This 2-mile walk at home indoor workout explores Tintern Abbey Minor medieval abbey with walled gardens, as part of the Trek Ireland in South Weford Coast guided virtual tour series.

In 1200AD, William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke in Wales and a famous Anglo-Norman Knight, was traveling across the Irish Sea when his boat was stuck by a thunder storm. In fear of losing his life, he vowed that should he reach the shore alive he would found an abbey. Upon safe landing, he immediately granted land to the Cistercian Order to found a daughter house of Tintern Major, from Monmouthshire in Wales, famously known by association with the poet, William Wordsworth.

Tintern Abbey Minor went on to become one of the most powerful Cistercian monasteries in all of Ireland until the dissolution of the Abbeys by the English King Henry VIII in 1536AD.

After dissolution, the Abbey passed into the Colclough family, who lived there from 1576AD until 1959 when it was handed over to the Office of Public Work for conservation work. You can now enjoy the mixed woodland by the Tintern River, where local guide Jim Hurley describes the area's industrial heritage, with its stone bridges and mills, and the fabulous walled gardens that house abundant varieties of native species as you explore this wonderful nature walking trail.

Tintern Abbey Minor guided virtual tour audio transcript of local guide and naturalist Jim Hurley
[00:09:59] Tintern Abbey Minor
We're now at Tintern Abbey and the Abbey dates from around the year 1200. At that time William Marshall, one of the Anglo-Normans, he was the man who built the lighthouse at Hook Head and who built the town of New Ross. The story goes that he was travelling from Pembrokeshire over to Wexford and ran into a storm, was in fear of being shipwrecked, and turned to prayer when he thought the end was nigh and vowed that if he made a safe landfall that he would give land to the church and would build an abbey.

He landed here safely at Bannow Bay and, true to his word, he granted some of his land; he had a very extensive land holding he granted land to the Cistercians and money to build this abbey. The abbey is a daughter house of Tintern Major in the Wye Valley in Wales and it was run by the Cistercians as an abbey up to about 1540. The gate to the Abbey here was normally closed and local people had their own church in the lane here, a Capella-ante-portas, the church outside the gate.

[00:11:44] Colclough Walled Garden
There are three trails, the Tintern walking trails, there's the red trail, they are all signposted, the Tintern domain trail, running through the woodlands, the green trail that we've come down there, running around Bannow Bay and across the bridge the blue trail that runs up to the Colclough Walled Gardens.

The Abbey was a religious settlement of the Cistercians up to the time of the Dissolution of the Abbeys by King Henry VIII and when the Abbey here was dissolved it was granted to Anthony Colclough, a soldier in Henry's army and the Colclough family came here in 1541 and they turned the Abbey into a dwelling house and they lived here until 1959 and at that time the Abbey was gifted to the State and it is now run by the Office of Public Works in association with Hook Tourism, Wexford County Council and Coillte who owns the woodlands here.

So, you've a choice of three interesting trails. We're now at the end of the Blue trail. The Blue trail, you'll remember, was the gardeners' trail, one of the three Tintern trails and we're in the former Colclough walled garden. The walled garden was built in the early 19th century and its purpose was obviously to provide vegetables, fruit and flowers for the big house. The garden is made up of a number of parts: the ornamental part in front of us here, and it's surrounded by woodland.

Originally the Colclough's would have planted the woodland and the main tree species they used was Beech and you see some of the tallest trees there are beech, the ones with the yellowish-green vegetation, some of them well over 200 years old. While the original wood would have been been beech, beech is not a native Irish species and various other species have invaded over time, particularly Ash that you see on your left there, the very dark tree in the corner is a Yew, that's in the garden, and also very common in the woodland there is Sycamore. Sycamore would be looked upon as a weed really in woodland, again it isn't a native Irish tree. But the woodlands support a great wealth of bird life and you hear the birdsong and you see the understory of the Ramsons, the wild garlic, with its white flowers, and the bluebells of course.

So, enjoy your visit to the Colclough garden and we find our way back along the Blue trail.

[00:35:13] The Red Trail
We're now on the Red trail, the Tintern Abbey main trail and we are passing by the corn mill. In the heyday of the Colclough family here the corn that was grown on the farms was ground and the mill was powered by the Tintern Abbey stream. The stream was dammed further up and a mill race brought the water to the mill wheel which is on the far side of the mill.

The river flows down to Bannow Bay and Bannow Bay is a large protection area for wild birds and a great range of habitats. The main interest here in the wood is the woodland species like the beech in front of us; some of these old beeches are over 200 years old. It is a great area for bats, we have about 10 species of bat in Ireland and around seven of them have been recorded here, like Daubenton's bat, the water bat, that hunts along the river here and in one of the sheds at the Abbey a colony of Whiskered Bats was found there, a significant colony making up about 10% of the national population.

So, we continue along the Red trail from here, walking among the wild garlic, the Ramsons.

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