Side Trips

On the main road south (N18) of Galway are two small fishing villages, Clarenbridge and Kilcolgan. Each year at the end of September, the villages host the annual Galway Oyster Festival. Launched in 1954, the 5-day festival is packed with traditional music, song, dancing, sports, art exhibits, and, above all, oyster-tasting events and oyster-opening competitions.

If you continue south on N18 for another 16km (10 miles), you'll see signs to the quietly beautiful Coole Park National Forest (tel. 091/631804). This was once a country home of the dramatist and arts patron Lady Gregory, who, along with W. B. Yeats and Edward Martyn, founded the Abbey Theatre. Sadly, her house no longer stands, but her influence is memorialized in a tree on the grounds on which the following people carved their initials while visiting with her: George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, John Masefield, Oliver St. John Gogarty, W. B. Yeats, and Douglas Hyde, the first president of Ireland. Clearly, this is an exceptional place. There's a visitor center, as well as a tearoom, picnic tables, and plenty of nature trails to wander. The visitor center is open daily 10am to 5pm late March to May, and also in September, with extended hours from 10am to 6pm June to August. The last admission is 15 minutes before closing (1 hr. for the audiovisual presentations). Admission is free.

Not too far away from the home of his friend, W. B. Yeats had his own summer home in Gort at Thoor Ballylee (tel. 091/631436; www.gortonline.com). The restored 16th-century Norman tower house served as the inspiration for his poems "The Winding Stair" and "The Tower." In the interpretive center, an audiovisual presentation examines the poet's life. Also on the grounds are the original Ballylee Mill, partially restored, and a bookshop specializing in Anglo-Irish literature. The site is on the N18 at Gort. Admission is €6 for adults, €5.50 for seniors and students, €2.50 for children 12 and over, €1.50 for children 11 and under and €12 for families. It's open from May to September daily 10am to 6pm. There's a Tourist Information Office (tel. 091/631436) open May to September daily 9:30am to 5pm.

Not too far away from Yeats's and Lady Gregory's summer homes, west off the main road, between Gort and Kilcolgan, Dunguaire Castle, Kinvara (tel. 061/360788; www.shannonheritage.com), sits on the south shore of Galway Bay. Once the royal seat of the 7th-century King Guaire of Connaught, the castle was taken over later by the legendary Oliver St. John Gogarty, Irish surgeon, author, poet, and wit. Together the three must have had a kind of Bloomsbury society west in the summertime, when all of Dublin's greatest literary minds decamped to their manor homes. Today Dunguaire's greatest appeal is the exquisite view from its battlements of the nearby Burren and Galway Bay. Admission is €6 for adults, €3.50 for seniors and students, €3.40 for children, and €15 for families. It's open daily from mid-April through September 9:30am to 5pm (last admission 4:30pm). There are medieval banquets here on summer evenings. Dunguaire is on the N67 just east of Kinvara.