The modern roads and footpaths of the area follow, at least in part, a route that predates any county boundary, any parish, and very possibly any written record of the landscape through which it passes.

The road in question is the Slighe Cualann, one of the five great royal roads of early medieval Ireland. These slighe, a word meaning way or path, were the main arteries radiating outward from the Hill of Tara, the ceremonial and political centre of ancient Ireland. The Slighe Cualann ran southward from Tara through what is now County Dublin and into the province of Leinster, taking its name from the ancient territory of Cuala, which broadly covered the coastlands of south Dublin and north Wicklow. The historian Francis Elrington Ball, writing in 1900, noted specifically that this roadway passed through Booterstown, placing the modern suburb squarely on a route that would have carried warriors, traders, pilgrims, and cattle drovers for centuries before the area acquired its present name or form.

Booterstown today is perhaps best known for its small bird sanctuary, tucked between the Dart line and the sea, but the Slighe Cualann rewards a different kind of attention. There is nothing visible to mark the road's passage; no standing stone, no worn hollow in the ground, no heritage signage points to the ancient alignment. The pleasure here is largely imaginative, a matter of walking along the shore road or through the village and allowing the knowledge that something very old runs underneath to quietly reframe the ordinary. The route is easily reached from Booterstown Dart station, and the area is accessible year-round, though the coastal path is most agreeable outside the wetter winter months.