Sunday 8 November 2009

Curtlestown Woods walk: buggyable*with lift

Walk in Curtlestown Woods, Kilmalin, past Pet Cemetary near Enniskerry, Wicklow. With Brian and Trinh and their and our kids. ... and very very few other people. Lovely sunny day in Nov.

We're trying out some of the walks in the "Ten Walks in the district of Enniskerry" book by Albert Smith and Kevin Warner and others. (the revised and updated edition replacing the walks with disputed section with others and notes on the legal proceedings - added interest for Irish walking books!).

Walk 6 in book. Kilmolin loop walk. This was a lovely walk and lovely day for it too. The bus turning circle looks like a great place to park until you see a double-decker bus trying to turn in it and having to reverse blind out into the road, wheels going down into potholes and underneath of front of bus scraping on road. There is lots of parking a little further on as noted in the book.



Books could have a buggyable rating for walks :) A 4k est 50 mins walk took us 2 hrs I think. Kids were very good. All of them walked the whole way except Maeve who got a shoulder for a short bit and Mark who is 2 was main user of buggy and inside it most of the time. Buggy lifted in 2 places: over coilte gate 5ft (easiest with two lifting buggy high and walking through gate step-through - make sure kids if they're still in buggy are well strapped in!!!) and over coilte bar 3 feet.

The map in the book doesn't have contour lines on it. :) Steepish uphill for whole 1st half of walk.

Daire went ahead of us in the woods. And somehow got a bit lost. At a fork we called him but not sure if he heard. We went past and he somehow missed us and started back even though we could still see the turn-off fork? He's gone ahead and gone straight on and had to be chased on walks before. Good man but hello! Fionn shouted for him and went back with Brian to collect him.

We had little oranges and banana at the view of Killiney, the Lead mines, Bray. Saw the ferry going out of Dun Laoghaire.

After the walk we were hUnGrY. Eat ouyt? Go home? We stopped in Enniskerry. Fionn and Trinh went to buy tasty food in delicatessen there. Home and ham and cheese rolls, homemade Fionn scones and other yummy stuff. Kids play. Maeve takes 93 photos with my phone and it's battery dies. :)

The same view in OpenStreetMaps and GoogleMaps:
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=53.1936&lon=-6.2043&zoom=14&layers=B000FTF
  http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Enniskerry,+Co.&sll=53.19287,-6.208649&sspn=0.026534,0.090895&ie=UTF8&radius=1.88&rq=1&ev=zo&hq=Enniskerry,+Co.&hnear=&ll=53.191842,-6.194401&spn=0.025249,0.090895&z=14
Impressed with OpenStreetMap's details. GoogleMaps have satellite overlay which is good for details though.

More pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gaoithe/SchoolActivityPlaygroundBuildAndWalkUpCountryLanes#

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