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COUNTY SLIGO

Stunning coast and hills

The one thing you can't avoid in County Sligo is the Yeats connection. Massive Atlantic rollers crash in along the coast at Easky and Strandhill because there's simply nothing to stop them. America is the next point west. Inland water too, Lough Gill is the location of that most famous Isle o Inishfree, Lough Arrow with the Bricklieve Mountains overlooking and Lough Gara guarded by the Curlew Mountains. To the north, a virtually uninhabited coast but with the tabletop of Benbulben as the back-cloth. Mullaghmore Head is stunning, ditto Cullumore. It's all there, waiting to be discovered.

Did You Know

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was one of the great literary figures a century ago. Part of a group of Irish friends who included Osacar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, he came from Dublin, but his parents were from Sligo where he spent much of his youth. Thus did he wirt:
I will arise and go now, go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattle made:
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
He was buried locally (10 years after he died in France) and his connections with this area are celebrated at length.

The beach at Strandhill is claimed (by those who should know) as the best surfing beach in Europe.