Things to Do in County Leitrim

More about County Leitrim

Where to base yourself

Leitrim is long and thin — roughly 80 km from the Shannon to the sea, pinched almost in two at Lough Allen — and the two halves feel like different counties. Decide which one you are here for before you book. In the south, Carrick-on-Shannon has the most beds, the most restaurants and the marina, and it is where you start if boats or the Blueway are the plan. It is also the hen and stag capital of the midlands, so a Friday or Saturday night in the town centre is loud; midweek it is a different place entirely. Drumshanbo at the foot of Lough Allen is quieter and better placed for the mountains, Ballinamore suits anglers, and Lough Rynn near Mohill is the county’s one big country-house hotel. In the north, Manorhamilton sits where four glens meet and puts you within twenty minutes of Glencar, Glenade and the Dartry ridge; Kinlough is the base for Lough Melvin and the short run out to the Sligo and Donegal beaches. Rooms are limited everywhere outside Carrick, and the whole county fills over the June bank holiday and for Carrick’s festival weekends.

The Shannon and the Blueway

The Shannon is Leitrim’s spine and the reason people arrive here by water. Carrick is the biggest hire base on the river, and a week on a self-drive cruiser needs no licence — the boatyards run you through it before you cast off. The Shannon–Erne Waterway leaves the river near Leitrim Village and climbs through sixteen locks to Fermanagh, all of them automated and worked with a smart card, which makes it far less daunting than it sounds. On foot or by bike, the Shannon Blueway runs the old canal towpath from Leitrim Village up to Drumshanbo — flat, traffic-free and about 10 km — and includes the floating boardwalk across Acres Lake, the first of its kind in Ireland, which people swim off in summer. The same trail network takes paddlers along the river between Carrick and Drumshanbo.

The northern glens

North of Lough Allen the ground rises into the Dartry Mountains, flat-topped limestone with steep flanks, and the roads run along glacial valleys. Glencar Waterfall drops through trees at the head of Glencar Lough; it is a five-minute stroll from the car park on a surfaced path and gets busy on summer afternoons, so early morning is better. Glenade is the next valley east, a long trough of a lake under cliffs, and the churchyard at Kinlough holds the carved grave of the man said to have been killed by the Dobhar-chú, the water hound. Truskmore is the high point of the range at 647 m with a television mast on top, and Tievebaun beside it is the quieter walk. On the other side of the county, Sliabh an Iarainn — the iron mountain — rises straight out of Lough Allen; its ore and the coal seams across the water at Arigna kept this corner working into the 1990s, and the Miners Way traces the paths the men walked to the pits.

Fishing, ruins and slow days

Leitrim is coarse-angling country, and the lakes around Carrigallen, Ballinamore and Rockfield hold bream, roach and tench within a short drive of each other. Lough Melvin in the far north is the exception and the prize: it has three distinct kinds of trout — sonaghen, gillaroo and ferox — found together nowhere else, and boats go out from Kinlough and Rossinver. The ruin of Rossclogher Castle sits on a crannóg just off the Melvin shore, best seen from the water. Fowley’s Falls near Rossinver is a short walk to a wooded cascade. Elsewhere the history is quiet and mostly unstaffed: Parke’s Castle on the north shore of Lough Gill is the exception, a restored plantation manor with guided tours and a seasonal opening, and boats leave from below it for Yeats’s Innisfree.

Rain, railways and getting around

There is no train to most of Leitrim and buses are thin, so a car makes the county workable; the exception is Carrick, which is on the Dublin–Sligo line. Wet days are a real planning issue here — the soil is heavy and the rainfall high — and the indoor options are few. The narrow-gauge Cavan and Leitrim Railway at Dromod is volunteer-run with limited hours, so ring before you go rather than turning up. Drumshanbo’s distillery, the one that makes the gunpowder gin, runs tours and is the county’s most reliable indoor hour. Glenfarne, out on Lough MacNean, has the ballroom that gave The Ballroom of Romance its name. And Creevelea Abbey at Dromahair stands beside the Bonet, free, open ground and never crowded, which is a fair summary of what Leitrim does best. If you want one wet-day route that still works, drive the northern glens: Glencar, over to Glenade and down to Kinlough, with the falls at the start and Lough Melvin at the end. Low cloud on the Dartry cliffs suits that road better than sunshine does, and there are enough pubs and cafés between Manorhamilton and Kinlough to break it up.