A Callan councillor has put forward exciting plans for a new heritage trail there.
Cllr Joe Lyons revealed his hopes for the proposed ‘Rice Trail’ at this week’s meeting of Callan Thomastown Municipal District.
The Fine Gael man has been outlining his idea to KCLR News;
“[The trail] would start at the Cherryfield Famine Graveyard, then make its way in the narrow roadways there into Callan and you have the workhouse there at the top of the town, you’d come down then to the big chapel on the top of Green Street and then down you have St Mary’s Abbey and Graveyard there, then over to the Macra Hall, down then to the Friary Complex, over the Friary Bridge and then down by the banks of the King’s River you have the old Franciscan Abbey, out under the bridge and you have the Moat, which is a huge attraction at the moment with the new walkways around it. Then out under the bypass, there’s a proposed walkway across there and over by the walled garden and you come out by Westcourt out at the Edmund Rice heritage centre”.
It’s expected that Trail Kilkenny and the local tourism board will now be drafted in to help make the project a reality.
And Cllr Lyons says the local authority urgently want to bring these plans to fruition;
“We’re hoping this will be great for locals and tourists alike. It will probably be known as the Rice Trail. We’re going to look for funding now and Kilkenny County Council is anxious to get this up and running.”
Cllr Lyons hopes the project could eventually rival the likes of the Medieval Mile trail in Kilkenny city.
However, he expects it will also be unlike anything Kilkenny’s seen before;
“In its own way, it would be different, more rural obviously. The more we have in the town centre to get people in, all the better. They’ll learn from the history of the place as well, there’s an awful lot of folklore and monuments around Callan.”
