Things to Do in County Offaly

More about County Offaly

Where to base yourself

Offaly is small enough to cross in under an hour, so one base does the whole county. Birr is the nicest place to sleep — a Georgian estate town with wide malls, independent shops and enough restaurants for three nights — and it puts you within twenty minutes of the Slieve Blooms and forty of the Shannon. Tullamore is bigger and plainer but sits on the Dublin–Galway rail line and the Grand Canal, which makes it the practical choice without a car. On the river, Banagher and Shannon Harbour are tiny and geared to boat crews, with a handful of guesthouses and moorings; they are the right base if you are cruising rather than driving. Kinnitty Castle offers the grand version at the foot of the mountains. Nothing here books out the way the coast does, but the Birr Vintage Week in August and the Tullamore Show — one of the largest agricultural shows in the country, held in mid-August — will take every room for miles.

The Shannon side

The river is the county’s western boundary and the best of Offaly lines up along it. Clonmacnoise is the reason most people come; arrive before ten or after four to have the churches to yourself, and note that the site sits on a low ridge above the callows with no shelter, so the wind matters more than the rain. Downriver at Shannonbridge, a squat artillery fort was thrown up to hold the crossing against a French invasion that never came, and it still commands the bridge. Further south again, Victoria Lock at Meelick is where Leinster, Munster and Connacht meet in midstream, with the unusual inland Meelick Martello Tower standing guard over the same reach. Between them the Shannon Callows flood every winter and dry into hay meadows in summer — once the great stronghold of the corncrake, now better known for whooper swans and wintering wildfowl.

Bog country, and what came after the peat

Nowhere in Ireland is more defined by bog, and nowhere has done more with it since the turf ran out. Lough Boora is the flagship: an industrial cutaway now carrying tens of kilometres of flat, well-surfaced walking and cycling trails, a scattering of large outdoor sculptures made from bog timber and old machinery, fishing lakes and bird hides. It is free, open all year, and bikes can be hired on site — it is the single best half-day in the county with children. Sharavogue shows the other approach, a raised bog taken out of production and left to re-wet. For the human end of the story, Croghan Hill rises as a green volcanic plug over the Bog of Allen, and it was in the peat beneath it that Old Croghan Man, an Iron Age bog body, was found in 2003. The narrow-gauge West Offaly Railway that once ran tourists across the bog at Shannonbridge went with the power station, so check before making the drive.

The Slieve Blooms

The Slieve Bloom Mountains rise straight out of flat country, which makes them look far bigger than their 527 m high point. Cadamstown and Kinnitty are the Offaly-side trailheads, with waymarked loops through glens, old mass paths and forestry, plus an extensive mountain-bike trail network that has become the main draw for a lot of visitors. The tracks drain badly after heavy rain and the forest roads can be churned, so boots rather than trainers. Nearby Ballyboy keeps thatched pubs of the kind that have vanished almost everywhere else.

Canals, whiskey and old stones

The Grand Canal crosses the whole county and the towpath is level, quiet and open to walkers and cyclists the entire way. Tullamore D.E.W. runs its visitor experience from a bonded warehouse on the canal harbour, with tastings and a working distillery on the edge of town. West along the water, Pollagh has a church fitted out in bog oak dug from the surrounding peat. Durrow Abbey north of Tullamore keeps a fine 10th-century high cross in oak parkland, on the site of the monastery that produced the Book of Durrow. Leap Castle is a private house and opens by arrangement rather than to walk-ups — ring ahead or you will find a locked gate — and Kilcormac holds a carved oak Pietà hidden through the penal years.

When to go

There is no season to work around here and very little that shuts. Spring and early summer suit the callows and the bog trails, when the ground is firm and the birds are in; autumn suits the woods at Durrow and Birr. Winter floods can close roads along the Shannon, and the shorter days make the drive between sights the limiting factor rather than the sights themselves.