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WALK 2

Sulby and the Millennium Way

Start/Finish	Sulby Claddagh (SC 386 940)
Distance	10km (6¼ miles)
Height gain	358m (1175ft)
Parking	Small car park by the river

This is an exhilarating walk, beginning beside the Sulby River and climbing high onto the gorse uplands to the south. Choose a clear day (the map, the signposting and the paths don’t always agree and in poor visibility this could be a problem), and enjoy the airy freedom of mountain heath patrolled by hen harriers, kestrels and short-eared owls.

Set off alongside the Sulby River, going with the flow and parallel with a road, and when this bends right, go with it, soon to reach a bridge spanning an in-flowing burn. Ignore the bridge, and keep forward on a gently rising lane (signposted ‘Snaefell Mountain Road’). Walk up the lane until the road surfacing ends and there branch left over a stile beside a gate, giving onto a rough track rising steadily to the edge of Ohio Plantation.

Keep forward on a rising track that climbs to the top edge of the plantation and there leave it at a gate, going forward between gorse. The track is gated and eventually climbs to a convention of gates, a place where the right of way shown on the map and the tracks underfoot do not coincide.

Striding out along the Millennium Way above Sulby

Go forward, maintaining the same direction along a broad track with an earth embankment on the right. Continue up the track until a signpost directs the route left to a larger-than-normal ladder/stile. Over this, turn left again, along a broad grassy track, and keep going to a gate in a fence corner. From there, go forward through heather on a rough track that closes in on a wall on the left as it approaches two metal gates at the top of a rough road descending left to Sulby.

From the gates (ignore the road), turn right and strike up the heather moorland on a rutted track for just under 1km (½ mile). Keep going until the gradient levels as the track starts to swing towards the masted summit of Snaefell, and then look for a short branching track on the left, cutting through low heather to intercept the Millennium Way (though there is nothing immediate to confirm that it is the Millennium Way). Turn left, soon passing a right of way sign. Later, a low sign does indeed confirm that you are on the Millennium Way.

Now gently descending, with a fine view northwards across Sulby to the conspicuous white church at Jurby and the Ayres Nature Reserve, go as far as another gate at the head of a walled track. Here, without going through the gate, turn left alongside a wall to another gate giving onto a sunken track.

This track now leads all the way back to Sulby. Part way down it becomes partially surfaced, and is flanked throughout by gorse, stitchwort, violet, celandine, wild garlic, bluebell and intermittent stands of holly.

The track eventually descends to meet the main Sulby to Ramsey road. Take care emerging onto the road. Turn left and shortly go left again at the Ginger Hall Hotel. Turn left into River Meadow Lane, following this back lane past the prehistoric site of Cronkshamerk (Cronk Sumark) hill fort (accessible by a steep climb from the roadside), after which you reach the road bridge encountered at the start of the walk. Cross it and turn right to follow the road back to the starting point.