County Tipperary’s largest town, Clonmel is in the Suir River Valley, with the Comeragh Mountains and Slievenamon ever-present on the skyline. The town is known for its stout resistance to Oliver Cromwell in 1650 during his invasion of Ireland, inflicting big losses on his New Model Army, before negotiating a peaceful surrender. Later the town …
Drogheda, by the Boyne Estuary in East Ireland, is a town with captivating history in its backyard. The Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site is a complex of three massive passage tombs dating back as far as 5,200 years and loaded with enigmatic stone carvings. The tombs at Newgrange and Knowth can be visited on …
When the Dublin and Kingstown Railway arrived in Bray in 1854 this coastal town just 20 kilometres from Ireland’s capital became a seaside resort for Dubliners. Early on, Bray was planned as “Ireland’s Brighton” and the Victorian promenade and genteel front row of houses are holdovers from those early years of tourism. Intruding on this …
Dublin is a city rich in history and culture. Home to the famous Temple Bar and Molly Malone statue it’s easy to fall madly in love with the rustic charm of Ireland’s capital. With a whole host of famous landmarks and cultural sights to explore, a visit to Dublin surely keeps you on your toes. …
Rated Ireland’s “tidiest town” in 2015, Letterkenny is a bonny market town, close to where the River Swilly widens into a fjord on the northwest coast. Lough Swilly and the Fanad Peninsula are on Ireland’s fabled Wild Atlantic Way, for scenic drives to mountains, rugged promontories, Neolithic dolmens, early medieval hill-forts and martello towers armed …
When people working in Dublin want to flee from big city life they settle in quiet commuter towns like Naas. Out in rural County Kildare you’re 35 kilometres from the capital and can de-stress on country activities like horse riding, golf and visits to grand old estates. Naas is on the 18th-century Grand Canal, which …
Near the very centre of Ireland, Tullamore is a town divided by the Grand Canal, which first linked the Midlands with Dublin back in 1798. A decade earlier, this place was the scene of the world’s first aviation disaster, when a hot air balloon crash causing a fire that burnt down up to 130 houses. …
The seaport of Sligo in the northwest of Ireland is somewhere that will always be associated with the poet W. B. Yeats. His mother was from the town, and Yeats himself was a regular visitor in his childhood. It’s no mystery why Sligo is often called “Yeats Country” as so many local places appear in …
The town of Athlone is at an ancient crossing point on the Shannon River, near the very centre of Ireland. When the idea of a federal Irish Republic was floated by the political party Sinn Féin in the 1970s, Athlone was mooted as the capital of a united federal Ireland because of its central position. …
In Ireland’s “Ancient East”, Wexford is a town founded by the Vikings at the start of the 9th century. It’s just the place to connect with Ireland’s distant past, at the Irish National Heritage Park, an outdoor museum recounting the country’s history up to the 12th-century Norman invasion. Culture lovers may know Wexford for the …