The Barrow Blueway - Athy to Maganey - The Barrow Line
The second part of The Barrow Blueway Trail, this time from Athy to Maganey. It’s mostly on a well maintained grass track which is ideal for walking but also suitable for cycling.
There’s plenty of parking at the Court House.
Also nearby is the Shackleton Museum which is well worth a visit.
The trailhead starts along the river towpath and goes all the way to St. Mullins, a distance of over 60km.
The towpath goes under a rail bridge, where the river banks are peaceful and wooded. This bridge once carried a railway line that served the old coalfields in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, but today it is derelict.
Soon the Barrow Way leaves the river and joins a side canal. These canals were built to bring boats around shallow and hazardous sections of the river, with weirs providing sufficient depth of water to keep these channels deep.
Soon you come to Ardleigh Lock. There was once a large flour mill across the canal here, on Lord's Island. Beyond the lock, the towpath rejoins the wooded river, which forms the border between Kildare on the side and Laois on the far bank.
As you continue on your walk, look out for the ruins of Kilmorony House on the far bank and the site of Grangemellon Castle on this side.
You will come to a long side canal, the Levistown Cut, which is lush and green, with two bridges crossing it to give access to the island of pasture between the canal and river.
Beyond Tankardstown Bridge, you come to a huge old mill and lock at Levitstown, which was destroyed by a fire in the 1940s. The mill once produced malt which was brought by barge to the Guinness brewery at St James's Gate in Dublin.
The towpath rejoins the river through pasture, and up ahead the river splits around a narrow island. Then you come to the sprawling expanse of Maganey Bridge. Here in 1642, 8,000 troops from the Confederacy of Irish Catholics, and alliance of native chieftains and old English settlers, were defeated by the Earl of Ordmond's forces. There is a shop just east of the bridge here.
The Barrow Way: Athy to Carlow