Distance: 16km
Time: 4 Hours
Level: Easy (may be muddy in patches)

Lough Inagh Walk - download the Connemara Loop Map & Directions in PDF format.

Start out from the Lough Inagh Lodge, walk left towards Recess and when you reach the little car park at the end of the wood, turn left up the hill, signed ‘Mamean’. Almost immediately the good views begin, at first back towards Lough Inagh and then forward to the Maumturks. As you approach towering Cnoc na hUilleann, you reach (less than 1.5 km from the start) an obvious Western Way sign, and you leave the road to follow this sharp left, heading generally Northwest on the grassy way.

The way is mostly obvious, and there are a few gates and a few WW wooden posts to reassure you. You simply go along the valley with Binn Briochain and its quartzite ridges high above your right shoulder. Keep and eye out for a ruined homestead and a walled compound on your right. There are by now lovely views back down the valley, and across left to the Gleninagh, (Gleann Eidhneach, the Ivy Glen) flanked by Ben Baun and Ben Dubh. One particularly rocky outcrop just to the left of the Way, where a rusty-roofed house is visible below on your left, is a good spot to stop and survey all around. Beware of some final mucky patches just before the Way reaches a stony little road, which brings you down to a bridge across a babbling river.

Here the Western Way goes right, into a wood, but you stay on the little road as it goes down past a homestead to another secluded bridge. The next part of your route is very scenic, crossing westward along the to of the valley. Then the narrow road drops gently to bring you to the main valley road, where there are good views over towards Kylemore Lough. Your way home is to turn down left along the said valley road, where the Lough Inagh awaits, now about an hour’s walk away.