What is Pollardstown Fen, and can you walk there?
Yes: a boardwalk of about 1.2 kilometres loops over the fen, free, with parking at the trailhead a few minutes from Newbridge. The fen is Ireland's largest remaining spring-fed calcareous fen, about 220 hectares of rare wetland kept wet for some 10,000 years by springs rising from the Curragh's underground water. It is a National Nature Reserve and one of the country's most protected habitats, home to rare orchids such as the fly orchid and marsh helleborine, and to plants found almost nowhere else in Ireland. Go in early summer for the orchids, keep to the boardwalk, and bring binoculars: it is a place for looking closely rather than striding out.
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