Distance: 3.13km
Start/End: Gate Entrance to Crestwood Park (Radharc na Loch).
Surface: Tarmac in parts, earth, grass and gravel in other parts.
Parking: There is a car park at the entrance to Crestwood Park (Radharc na Loch) but the gate is nearly always locked. There are no bike parking facilities.
Please note that a considerable section of this route is not suitable for wheel chair users or for cycling. In fact bicycles could damage the pathways.
The route offers some of the most picturesque landscape views, Burren-type rock outcrops and traditional rural boreen trails available within walking distance of the city.
Beginning at the park entrance in Crestwood Park, take the grassy path to the right through a hill of karst limestone outcrops covered with hazel, hawthorn and blackthorn.
After coming down from the hill, walk pass the gaelic sports fields on the left and then take the path to the left and continue until one arrives to the top of Ballinfoile Hill where the mast (private property) is situated. Located at the This section route offers spectacular views unmatched anywhere else in the city of the Burren, Lough Corrib and Connemara. Turn around and walk until near the end of the woods and before the pitches. A small opening on the right is the start of probably the best most authentic boreen trail in Galway. The ground is rough and one has to be very careful not to slip in sections which can become very muddy when it rains. The boreen is bordered by traditional hedgerows and dry stone walls that form boundaries to small rural fields comprising rough uneven ground reminiscent of a bygone era. Near the end of the boreen there is a quite road crossing once thronged until relatively recently with noisy trucks loaded down with stone taken from the nearby quarry. At the small village of Coolough that has all the hallmarks of a pre-Famine settlement known as a clachan (Irish ‘cloch’=’stone’) walk as far as the thatched cottage (private property) before returning along the route back to Crestwood.
Click here
