Foto © Stefan Friedhoff
Foto © Stefan Friedhoff
Foto © Stefan Friedhoff
Foto © Stefan Friedhoff
Foto © Stefan Friedhoff
| County Sligo is situated
in the north west of Ireland at the Atlantic coast. Sligo has a
magnificent variety of mountain scenery, beautiful lakes, waterfalls,
woods and a breathtaking coastline with endless beaches and cliffs.
County Sligo is known as Yeats Country as the scenery inspired
many of the great works of W.B. Yeates, the Nobel Prize winning
Irish writer.
"Where
dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where the flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries…"
From "The
Stolen Child"
by William Butler Yeats |
 |
W. B. Yeats was born in Dublin but his parents were from Sligo
and he spent a goodly proportion of his childhood there.
In the west of the county the Ox mountains form a background
to the coastal plain, while north of Sligo town the landscape
is dominated by steep-sided and flat-topped limestone hills
like Ben Bulben.
Another beauty spot in the county is Lough Arrow, with its
inlets and encircling hills.
Near Sligo town, in beautiful Lough Gill, can be seen the like
isle of Innisfree immortalised in the Yeats' poem.
I will arise and
go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade….
from " The Lake Isle of Innisfree "
by William Butler
Yeats
There is one of the
greatest concentrations of megalithic tombs in all of Europe
in Sligo. Carrowmore is one of oldest Stone-Age
burial sites in Europe with some hundred tombs, passage graves,
dolmens and stone circles.
On the summit of Knocknarea Mountain is a huge flat-topped
cairn called Maeve's Cairn. Queen Maeve was the Iron Age Queen
of Connaught.
Sligo is good place to establish as your base for holidays
in Ireland. Most of Connacht and Ulster are just a few hours
drive from anywhere in Sligo.
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