Day Four

We leave for County Sligo. County Sligo is known as the Yeats Country as it inspired many of the great works of the Nobel Prize winning Irish writer, W.B. Yeats. The county is situated on the Atlantic coast in the north west of Ireland and is the gateway between Connaught and Ulster, and has a magnificent variety of mountain, lake, wood and coastline. 

Our first stop is Sligo, the largest town in the northwest. Among its many cultural attractions are the Hawk’s Well Theatre, the Yeats Memorial Building which is home to a photographic and audiovisual centre on WB Yeats, and the Model Arts Centre which hosts work from all over the world including that of many established Irish artists.

From Sligo we travel to Drumcliffe church yard, the final resting place of Yeats. The Visitors’ Centre outlines the richness of culture and history of Drumcliffe church and area, in particular WB Yeats, The Battle of the Books and St Columba. From Druncliff we take a scenic drive to Lisadell, Gelencar, Lough Gill and Innisfree.

From Innisfree we make our way to West Sligo. Tucked away on a remote coast road, facing the Atlantic, is the The Beach Bar. This 17th century Irish Pub is a must-see, to relax and relish the atmosphere before we move on to Enniscrone, a charming seaside village with a 5km sandy beach.

While in Enniscrone why not sample one of the famous seaweed baths. Tradition along the West Coast of Ireland holds that the practice of bathing in hot water and seaweed provides relief from the painful symptoms of rheumatism and arthritis.

The therapeutic power of the Seaweed Bath is attributed to the high concentration of iodine that occurs naturally in sea water and in seaweed. In its growing process, seaweed extracts this iodine from the surrounding sea water and concentrates it in its fronds to such an extent that some seaweeds have up to 20,000 times the concentration of Iodine of the water in which they grow. Nowadays, given the increased consciousness of the dangers of synthetic drugs and chemicals to both ourselves and to our environment, more and more people are reverting to traditional remedies and methods.