Ballinroad
Baile an Rodaigh

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 04 / 04

Baile an Rodaigh · Co. Waterford

A Dungarvan suburb the CSO calls a town. The village is the wider area.

Ballinroad is the eastern edge of Dungarvan with a different sign on the road. It sits between Abbeyside and the turn for Ring, three kilometres out from the square. The 2022 census drew a line around it and counted 1,389 people, which makes it a town on paper. On the ground it's an estate, a church, a crossroads, and the road carrying you somewhere else — usually back into Dungarvan or out the peninsula to An Rinn.

If you end up here, it's because you booked a self-catering house, you're playing the golf course, or you missed the turn for Clonea Strand. None of those are bad reasons. Just don't expect a village in the sense Lismore is a village. The pub is in Abbeyside. The chipper is in Abbeyside. The walk you came for is the Greenway, which runs along the edge of Ballinroad on its way out to the bay.

Population

1,389 (2022)

Coords

52.0850° N, 7.5917° W

01 / 04

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

Rod's town

Baile an Rodaigh

The Irish name is Baile an Rodaigh — Rod's homestead, a personal name from somewhere deep in the medieval record. It survives on Logainm and the parish letterhead. Almost nobody in the village uses it day to day. The road sign does both.

St Laurence's

The 1835 church at the crossroads

St Laurence's at Ballinroad Crossroads went up in 1835, which puts it a few years after Catholic Emancipation and well before the Famine. Four-bay, double-height, mostly its original form. In 1862 it was joined to Abbeyside and Garranbane to form the parish that still runs all three churches today. A small building with a long letterhead.

Cunnigar to Clonea to Knocknagranagh

The golf club that kept moving

Dungarvan Golf Club started in 1924 as nine holes on the Cunnigar — the sand spit poking into the bay. It moved to Clonea in 1929, played beside what's now the Clonea Strand Hotel for sixty-odd years, then shifted again in 1993 to its present home at Knocknagranagh, on the Ballinroad side of the road. Three locations, one club, one membership book that just kept being signed.

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When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

The Greenway through the back of Ballinroad is at its best. Quiet evenings, long light, the bay clear of summer traffic.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

Clonea Strand and the Ring road get busy. The estate roads stay quiet, but everything you'd come out for is across in Dungarvan and Dungarvan fills up.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep–Oct

Greenway empties, the bay light goes amber, Dungarvan settles. The shoulder is the best time to stay anywhere on this side of the harbour.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

Wind off the bay, half the tourist trade closed across the way. Fine for a bike along the Greenway if you have the layers — not a base.

◐ Mind yourself

03 / 04

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Booking accommodation in Ballinroad expecting a village centre

There is no centre to walk to. Stay in Dungarvan or Abbeyside instead — three minutes by car, and you can walk to a pub.

Getting there.

By car

Three kilometres east of Dungarvan on the R675 — the Ring road. Off the N25 at the Dungarvan bypass, signed for Clonea and An Rinn. Park where you're staying; nothing in Ballinroad needs a car park of its own.

By bus

TFI Local Link 360 (Dungarvan–Helvick Head) and 367 (Tramore–Dungarvan) both pass through. Bus Éireann services use Dungarvan town as the stop — three kilometres west.

By train

No train. The line closed in 1967 and is now the Greenway under your feet. Nearest station is Waterford (45 min by car).