The North is covered bywwww. Trails in the North, however, are better documented and promoted: for detailed information on the many routes here, the best places to start are wwww. They include the Kingfisher Trail wwww. Other cross-border routes include the recently signposted, kilometre North West Trail, mainly on quiet country roads through Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Leitrim and Sligo. For information on these trails in the Republic, go to wwww. In the North, wwww.
Some councils and local tourist offices have produced helpful map guides for the main routes too, but you should always get hold of the relevant Ordnance Survey map and carry a compass. Other walking highlights include the ascents of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo and of Carrauntoohil, for more experienced walkers, in County Kerry, the easily accessible Bray—Greystones walks in County Wicklow and just about anywhere in Connemara, notably the excellent, new Diamond Hill trail in the national park; not to mention walks in the Wicklow and Killarney national parks.
Mountaineering Ireland, an organization that covers hill-walking and rambling, as well as climbing, maintains a compendious website wwww. Other useful walking websites include wwww. Guided walking tour operators are available on wwww. If you need help in a real emergency on the mountains, call t or t and ask for mountain rescue wwww. With a wide variety of migrating flocks, including a large number of rare species, visiting its shores, Ireland is a great place for birdwatching; Wexford Wildfowl Reserve, Cape Clear and Castle Espie are especially fruitful hunting grounds.
The best general contacts are wwww. Horseriding, whether over the hills or along the beaches, is also a popular pastime, for both novices and experienced riders, who also have the option of multi-day trails rides. The Association of Irish Riding Establishments wwww. Golf, which was probably first brought to Ireland by the Ulster Scots, attracts huge numbers of visitors every year; the Golfing Union of Ireland, based in Kildare wwww.
There are plenty of opportunities for sea angling and dozens of rivers and lakes for fly- and game-fishing. For information, the best places to start are the tourist-board websites, wwww. Great Fishing Houses of Ireland wwww.
The most popular areas for sailing are the relatively sheltered waters of the east coast, especially in Dublin Bay; Cork Harbour and west Cork; Lough Swilly on the north coast of Donegal; Strangford Lough in County Down; and some of the larger lakes, such as Lough Derg in County Clare.
For further information contact the Irish Sailing Association wwww. Inland waterways and sheltered coasts — notably in west Cork, Dingle and Waterford — also offer canoeing and kayaking opportunities, ranging from day-trips and touring to rough- and white-water racing.
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See also wwww. There are some superb beaches for surfing wwww. Right in the path of the warm North Atlantic Drift current, Ireland offers some of the best scuba diving in Europe, notably off the rocky west coast. Information is available from the Irish Underwater Council wwww. When played at the highest level, Gaelic football is a fast, skilful and muscular sport, in which the strongest rivalry is between old adversaries Dublin and Kerry. Inter-county matches grab the limelight, but the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association are parish clubs throughout the country, which are the heart and soul of many communities, with around , members.
Obeying the siren call of the west coast, most foreign tourists, and indeed Irish holidaymakers, put their foot down to motor through the Midlands as quickly as possible. In the south of the county, the Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre gives a fascinating glimpse of a prestigious but ill-fated Iron Age road-building project. In the sixteenth century, however, this region was fairly comprehensively planted, when land was confiscated from native Irish owners and given to loyal English landlords.
Bypassed by the Industrial Revolution, many of the planned estate-towns that were attached to these landholdings remain to this day, along with the vestiges of a slow, steady rural style of living. The house stands in abundant gardens 5km south of Mullingar on the N In he falsely accused his wife Mary of having an affair with his brother Arthur and imprisoned her for the next 31 years at their nearby main residence, Gaulstown. It was only when the Earl died that she was released by their son, whom she no longer recognized.
The house itself, which commands beautiful views of the lake, has been painstakingly restored and authentically refurbished by Westmeath County Council. It holds some gorgeous fireplaces of carved Irish oak with Italian marble insets, but is most notable for the exquisite craftsmanship of its rococo ceilings, the work of a French stuccodore, Barthelemij Cramillion. Look out especially for the vivid depictions of the Four Winds, a fire-breathing dragon and a horn of plenty in the dining room, while the library, intended for night-time use, features sleeping cherubs wrapped in a blanket of clouds, a crescent moon and stars, and on the cornice a swirl of flowers with their heads closed.
