
Forever by your skill,
Your compromises.

Bridge of Tides

About a mile in, the path enters a tidal zone. On one side is waxy seaside grass, beyond which lies the sea, hidden by dunes but detectable by the seaweed smell. On the other side is a swampy estuarine area, mirror-clear pool or mudflat depending on the tide. It’s patrolled by a heron, an egret, a few redshanks and a lonely curlew. The bridge then flies out over a bay. Here you can see sandbars that function as way stations for various types of bird.

My favourites are dunlins, very small long-legged shore birds that travel together, flowing as a whole body to imitate clouds or the water’s edge. Their white underwings flicker collectively. When they come to rest on the land, they all face the same way, against the wind.

The birds that stay closest to the bridge are hooded crows. I think they like the spot as a kind of accidental mussel farm—the molluscs grow on the bridge piers. The crows pluck them off and use the bridge as a kind of nutcracker. Quite often, I saw a crow hovering over me. Once I’d passed, I heard a ‘crack’. Turning my head, I’d see the same crow fluttering down to attend to its meal.

In Irish mythology, the crow was seen as a manifestation of the Morrígan, the Great Queen or the Phantom Queen, goddess of battle and strife, birth and death. A shape-shifter, in the story of Cú Chulainn she appears to her would-be lover variously as an eel, a wolf and an old woman. Most often she appears as a crow or raven. Sometimes, still, she appears as a trio of individual women, sisters. According to Ali Isaac The Crow in Irish Mythology (aliisaacstoryteller.com):

It was said that she would often fly above a battle, her cry bringing courage and encouragement to her warriors, whilst simultaneously striking fear into the hearts of the enemy. Sometimes she would join the battle in her human form.

Dairy Farms

At the end of the bridge, the path extends for a mile or so through farmland. The air is redolent of cows. Huddled together, they gaze over the fence, hoping you’re bringing some fodder now that the grass has been trampled to mud. On the naked branches of trees, robins sing lustily. The verge is overgrown with grass, Queen Anne’s Lace and dandelions.
Cattle have always been important to the Irish. A suggestive indication of this is that the Irish word for ‘road’ is ‘bothar‘, which means ‘cattle way’. One of the most important pagan goddesses was Bóand, a name that translates as ‘luminous cow’, for whom the river Boyne was named. Cows are also associated with St. Brigid, one of Ireland’s oldest saints whose feast day Imbolc marks the beginning of spring. In some parts of Ireland, St. Brigid is still invoked to bless women with children and cows with milk. Intriguingly, there is also a myth concerning a mermaid who prophesied the arrival of three sacred cows Concerning Cows – Legends, Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland (libraryireland.com) that would rise out of the western sea: Bo-Finn, Bo-Ruadh and Bo-Dhu, the White, Red and Black. The people waited with bated breath:

Exactly at noon the waves were stirred with a mighty commotion, and three cows rose up from the sea, a white, a red and a black—all beautiful to behold, with sleek skins, large soft eyes and curved horns, white as ivory. They stood on the shore for a long while, looking around them. Then each one went in a different direction, by three roads; the black went south, the red went north, and the milk-white heifer–the Bo-Finn—crossed the plain of Ireland to the very center, where stood the king’s palace. And every place she passed was named after her, and every well she drank at was called Lough-na-Bo, or Tober-Bo-Finn (Well of the White Cow).
From Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland by Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (aka Oscar Wilde’s mum)

Railway Cottage to the Seaside

Alongside the farm I’ve been climbing steadily for half a mile. At the top of the hill I cross a road and see a carpark on the right, pretty busy by Covid-era standards. People come here to get coffee from the ‘Railway Cottage’, an old railway station that was transformed into a cafe in 2020.

A little way after that you see three or four trees. Informative plaques announce that the trees were planted to attract bees and gives their various names in Irish Gaelic. In ancient Ireland, trees were thought to have special powers. The crabapple, or úll crannáin, for example, was often associated with fairies The Apple Tree in Celtic mythology (ireland-calling.com) . When a fairy maiden seduced Connla, she gave him an apple that magically reappeared after having been eaten. And once he ate this magical apple, he was under her spell and sailed in her crystal boat to an island where trees produced fruit all the year round (after spending a winter in Ireland, I can see the appeal). The only catch was that he could never again return to the land of men. The Celts attributed powers of rebirth to the apple and used to bury apples in graves as food for the dead. ‘Avalon’ of the Arthurian legends literally means ‘Apple Isle’.

