Three Lismore walks: Lady Louisa's, the Riverside and the Towers

Lismore is a walking town in the plain sense: Main Street, West Street and the two Malls are the whole of it, and the river is five minutes from the Heritage Centre. There are three walks worth knowing, one short and on the doorstep, one longer and inclined to flood, and one a short drive out to a set of gate lodges in the woods. All three are free and none needs a guide, though the Heritage Centre will give you one if you want it.

Lady Louisa's Walk

This is the loop to do if you only have an hour. Start on Main Street at the top of Ferry Lane and walk down to Lismore Bridge. Stop on the bridge: the castle stands over the Blackwater just upstream, and this is the best free view of it in town.

The path leaves the road on the town side of the bridge and runs east along the south bank under beech and ash, with holly, ivy and spindle tree beneath. In April and May the bank is thick with wild garlic, and Discover Ireland's walks page adds wood sorrel and golden saxifrage. Where the path leaves the river it turns south to meet the lane behind the town, and you come back west along it to Church Lane and down onto East Main Street, a few minutes from where you started.

Discover Ireland gives it as an easy 2km loop of about thirty minutes on grass path and boardwalk, and measured along the mapped paths it comes in a little under that. The Heritage Centre's guided version, at 11am on Mondays for €8, is advertised at 3km, so the guides take a longer line. Wear boots after rain.

The Riverside Walk and Round Hill

The longer river walk, about 5km and fifty minutes on Discover Ireland's figures, follows the Blackwater past fishing stands and stiles on the salmon beats. Herons, swans and kingfishers are on the list of birds it promises. It passes Round Hill, a large earthwork marked by a stand of mature pines on top of a mound, which local tradition holds is where Carthage built the first lios, the earthen ring fort, of the monastery he founded in 636. The story Discover Ireland repeats is that an old woman told him he would be founder of a lios mór, a great fort, and that is the town's name.

The catch is in the same source: the walk is "not always open" because it floods. The Blackwater rises fast after heavy rain, and when it does, stay off the bank. Lady Louisa's Walk is the better choice in a wet week.

The Towers at Ballysaggartmore

The third walk is the one that surprises people. About 3.5km west of town on the R666 towards Ballyduff, a car park on the right opens onto a woodland loop of about 2km. Follow the old avenue, lined with tall poplars and rhododendron, and you reach a turreted Gothic bridge and a pair of castellated gate lodges, built on a scale meant to announce a great house. There is no house. Arthur Kiely-Ussher built the lodges for his wife; the money ran out before the mansion they were meant to announce was started, and the family lived in a more modest house. Locally the whole place is simply the Towers.

The path is a forestry track, easy but uneven and rooty in places, and very muddy in winter. Dogs are welcome on a lead. If you walk out from town rather than drive, it is a road walk each way. On the same road you pass The Mill, the third gallery space of Lismore Castle Arts, open Friday to Sunday afternoons when an exhibition is on.

With a guide

The Heritage Centre runs a weekday walking programme, all leaving from the old courthouse on Main Street and all needing a booking. The town tour, about 1km, goes at 2pm Monday to Friday for €8. A 5.5km loop to the outline of the Norman motte and bailey at an old fording place goes at 11am on Wednesdays and Fridays for €10. A 7km section of St Declan's Way, the pilgrim path, with a short steep climb to a view over the Blackwater valley, goes at 11am on Tuesdays for €15 and is graded slightly strenuous. Under-16s go free on all but the last.

What to bring

Boots, for any of the three in any month but high summer. And a plan for afterwards: Farmgate on Main Street does lunch on Fridays and Saturdays and books by email only, and the Gallery Café inside the castle walls is open daily through the garden season, which ran to 25 October in 2026.