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| Lane from Barretstown to Bishopshill Commons. © Eugene Brennan |
I'm always on the lookout for new trails and farm lanes for cycling on. Some are marked with a cul-de-sac sign, and just end up at farmhouses. However, others actually link two roads. Usually, there’s no sign at the junction where they meet a main road, or even a road number, so it can be a mystery where they go. The best way to work out whether there's a through route is to check old maps and Google satellite imagery. (The road layer of Google Maps sometimes only shows sections of a lane). I've found around six of them in the Kildare/Wicklow area. This is one of my favourite trails that runs between the Ballymore Eustace–Barretstown Castle road and the Ballymore–Bishopshill road. (The back road to Blessington which runs at the rear of the Russborough House estate.) It's only really passable in dry weather, as like many of these lanes, it gets flooded at several points and it's necessary to climb up into the ditch through briars to avoid the floods. Also the ground on such lanes can be hard going as the surfaces are usually untarmacked, potholed and sometimes the surface is churned up by horses' hooves. The screenshot map at the end of this post shows a Google My Map I created. You can zoom into the map when you visit it at
this link, or by following the link in the map's caption.
The ground that this trail passes over is hilly and rocky. Looking at the Geological Survey Ireland bedrock map, it appears that the rock in this area is slate and greywacke. The formations here are called the "Glending Formation" and the "Slate Formation". Greywacke is currently quarried north of Blessington near Rathmore and slate was also extracted at least as far back as the early-19th century, resulting in the townland being named "Slate Quarries".
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