By Cian O’Connell

Community matters deeply in Ballyboughal so the past year has brought plenty of time to reflect on a successful collaborative project involving the local GAA club.

A walking track now surrounds Ballyboughal’s main pitch and so many people have benefitted from this new resource.

Joanne Cahill, Ballyboughal’s Healthy Club Officer, is delighted by the response since it was opened in 2017.

“Our walking group has been going for about a year,” she explains. “The track is used all the time. Even though I'd be there on a Thursday morning which is the official walking group you have other groups using it all the time. So there is a real mixture of people.

“It surrounds the pitch and there is a little bit which goes through the car park. It mainly surrounds the pitch and it is made of tarmac. Along one side it has got some exercise equipment. The outdoor exercise equipment is a huge attraction.

“So it was completed around the end of the summer last year and the funding came from ourselves, Fingal County Council, and the athletics club.

“If anybody is thinking about installing a track the burden doesn't have to rest on the club. You can go out to seek funding from other areas which makes it a community resource.”

Working together with other groups and organisations has boosted Ballyboughal according to Cahill. “You have people using the resource which is great and it was a collaborative funding project from a number of sources.

“That is why everybody takes ownership of it and it it is a rural community. We are about 10 kilometres outside of Swords, but we are still fairly rural and it is quite an older population.

“You'd have the usual situation where people wouldn't feel safe walking on the roads so the decision was made to install this. It is somewhere you can go for a safe walk because there is really nowhere around Ballyboughal because people don't like walking on the roads.”

That is why the track carries such value and importance to the residents of Ballyboughal. “Massive, absolutely massive,” Cahill acknowledges.

“It has probably been one of the biggest community resources to come into the village in years. It is somewhere people meet, to hang out, people use it for recreation, and for the exercise equipment.

“When people are dropping the kids to training, rather than just sitting in the cars stopping and dropping now the parents can get out for that hour.

“It was something that was discussed at the Healthy Club Conference about having a walking resource for parents to do that. Instead of just sitting in the cars they can stay at the pitch to walk around so it covers a multitude.”

Different schemes have been introduced with the Get Ireland Walking 21 day challenge a notable success in Ballyboughal. “We ran the Get Ireland Walking 21 day challenge - it is very simple, it is just walking for 21 days,” Cahill states.

“We put a three kilometre challenge, you have a little score card where you ticked off the days. It is very simple, not rocket science, but it encouraged people to come up to walk the track, to walk around. It was really good, it was hard to do 21 days when you could be sitting at home on a Sunday.

“We had a couple of ladies, who completed it and we gave them a little prize. I tried to go up everyday, I think I missed one day, but it was nice to go up to give out water, put on music, give out water, just to create a bit of a buzz.

“When we did Ireland Lights Up it gave us great confidence to host other walking events. We knew how to promote it and the people we knew who would be interested in it.”

So Thursday’s Operation Transformation event, which will be attended by GAA President John Horan, is next on the list for Ballyboughal.

“It is a joined initiative launched last year between the GAA, Get Ireland Walking, Healthy Ireland, and Operation Transformation,” Cahill adds.

“They were encouraging clubs with a specific floodlit track, if you had the facility, to turn on the lights between 7 and 9 o'clock every Monday night. Just invite people up to give them a safe space to walk, to have a bit of craic, to have a chat, to get active, meet the neighbours.

“We had no idea what numbers we would get, but we had 150, maybe even more. They were coming from everywhere with cars backed up. There were groups of people, families, kids, there was every walk of life.”