From Cork County Council....Last week marked the final contract signing by Cork County Council for improvement works to Ballincollig Regional Park.
Works on the project, carried out by Sole Sports & Leisure Ltd., will link the Regional Park to the 20 acre amenity lands at Fionn Laoi. The development will open a section of the park behind the former heritage centre to the public and create a 1km riverside walk and cycleway. It is anticipated that the work will start on the 20th of May and be completed in July.
This is one of the final projects to be completed by Cork County Council in the park since its acquisition in 1977. Usage of the park, which had formerly been a gunpowder mills, has seen a huge increase in recent years, with over 660,000 visitors for 2018.
In addition to the walkway project, Cork County Council will be planting hundreds of additional trees and developing wildflower meadows and picnic areas.
The park will be transferred to Cork City Council on the 1st of June 2019 for future maintenance.
Update 1st March 2019 : I put up this post originally in December of 2016. It was announced recently that Cork County Council have a closing date of March 26th 2019 for tenders and they hope to appoint a contractor within three weeks of that date.
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Dec 2016
While the Tramore Valley Park in Cork City is lying idle, things are really starting to happen at the Ballincollig Regional Park. It was announced recently that a new riverside walkway is to be developed.
The map below shows the location of the current 5k parkrun which is towards the Western side of the Regional Park. The Purple line shows the location of the new proposed walk next to the river.
This is a significant development in that it is a new access point for the park. It will also give runners more options for more routes and it should be a nice route alongside the river.
This is the route shown below. Note that there will be no access from Willowfield estate. The fence there will be retained and the access point will be from a new 20 acre park under development further to the east.
At present, there is a rough path alongside the river further west but it requires jumping across stones to get over a stream. The new pathway and bridges will allow easier access to this section as well. I presume that in time, it will be surfaced properly like the rest of the paths.
These are the plans from Cork County Council. The Brown points are new bridges.
This shows the path where there will be no bank available for a path and one will have to be constructed.
The following photos shows what it looks like at present. i.e. completely inaccessible.
This is what the new riverside pathway should look like.
I'm not sure what the timeline is for this project but it looks great.
Hopefully you can run on this in May 2017. It connects to another new path part of Fion Laoi and a 20 acre section of what will be new park land. This path is currently being built and there will be lots of loops and trails about that headland you can see in the satellite pic.
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