Cluain na nGall · Co. Carlow
Where the Wicklow Way ends and a goddess temple keeps its lights on.
Clonegal is a one-street village on the Derry river, on the line where Carlow gives up and becomes Wexford. Two hundred people, give or take. A church, a bridge, a pub, a closed shop, a castle. You could walk the whole thing while a kettle boils. Most travellers who arrive here have done so on foot, from Dublin, over six days, and are not in a hurry to walk anywhere else.
The reason to come is Huntington Castle. Laurence Esmonde built it in 1625 on the foundations of a Franciscan friary, and his descendants - now Esmonde-Robertsons - are still in residence. They open the house for tours, and the gardens, and the yew walk that some authorities call the oldest formal planting in Ireland. In the basement they keep a working temple to the goddess Isis. Olivia Robertson and her brother Lawrence founded the Fellowship of Isis here in 1976; it has grown into a worldwide goddess religion with members across ninety countries. None of that is a sideline. The family takes it entirely seriously and so should you.
The other thing Clonegal is is the southern end of the Wicklow Way. Walkers come down off the hills at Moylisha, cross into Carlow, and arrive on Main Street with the look of people who have not heard their own thoughts in a week. The pub knows. The B&Bs know. There is a finishing-post sign at the bridge and a stamp at the post office and a feeling, on a wet Thursday afternoon in October, that you have walked off the edge of the country.