After fuelling up with caffeine at Railway Cottage, some visitors take their young children 500m along the Greenway to enjoy the playground by ‘Crooked Bridge’. This old stone structure has stalactites hanging from its ceiling and looks like a bat-worthy napping spot. The path passes through a boggy area and then rises gradually for about a mile. After that, the trees lining the trail thin out and you have a spectacular view of the Copper Coast—so-called for the fact that there used to be a lot of copper mines in the region.

Just before Ballyvoyle Head, the trail turns inland. At this point the trail is lined with scraggly vegetation including gorse. It was flowering at the time, giving off its distinctive scent of coconut toffee.

Ballyvoyle Viaduct to Ballyvoyle Tunnel

After the inland turn, the trail climbs steadily in rural green-ness. Points of interest: a big wooden crucifix perched over a plaque-ready rock, and a little waterfall trickling down dark rock. Then comes the Ballyvoyle Viaduct, a high narrow bridge spanning the River Dalligan. The Valley below is lush with riverine life, particularly willow and alder trees.

Some hundred metres on, the path becomes an aisle in a rocky ravine. It becomes dark and cool thanks to the moisture trickling down the rock in all weather feeding the overhanging trees, ferns and moss. It was here that I saw the fairy doors. Hundreds of fairy doors. The first time I visited, it was night time and I saw them by the white light of my headlamp. Hundreds of fairy doors seen under these conditions were a bit terrifying. In daylight, it’s clearly just a bit of fun for local children. They decorate a little slab of wood with a smear of glitter and their name, then stick it up on the rock with all the others.

But at night time, you feel the beady glare of the aes sidhe, supernatural entities that inhabit the countryside. If treated well, they can be benevolent but if mistreated they will make you know it. People tried, and sometime still try, to protect themselves from sidhe wrath by putting iron in the house, by tying a red ribbon or amulet to something, or by leaving food out for them. It was considered a bad idea to disturb their habitat because they reportedly guard their natural abodes with ferocity. William Butler Yeats grew up hearing tales of their antics and eventually incorporated faeries in his own poetical mythology. “The Stolen Child” is not only a dramatization of the shidhe stealing a baby, as they were wont to do, but a escape from the hard world into the private world of imagination:

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

The tunnel, after the fairy doors, was also spooky. Four hundred meters of a dark tube, faintly lit with electric lights in niches in the tunnels bricked sides. The light mainly served to make the dark, wet walls glisten and to illuminate stalactites.

Durrow to Newgrange

Coming out of the tunnel, you keep running and pass an old pub (closed, of course) called Mahony’s Pub. Further up, on the right side is a shrine to the Virgin, surrounded by a little garden. At nighttime it’s lit by a neon light. Then you get to the old Durrow railway station—the platforms are still there on either side of the trail but the old lookout tower looks much the worse for wear. One hundred years ago this was the site of the Durrow Engagement, a key event in the Irish War of Independence. Kieran Foley wrote an article about the event in The Muster Express:

At the time, the British authorities were having great difficulty in getting jurors to attend the law courts. On March 3rd 1921, a train that was specially chartered to transport jurors to Waterford City
for court duty was held up near Durrow Train Station. It was anticipated that when news of the non-arrival of the jurors’ train reached the British authorities, military would be sent out from Dungarvan along the coast road where Volunteers would be ready to ambush them at Ballyvoyle.

During the subsequent day of fighting, events moved to Durrow and to the creamery located behind Durrow station where, according to reports, up to 300 British forces took cover while around 20 Irish Volunteers were in the vicinity of the station. A machine gun was brought by train from Waterford and was used in the engagement but was nullified by Volunteers who targeted the operator. The Volunteers suffered one injury, Andy Kirwan of Bonmahon. It’s thought the British suffered a number of casualties with possibly two fatalities but this was never confirmed. 

These days, it’s such a peaceful spot it’s hard to imagine there was ever any kind of conflict here. A little way up the hill, the Greenway meets a public road and it was there that a woman stopped her car to ask me if I’d seen three dogs. They’d gotten out again, she said. If I found them could I call or bring them down to Durrow House, down by the viaduct? OK, I said. She zoomed off.

You can see some beautiful photos of the area around the viaduct at inesemjphotography. It was very calm and even though I strained my ears to hear dogs, I didn’t manage to hear anything but robins singing. The scenery in the day was rural, but with a suggestion of wilderness.

At night, it was a different story; I was alone with the stars and a faint smell of jasmine. Looking up at the dark sky pricked with intense but tiny lights, I found myself wondering what names the Irish used out here on the western edge of Europe, where Arab, Greek and Roman cultures and astronomical names and ideas were late in arriving. Newgrange, the neolithic monument in County Meath, clearly shows that the people who lived here in 3,200 BCE were careful sky watchers. Did they watch the stars as well as the sun? I wonder if we’ll ever know that.