Aderon on Seefingan

On Sunday the little lady and I tried out the Seefin-Seefingan-Kippure circuit from Lynam's Easy Walks book. A beautiful day, but the description lacked 2 important bits (clarified below):

Park @ Kippure Adventure Ctr in or outside the gates (opening times? Sun 9-4 it was open). Cross the road & walk N along the stream until you get you can't go further & get up onto the road (there's a tree across the path) & head into the woods going N/NE. This is where the description is poor. It says to go in & out of the woods by the river on your left & only shows one river in the book. BUT this "brook" actually splits, w/ a tributary N (no name) & one NE-then N (the latter called Athdown Brook the Healy & OS maps). He means to take the latter. We went N through the woods thinking the brook only stayed on the left which is a muddy slog up old forestry tractor tracks. It was beautiful in the woods, though. You won't get lost if you keep going north so not a big deal. Once on the Athdown Brk keep N as per the book's directions, leaving the tree line & follow a fence to where the fence turns due east.

Where the fence went E, we headed NW to another fence that you can easily see & followed that W along a vague path towards the very visible Seefin (if you're not on the fence, the walk has a lot of hidden holes, best avoided). Being on Seefin before and with the hiking partner tired, we contoured around to the saddle between Seefin & Seefingan and headed up the many clear paths to S'fgn itself. From there (after a jetboil of tea and some pasta hidden from the wind by the cairn :D) we headed E-SE towards Kippure and the bluff before it. The bluff before Kip is likewise not in the book (it just shows a clear ridge from S'fgn to Kip) so be prepared for that. It's VERY boggy on the S'fgn/Kip saddle so be prepared. Some parts will suck your leg up to your knee, but a lot of zig-zags and gaiters will help. If you're tired, like my poor loved one (and perhaps me too, but ya never admit that) you can contour around the base of the bluff before Kip (pt 679 on the OS map) until the southside of said bluff & walk down to a fence. It's VERY tussocky there, so watch the ankles!!. Go W keeping the new plantation on your right until you reach a stream going N-S called Sraghoe Brook. It defines the very eastern edge of the plantation (you'll see a branch of it coming up before you reaching the easter edge, but don't take it). Head down that brook to the south (open land to your left & plantation to the right), swapping sides on the fence (barbed wire, but not maintained so easy to cross without further damaging it) when necessary and when you want to get a good walk along the very nice, if sedate little brook. At the bottom, when you reach the stone bridge, go west for a 2km walk to your car along the busy road. Try to ignore the trash, toilets, etc. (and worse) along the roadsides & dream about a good hot bath! Linkback: mountainviews.ie/summit/92/comment/3706/

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csd on Seefingan

Seefingan in summer. Picture shows the summit cairn and trig pillar, with Sorrell Hill in the background. The route up from Athdown brook was made almost unbearable by the flies - the price we pay for nice summer weather I suppose! Linkback: mountainviews.ie/summit/92/comment/578/

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Homerclesse on Seefingan

I encorporated Seefingan as a Circular route of Seefin, Seefingan, Kippure and the Coronation Plantation.
There a couple of approaches. My favourite is to park at the gates of the Kippure Estate and follow the track across the road. This eventually leads into heavy forest with a lot of deeply rutted tracks and felled trees. The best option is to head to the river bank (Athdown Brook) and climb up along the left side bank of it. A nice view behind you to the Coronation Plantation and the Mullaghcleevaun Range. Once you clear the line of trees on the left then it's simply a matter of heading a little north of west to the summit Seefin. Alternatively, head straight up the side of the summit till you reach Seefingan marked by a very interesting Cairn. Great views of the Blessington Lakes, the other hills of the West Wicklow range, south to Mullaghcleevaun and east to Kippure and Sugar Loaf. If you want it's possible to head to Kippure easily visible to the east with it's huge aerial and then head roughly 220 degrees back down following the Sraghoe Brook, to the Sally Gap and back to the car.

An alternative route is to park on the west side of Seefin at the gates and go straight up the Forest track. Although it will be a up and down walk to your car this way. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/summit/92/comment/4546/

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simon3 on Seefingan

This icy view appeared en-route from Seefingan to Seefin one cold December day. The hill to the right of the first post is Sorrell Hill. Starting on the skyline to the right of Sorrell there is Slievecorragh (418m - beside Hollywood), below that is Lugnagun (446m) a spur of Sorrell. The rising ground to the right of the picture is Seefin. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/summit/92/comment/249/

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paulocon on Seefingan

A pretty handy walk across from Seefin with only a small amount of boggy land to be encountered on the lowest point between the two hills. The cairn is a similar size to that on Seefin and while it doesn't contain a passage, an indentation to the East hints that perhaps it did at some stage. The cairn is actually positioned away from the summit proper and it would appear this was done to make it visible from around the valley. The summit proper is a short trot across some very boggy land to the east and is marked by a triangular Military Range sign. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/summit/92/comment/4295/

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