Broom Bridge also called Broome Bridge, and sometimes Brougham Bridge, is a bridge along Broombridge Road which crosses the Royal Canal in Cabra, Dublin, Ireland. Broome Bridge is named after William Broome, one of the directors of the Royal Canal company who lived nearby.
It is famous for being the location where Sir William Rowan Hamilton first wrote down the fundamental formula for quaternions on 16 October 1843, which is to this day commemorated by a stone plaque on the northwest corner of the underside of the bridge. After being spoiled by the action of vandals and some visitors, the plaque was moved to a different place, higher, under the railing of the bridge.
Given the historical importance of the bridge with respect to mathematics, mathematicians from all over the world have been known to take part in the annual commemorative walk from Dunsink Observatory to the site. Attendees have included Nobel Prize winners Murray Gell-Mann, Steven Weinberg and Frank Wilczek, and mathematicians Sir Andrew Wiles, Sir Roger Penrose and Ingrid Daubechies. The 16 October is sometimes referred to as Broomsday (in reference to Broome Bridge) and as a nod to the literary commemorations on 16 June (Bloomsday in honour of James Joyce).
I am getting lazy. The last time I walked from Broombridge to Ashtown and before that I actually walked as far as Maynooth. Today I only walked to Pelletstown and then got a train back to the Broombridge tram stop.
Work began on the construction of the 146 km long Royal Canal, to connect Ireland’s capital city, Dublin, with the upper River Shannon in 1790, and the canal was completed in 1817. It operated in competition with the Grand Canal which ran an almost parallel route never more than 30 km to the south, and with the Grand, was made redundant by the advent of the railways in the mid-19th century.
The Royal Canal was officially closed to all navigation in 1961, but like the Grand Canal, much of the Royal has been restored in recent decades.
The Royal Canal Way is a 144-kilometre (89-mile) long-distance trail that follows the towpath of the canal from Ashtown, Dublin to Cloondara, County Longford. It is typically completed in three days. It is designated as a National Waymarked Trail by the National Trails Office of the Irish Sports Council and is managed by Waterways Ireland.
In 2015, Dublin City Council began extending the walking and cycling route along the Royal Canal from Ashtown to Sheriff Street Upper. The Royal Canal Way connects with the Westmeath Way west of Mullingar, and will eventually form the eastern end of the Dublin-Galway Greenway, the final part of EuroVelo Route 2, a cycling path from Moscow across Europe to Galway.
The Royal Canal Greenway is the greenway encompassing the Royal Canal Way between Maynooth and Cloondara, with a branch to Longford. It was launched in March 2021.
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