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Special Places Westmeath, Offaly and Laois - Self Drive
Oct 12 2011 07:33 AM | Bhushan in Self Drive Tours
Special Places Westmeath, Offaly and Laois
+353 (0)44 9348650
eastandmidlandsinfo@failteireland.ie
A drive through the homeland of the poet Oliver Goldsmith leads to the village of Moate. At Dún na Sí, the ‘fairy fortress’, an outstanding heritage centre was opened in 1985 by local enthusiasts. It offers a feast of activities, most of them associated with traditional song and dance and with Irish heritage in general. It includes a genealogical research centre and a heritage park with old-time farm machinery and replica buildings.
The Regional Archive, set up in 1995, collects and preserves traditional Irish music and related cultural material for Westmeath and four adjacent counties. Activities include céilidhe and sessions with performances by traditional musicians, singers, dancers and storytellers.
East of Moate is Kilbeggan, the home of Ireland’s oldest whiskey. Distilling ceased soon after it celebrated its bicentenary in 1957 – but the whiskey survived. In the 1980s, local enthusiasts set to work to restore the plant and create a working museum. The magnificent water wheel was set to turn again and drives wonderful pumping machinery and other gear within. You may fill your mind with whiskey lore and your mouth with a sample of Locke’s. Food is available, too.
For a wonderful experience of the peatlands, which once covered a great area of central Ireland, go southwards for a trip on the Blackwater Railway. A little one-coach train trundles and bounces its way along a narrow-gauge line through an extraordinary landscape of dark brown. This is the peatland which has been drained and is being slowly scraped away to serve as fuel in the nearby power station. But the carpet of brown is interrupted by an island of green pasture and then an expanse of reed-fringed lakes. The train makes a halt where you may try your hand at digging turf in the traditional way and also passes a preserved area where heather and other wild flowers bloom.
A far cry from the peatlands is the sophisticated town of Tullamore and another, but very different, whiskey museum, the Tullamore Dew Heritage Centre. Tullamore is a famous old whiskey – the ‘Dew’ of its name is a pun on the initials of the founder, D. E. Williams. You may buy some in the Centre, one of very few tourist offices in which the consumption and sale of whiskey is permitted. Testing a sample is your reward for purchasing an admission ticket to the exhibition devoted to the history of the town and of its spirit.
The home of the centre is a beautifully restored canal-side warehouse. They have a restaurant, too. Across the Slieve Bloom Mountains from Tullamore, you may visit the Workhouse of Donaghmore, a range of two-storey buildings of grey limestone, built in 1853 to feed and house 400 paupers. It closed its doors in 1886. But the buildings survived and in 1993 they were opened officially as the Donaghmore Workhouse Museum. Refurbishment and adding to the collections is in progress all the time. Part of the complex now houses a fine display of horse-drawn farm implements and a wide selection of local household goods, many of them bringing back happy childhood memories to sexagenarian and older visitors.
Then go east through Durrow to one of Ireland’s most specialised museums. The creation of its proprietor Walter Whelan – who conducts visitors on delightful tours of his astonishing collection - it is the Angling Museum of Attanagh. It presents swarms of fishing flies and an array of rods and reels, some tools of the trades of fly-tiers, gunsmiths and poachers and a formidable man-trap. Not to be missed either by hunting and fishing enthusiasts or by anyone capable of admiring the artistry involved in creating a dry fly.
Distance : 200 km (125 miles)
+353 (0)44 9348650
eastandmidlandsinfo@failteireland.ie
A drive through the homeland of the poet Oliver Goldsmith leads to the village of Moate. At Dún na Sí, the ‘fairy fortress’, an outstanding heritage centre was opened in 1985 by local enthusiasts. It offers a feast of activities, most of them associated with traditional song and dance and with Irish heritage in general. It includes a genealogical research centre and a heritage park with old-time farm machinery and replica buildings.
The Regional Archive, set up in 1995, collects and preserves traditional Irish music and related cultural material for Westmeath and four adjacent counties. Activities include céilidhe and sessions with performances by traditional musicians, singers, dancers and storytellers.
East of Moate is Kilbeggan, the home of Ireland’s oldest whiskey. Distilling ceased soon after it celebrated its bicentenary in 1957 – but the whiskey survived. In the 1980s, local enthusiasts set to work to restore the plant and create a working museum. The magnificent water wheel was set to turn again and drives wonderful pumping machinery and other gear within. You may fill your mind with whiskey lore and your mouth with a sample of Locke’s. Food is available, too.
For a wonderful experience of the peatlands, which once covered a great area of central Ireland, go southwards for a trip on the Blackwater Railway. A little one-coach train trundles and bounces its way along a narrow-gauge line through an extraordinary landscape of dark brown. This is the peatland which has been drained and is being slowly scraped away to serve as fuel in the nearby power station. But the carpet of brown is interrupted by an island of green pasture and then an expanse of reed-fringed lakes. The train makes a halt where you may try your hand at digging turf in the traditional way and also passes a preserved area where heather and other wild flowers bloom.
A far cry from the peatlands is the sophisticated town of Tullamore and another, but very different, whiskey museum, the Tullamore Dew Heritage Centre. Tullamore is a famous old whiskey – the ‘Dew’ of its name is a pun on the initials of the founder, D. E. Williams. You may buy some in the Centre, one of very few tourist offices in which the consumption and sale of whiskey is permitted. Testing a sample is your reward for purchasing an admission ticket to the exhibition devoted to the history of the town and of its spirit.
The home of the centre is a beautifully restored canal-side warehouse. They have a restaurant, too. Across the Slieve Bloom Mountains from Tullamore, you may visit the Workhouse of Donaghmore, a range of two-storey buildings of grey limestone, built in 1853 to feed and house 400 paupers. It closed its doors in 1886. But the buildings survived and in 1993 they were opened officially as the Donaghmore Workhouse Museum. Refurbishment and adding to the collections is in progress all the time. Part of the complex now houses a fine display of horse-drawn farm implements and a wide selection of local household goods, many of them bringing back happy childhood memories to sexagenarian and older visitors.
Then go east through Durrow to one of Ireland’s most specialised museums. The creation of its proprietor Walter Whelan – who conducts visitors on delightful tours of his astonishing collection - it is the Angling Museum of Attanagh. It presents swarms of fishing flies and an array of rods and reels, some tools of the trades of fly-tiers, gunsmiths and poachers and a formidable man-trap. Not to be missed either by hunting and fishing enthusiasts or by anyone capable of admiring the artistry involved in creating a dry fly.
Distance : 200 km (125 miles)