A little over a kilometre northwest of Castlepollard on the Granard road, Tullynally Castle has been the seat of the Anglo-Irish Pakenhams, later Earls of Longford, since the seventeenth century. Remodelled as a rambling Gothic Revival castle to the designs of Francis Johnston in the early s, it remains the family home, open only to prebooked group visits minimum 25 people and for occasional concerts. The extensive gardens, however, and tea rooms are open to casual visitors in the summer.
Terraced lawns around the castle overlook parkland, laid out by the first Earl of Longford in From here winding paths lead through the woodland to lakes, a walled garden with a year-old yew avenue and a limestone grotto, as well as a Chinese garden complete with pagoda and Tibetan garden of waterfalls and streams. To the east of Castlepollard off the R Oldcastle road, the Fore Valley is a charming, bucolic spot, sheltered between two ranges of low, green hills and dotted with some impressive Christian ruins.
Around , St Fechin founded a monastery here, which had grown into a community of three hundred monks by the time he died in The historical and supernatural sites are all within walking distance of the village of FORE at the heart of the valley. Practising an extreme form of asceticism that was popular in the early and high Middle Ages, anchorites would stay in the tower, meditating and praying alone, with food brought to them by local people, until they died.
Like the other hermits, Beglin had vowed to remain in the cell until he died: in , he fell trying to climb out, and broke his neck — thus enacting his promise. In the spring stands a dead ash tree, gaily festooned with sweet wrappers, stockings, knickers and coins which caused the copper poisoning that killed the tree — the fourth wonder, the wood that will not burn. A couple of hundred metres across the marshy valley floor rise the substantial but compact remains of Fore Priory — the monastery built on a bog. It was erected in the early thirteenth century, one of very few in Ireland to follow the rule of St Benedict, the fifth-century Italian ascetic.
The seventh wonder is a little removed from the others to the south of the village — ask for directions at the coffee shop. A short woodland walk will bring you down to the attractive shore of Lough Lene, which is dotted with small, green islands.
The latter still casts a formidable shadow over Athlone, having weathered some bloody fighting during the Cromwellian Wars and the War of the Kings of the seventeenth century. Today, the town supports an important college, the Athlone Institute of Technology, as well as various civil-service offices and high-tech firms, but its main function for tourists is as a jumping-off point for the monastic site of Clonmacnois.
Fewer visitors know about the Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre, but the evocative, year-old wooden road preserved here is also well worth a visit. Dated to BC, the trackway was made of split oak planks up to 4m in length that were meant to float on the bog surface, one of the most substantial and sophisticated of many such prehistoric roads found in Europe.
However, the builders knew more about woodworking than the properties of the bog, because within ten years the heavy planks had sunk into the peat — which preserved them perfectly for the next two thousand years. Here the river descends at a shallow gradient through flat land that floods extensively in winter, but in spring, the receding flow leaves beautiful, nutrient-rich water meadows, some of the last of their type in Europe.
The Shannon Callows, as they are known, become the summer home of rare wild-flowers, grazing cattle, lapwings, curlews, redshanks and rare corncrakes. With a large lay population, Clonmacnois resembled a small town, where craftsmen and scholars produced illuminated manuscripts, croziers and other remarkable artefacts, many of which can be seen in the National Museum in Dublin. However, between the eighth and twelfth centuries the site was plundered over forty times by Vikings, Anglo-Normans and Irish enemies, and church reforms in the thirteenth century greatly reduced its influence. Outside the Office of Public Works has erected all-too-faithful replicas, complete with erosion — an attempt to recreate their appearance when first carved would have been far more constructive.
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Standing 4m high, the cross is carved from a single piece of sandstone and may originally have been coloured. The other two crosses are about a century older and much simpler, the South Cross featuring the Crucifixion surrounded by rich interlacing, spirals and bosses, while the North Cross is carved with abstract Celtic ornaments, humans and animals. It was built in by Abbot Colman and King Flann, but its most beautiful feature now is the fifteenth-century north doorway, featuring decorative Gothic carving surmounted by SS Dominic, Patrick and Francis. Founded by Queen Devorguilla, who retired here as a penitent in , it boasts a fine Romanesque doorway and chancel arch carved with geometrical patterns.
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