Overview:

Distance: 25km Looped Walk
Time: 6 - 10 Hours
Start / End Point: Information board beside St Peter's Church, Drogheda (here on google maps)
Parking:
When starting in Drogheda, I parked in this paid-for car park in the centre of town.
The middle crossing point of the trail is Townley Hall Woods, which has parking for over 20 cars, and is a good starting point if you’re looking to split the trail in half.
Trail difficulty: Easy
This route sticks to well defined paths through woodlands and small roads. Some of the woodland sections include steps, but there are no stiles along the whole route.
Read about trail grading in Ireland here.
Trail quality: 3.5/5
If you are looking for a very accessible trail, this is perfect. It is very well managed, with lots of history along the way. The route does contain road walking, but the majority of the road walking is along quiet roads, or roads with footpaths.
Views: 4/5
This trail shows off Drogheda and it’s surroundings incredibly well, bringing you past and through so many wonderful pieces of history.
Buggy/Wheelchair friendly: Partially
Some sections of this trail are quite accessible. The sections through Townley Hall Woods are where you’ll find stairs. Making a loop around the easterly section of the trail, taking in the River Boyne Greenway, would be a great accessible route.
Dogs allowed: Yes (on a lead)

Useful links:

The Boyne Valley Camino is a 25km looped pilgrim path, taking walkers on a journey through history. One of Ireland’s newest waymarked walking trails, I’ve been excited to get to this corner of the east coast for a while now.

Starting in Drogheda, the trail is shaped like a figure-eight. The route starts by heading west along the northern side of the River Boyne to Townley Hall Woods, the centre of the eight shape. This is where the trail crosses itself - continuing on you will now be on the south-west side of Townley Hall woods. Once at Mellifont Abbey, you return through the village of Tullyallen and the northern side of the woods. Making it back to the trail junction, the route takes you along the the south side of the River Boyne on the gorgeous greenway all the way into the centre of Drogheda.

In the official map below, you’ll see that the blue route is the way out from Drogheda to Mellifont Abbey, and the pink route is the walk back from the abbey to Drogheda town. This figure-eight format means that you can split the trail into two 13km loops, which is great for anyone building up to walking longer days.

When I messaged the people who’ve put this trail together to tell them I was going to walk the route, they were incredibly helpful and accommodating, sending out one of their own to greet me at the start line and make sure I had all my maps and a passport to collect stamps in along the way.

In talking to Ainé from the Boyne Valley Camino Society, I learnt that there is a long history of people in the north-east of Ireland assembling in Drogheda to take boats from here to A Coruña in Galicia in Spain, walking the remaining 75km to Santiago de Compostela to complete their pilgrimage.

Bernadette Cunningham’s 2018 book ‘Medieval Irish Pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela' documents voyages from Drogheda to Santiago in the Middle Ages, highlighting a far older link between Ireland and the Camino than I expected.

Walking through Drogheda, Ainé and I turned off the main street, followed a small lane for a moment, and then turned into Old Abbey Lane, meeting the beautiful ruins of a Medieval Augustinian friary (known simply as The Old Abbey). The old church walls are incorporated into the town around it, with the arches and church tower rising up like old watchmen from the past.

From here we descend to the waterfront, and Ainé stays with me until we reach the end of the riverside park. Crossing back up to the main road, the route follows footpaths and then turns off down a smaller country lane. Crossing under the M1, I follow a mixture of back roads, and the discarded remnants of old roads from before the motorway, bringing me to Townley Hall Woods. It’s as the trail uses these otherwise forgotten paths, passing old holy wells and tree-stumps marked with painted yellow arrows, that I’m truly reminded of my own time walking the Camino Del Norte through Spain in 2015.

This woods is the big junction of the trail. From here you can continue on as normal, or you can join the return route to Drogheda, doing a roughly 13km loop in total. The way-marking all along the trail is a combination of the yellow arrows and the yellow classic camino shell on the blue background.

