Back to Yeats-ics
If you're seeing this, then this blog is a placeholder and should be considered only as a work in progress!
I mentioned in the road trip's blog that we only tolerated the heavy traffic in and bad navigation of Sligo Town for long enough to find a better path.
But I took the train back to Sligo a few weeks after the road trip to break the curse we'd placed upon it in our minds.
While I haven't yet completed this blog, I did post some pictures of Sligo to my Flickr ("okay, Boomer") page. The links for that are below.
Also, I reviewed Sligo for a hotel reservation website who shall rename maneless. The slightly-edited content of that is a good start for this blog post, and between this post, the previous post about the area, and the pictures of Sligo Town and the Benbulben Forest Walk, you'll have a rough idea of what to expect if you're planning a trip there.
That content starts now...
One problem with Ireland is that the town/city where the train stops is often the name of the county that it's in. That makes it a bit hard to distinguish between what features exist in the town - and are therefore accessible by foot, scooter, or bike (but without a car) - and what's 30 KM away but in the county.
I drove through the county the month before I came back to the town. The surrounding area is beautiful! Between the western coast and its castles and Benbulben and other nearby mountains, having a car and a few days to spare would be wonderful here!
Alas, I had no car this time, arriving by train for a long weekend, all unavoidably booked with little notice. Usually, I'll blow into town and rent a bike or scooter to get around. Conveniently, Sligo is one of the few west-coast cities with a bike-share program, using Bolt for that option. (I know this because I managed to unintentionally kill *three* Bolt bikes, one several KM from a Bolt parking spot!)
Usually, a hotel for me is just a place to collapse until I wake up and start again, speeding around to see everything I can in the time that I have. I booked the Clayton Hotel in Sligo because it was one of the few available with no notice, and I really didn't care that it was a "spa" and had almost no external pictures on the site from which I searched and booked it.
So when, upon arrival, I grabbed a Bolt and headed for the hotel - a somewhat precarious ride of a few KM on some busy streets to the northern outskirts of town - I expected something like a Hilton or other boring box hotel. However, when I got to where I thought the hotel should be, there was only this beautiful, GIANT building on lush, sweeping grounds that looked like an ancient (circa 1800s) manor or hospital, flanked by old chapels - because it was just that! Apparently, the local Clayton was once St. Columba's Hospital - a former psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Sligo that was converted to a hotel about 20 years ago (and then expanded.) The majesty of the place was one of the highlights of the trip, even if the room with the view of Benbulben (see below) I requested did *not* have this view.
While autumn in the actual town of Sligo was adorable - with the peat-stained Garvoge River roaring through it, several large cathedrals, the abbey ruins (closed for winter but visible,) many murals (most dedicated to one guy we'll talk about more in a moment,) a surprisingly good Polish deli, and Doorly Park - the real star of this place is W.B. Yeats and his resting place nearby.
Sligo has built a tourism industry on Yeats' image as the Irish poet. He chose (in advance) to be buried under the nearby mountain known as Benbulben. It looms over the town from about 12 KM to the north and is a place over beauty along the coast. It was, in fact, one of the few places out of town I chose to visit on this trip, spending money on taxi rides to and fro (or, as I call it, "my 40-euro nice walk.") It was worth it, but only because the weather was nice at the time, and that's never guaranteed in Ireland.
When leaving Benbulben, I ate dinner at Henry's at the bottom of the hill before catching the taxi back to the Clayton.
By the way, I couldn't get any taxi drivers to accept a ride back to town using the FreeNow app, but Uber worked fine. (In Ireland, Uber just contracts out to a taxi driver. Both apps take about 30% from the driver, so do without an app if you can.)
If you have transport, check out nearby places as well. I biked out to the beach at Far Finisklin (where one of the Bolt bikes broke down,) but I've been advised for next time to visit Strandhill Beach (if the weather is nice, especially at sunset) and Knocknarea (for a few minutes.)
I've also been (during the previous drive) to Yeats gravesite at St. Columba's church a bit up the N15 highway, and it was worth a stop. I'd also add Castle Classiebawn and its viewpoint but reviews say the castle itself is on private (inaccessible) grounds, though pictures of it suggest it's a photographers' dream (again, if the weather is nice!) :)
I'm sure I'll add some featured pictures to this as well as some more snarky verbiage that no one will ready. If you made it this far, let me know! I won't hold my breath lest I wind up like Yeats, albeit resting somewhere far less pretty.
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