Great Irish Roads - A series by Bob Montgomery Great roads 14: Mitchelstown to Kildorrery via Kilfinnane R517/R512.
For this series' first foray into Counties Cork and Limerick we chose a combination of roads that positively leapt off the map.
This was the R517, just a few kilometres north of Mitchelstown, through Kilfinnane, joining the R512 at Blackpool and turning south again along Seefin Mountain in the Ballyhoura Mountain range to Kildorrery on the Mitchelstown to Mallow road. Appropriately, given our location, our transport was a performance model from Ford of Cork, the Focus ST.
Perhaps to emphasise just how kind the weather has been to us over the past two seasons of finding the best roads in Ireland, on this occasion the weather gods refused to co-operate and we were left to traverse our chosen route in conditions of heavy rain. But even that couldn't take from the delightful landscape and fascinating roads which awaited us. From the point where we turned off the N73 just north of Mitchelstown, the R517 revealed itself to have a consistently good surface and for the first few kilometres proved relatively straight with sweeping bends.
Soon, a valley landscape stretches ahead and I am reminded once again that here, as so often in Ireland, is one of those magical landscapes which one only has to drive a short distance from the main most-travelled road to discover.
By the time we pass through the tiny village of Daragh, with its attractive tree-lined approach roads my feeling is of a road that has existed for a very long time.
As we continue to climb through a very pleasant landscape of wooded hills we come unexpectedly upon a cutting through which the road passes and over which a fine bridge crosses - a relic perhaps, of one of the many railway lines now long-departed from the landscape?
Sometimes, the work of the roadmaker is something more than 'just' a road, becoming an example of how art can be found in everyday things built for one purpose but somehow becoming much more than the sum of their parts.
This is just such a road, at one with the landscape in the way that the best Irish roads are, a road that down the years has melted into the very landscape it crosses, and become a part of it.
Coming into Kilfinnane now, with its cheerful brightly-painted houses and dominated by a tall church spire; there are impressive earthworks some 2,000 feet in circumference just beside the village. Leaving Kilfinnane a lush flat landscape stretches away to the north towards Lough Gur and the City of Limerick.
This is, of course, the Golden Vale, Machaire Méith na Mumhan - The Rich Plain of Munster. All too soon we come to a junction with the R512, the point on our journey where we swing south towards Kildorrery.
Soon, we're climbing again and through the mist and rain the bulk of Seefin Mountain (528m) and further on to its left Coolfree Mountain are visible. The village of Ardpatrick sits at the start of our transit past these mountains and their heavily wooded slopes on our south east while to our left spreads a valley across which is visible the red sandstone Castle Oliver, a mid-19th century mansion, with the ruins known as 'Oliver's Folly' also visible.
To gain a better view of the landscape take a short diversion at the sign for Castle Oliver View which is just a short distance from the R512. There are fine views also from the car park of Ballyhoura Mountain along this diversion.
Back once more on the R512 it's a gentle run downhill to our journey's end, the well-preserved 19th century village of Kildorrery whose main claim to fame was the nearby Bowen's Court, now demolished, the home of the novelist Elizabeth Bowen.
So, roads of unique charm and a landscape so rich in history that we hardly noticed the rain!