On leaving the woods, there are about 4km along small roads to Mellifont Abbey. There is always a cut verge or space to stand in from any oncoming traffic. The fact that some of this section is on very straight roads makes the walking feel longer than it is.

On reaching Mellifont Abbey there’s a new stamp to collect, and a beautiful place to explore!

Mellifont Abbey was the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland. St Malachy of Armagh created it in 1142 with the help of a small number of monks sent by St Bernard from Clairvaux. The monks did not take well to Ireland and soon returned to France, but the abbey was completed anyway and duly consecrated with great pomp. It has several extraordinary architectural features, the foremost of which is the two-storey octagonal lavabo.
The monks at Mellifont hosted a critical synod in 1152. The abbey was central to the history of later centuries, too, even though it was in private hands by then. The Treaty of Mellifont, which ended the Nine Years War, was signed here in 1603, and William of Orange used the abbey as his headquarters during the momentous Battle of the Boyne.
— Heritage Ireland: Mellifont Abbey

I decided to take my time here, wandered around the remains of the abbey, claimed one of the many picnic benches to munch a late lunch, and generally relaxed. There was a peacefulness around the Abbey, with everyone talking in hushed tones, bar the occasional giggle of delight from a child that found a new pillar to hide behind.

Note: the grounds of Mellifont Abbey are open all year round, but the visitor centre (where the stamp is located) is only open May - September, 10:00 – 17:00.

However, I did still have a return trip to make, so moving on from the Abbey I was back onto small country lanes for a further 3km into the village of Tullyallen.

The route brings you on a circuitous loop through the village as far as The Morning Star pub - which also has a small coffee dock. While ordering my coffee I chatted with the girl behind the counter, talking about the trail and how busy it’s been. She remembers some of the stories that Ainé had shared with me that morning, not quite nailing the details but getting enough right. She also has a stamp for my passport, and I feel like a school child passing over my book for her to mark.

Carl and I have walked thousands of kilometres of National Waymarked Trails in Ireland, and countless of times we’ve met locals who have had no idea that the trail we were walking even existed. Packing away my passport and downing my coffee (the day was getting away from me), I was heartened by how everyone I had met knew of this new walking route, had absorbed some of its context, and were happily sharing their localities with whoever was passing though.

Leaving Tullyallen you’r into King William’s Glen and Belnumber woods. I think this stretch might be my favourite part of the trail. The sun dappling through the canopy above and the ground soft underfoot, the trail rises and falls with the old trees and riverbeds. I really enjoyed the couple of kilometres back to the Townley Hall Woods info board.

Crossing the N51, I very quickly came to the Obelisk metal bridge and crossed back over the River Boyne. The trail then hits the canal, and I feel like around every corner there is a new sight to see. Following the road across a humpback bridge, one of the entrances to Oldbridge House (1750) is on the right. You can detour off to see the estate from here - inside you’ll find the Battle of the Boyne Interpretive Centre, as well as some incredible gardens.

Walking along the outer walls of the house, the trail transitions from canal banks to riverside, and after about 1.6km passes under the Mary McAleese Bridge. At this point the trail is fully segregated from the road on the Boyne River Greenway, a boardwalk that overhangs the riverbanks.

As I walked along the greenway, soaking up the sunshine while the town of Drogheda solidified ahead of me, I began to reflect on the trail as a whole. I had had a beautiful day out - and the gorgeous sunshine had certainly helped.

Yes, there was road walking, which I knew would put some people off of this trail. But this wasn’t a trail about exploring the wilderness - this was a trail built around the cultural and historical heritage of the area. And it truly reminded me of my experience of walking the camino route I had walked all those years ago.

A particularly unique note for this trail is that I think there isn’t a single stile on the whole route - which is a novelty when it comes to Irish trails. All of the route followed wide paths, with easy to navigate gates or junctions. This isn’t a trail I can label as multi-access (learn what that means here) but it is certainly one of Ireland’s more accessible national trails.

Arriving back to the info board at St. Peter’s Church, I tap the post and go off in search of chips, the final note in a perfect day.