Morning walks

This morning I set out, as I often do on fine mornings, for a walk in the woods. I start out down the drive toward the house, but, just as I catch sight of the house around a curve in the driveway, I veer off to the right and lift the rope latch from a field gate and head toward the woods. When the Molonys developed—rescued would be a better word—Balldindoolin they established, along with the garden, a nature trail through the woodlands adjacent to the fields. Visitors to the Ballindoolin gardens can walk the trail, about a mile and a half altogether if they follow along its entirety. The trail begins at the edge of the garden and goes briefly through cultivated lawn before crossing a field. If cows are present many people stop at the field gate, a sound idea as there is likely to be a bull among the cattle. Just to the left of the field gate is the ruin of a dovecote, built in 1781 by the original owner of Ballindoolin, Christopher Bor.

 Pigeons would be raised here for the family table, although Esther points out that, given the unusual form of the dovecote, which was built in a shamrock shape, it might have been meant strictly as a folly. Back to the right, the trail passes an ancient mound, possibly from the Iron Age, planted over by Bor in 1760 but otherwise undisturbed. Down the hill there is a lime kiln tucked into the hillside. These kilns were common on larger estates as a way of creating lime for farming; the lime would also be used to make putty for mortar used to construct the original house, now gone.

After these heritage landmarks, the trail dips into the woods. When I begin at the field gate I bypass the hill with the mound and the dovecote and instead go along a path between two fields and then into the woods. There is a short loop trail, flat and damp and quiet in the morning except for bird song and the distinctive haunting call of the woodpigeon. At one point along the trail you can see the ruins of Carrick Castle, one of the small and relatively undistinguished such tower houses that dot the edges of what would have been medieval territories and are now county borders. The large castle in this area would have been Carbury Castle, several hills away from Carrick and much more menacing even in its ruined state.

I don’t see many animals along the trail but they are there in abundance and there are tracks in the thick mud (the area was once underwater but was drained for tree planting). I could be passing badgers, pine martens, minks, stoats, voles and foxes as I walk. The wolf is no longer a danger, as was hunted to extinction in Ireland in the seventeenth century. There are no rabbits at Ballindoolin (although why is a mystery; Ballinderry is overrun with them), but there are the much larger hares, which look exactly like rabbits on steroids and can be a bit scary to an eye used to cute, bouncy cottontails. There are many badger holes up and down the hedgerows. From time to time Esther sees a pine marten moving along with its characteristic slink across the grass in front of her sitting room. A baby vole lives just outside the entrance to the tea room and often sneaks in, unruffled by Esther’s foot stomping which doesn’t work to keep it away. Trina says there are many foxes up near the dovecote; she has even seen them in the daytime. I have only ever seen foxes at night, walking in an unhurried and dignified manner across the pasture or crossing the road and getting caught in the headlights. What the woods doesn’t have, of course, is snakes, but there are also no poison plants, only nettles and briars. The nettles can sting badly if you accidentally brush up against one but the sting is nothing like the rash from poison oak, a nuisance more than a danger.

What I love most of all about my walk is the fact that I am absolutely alone unless the garden is open and someone has ventured out. It’s a private walk, a luxury of circumstance and one more evidence of the generosity of Esther and her family out of their own good fortune.