Things to Do in County Louth

More about County Louth

Where to base yourself in the Wee County

Louth is roughly forty minutes end to end, so the base you pick is about atmosphere rather than logistics. Carlingford is the one most people want — medieval lanes, oyster bars, the lough in front and Slieve Foy behind — and it is also the one that runs out of rooms first. Summer weekends, the oyster festival in August and the town’s steady stream of stag and hen groups mean you should book well ahead and expect noise on a Saturday night. Dundalk is the workaday alternative fifteen minutes away, with the most beds in the county and a train station on the Dublin–Belfast line. Drogheda suits you better if the Boyne Valley tombs are on your list as well as Louth’s own sites. Out in the country, Ballymascanlon is a hotel in its own grounds with a dolmen on the estate, Bellingham Castle at Castlebellingham is a 17th-century seat rebuilt with battlements, and Greenore is a Victorian railway port that never quite became a resort — quiet, and handy for the ferry.

Carlingford itself

The town packs three medieval buildings into a few hundred metres. King John’s Castle sits above the harbour, its curtain wall built into the rock, and Taaffe’s Castle is a 15th- or 16th-century merchant’s tower house standing among the shops on the square — the water used to come up to its base. The Heritage Centre occupies a deconsecrated medieval church and is the place to make sense of the rest. The oysters are farmed in the lough in front of you and are on almost every menu in town; the season is traditionally the colder months, though farmed stock is served year-round. From Greenore, ten minutes down the shore, a small car ferry crosses the lough to Greencastle in County Down in about fifteen minutes, which saves an hour of driving round through Newry.

Walking the Cooley Peninsula

Behind the town the Cooley Mountains rise steeply and empty out within ten minutes of leaving the car park. Slieve Foye is the highest at 589 m, and the direct route up from Carlingford is short but relentless, with loose ground near the top; allow three hours return and don’t attempt it in cloud without a map. The Táin Trail loops about 40 km around the whole peninsula, usually walked over two or three days, following the route of the cattle raid that gives the area its name. For something gentler, Ravensdale Forest has waymarked woodland loops and forestry roads on the Dundalk side, and the greenway from Carlingford to Omeath runs about seven flat kilometres along the old railway with the lough beside you the whole way — the best option in the county with a bike or a buggy. Proleek is a portal tomb with a capstone of something like 35 tonnes, reached across the hotel grounds at Ballymascanlon; the tradition is to land a small stone on top for a wish. Templetown on the seaward side is the peninsula’s sheltered swimming cove.

Monastic Louth and the Boyne edge

Monasterboice holds the best high crosses in Ireland. Muiredach’s Cross, about 5.5 m and carved on every face with biblical scenes, is tenth-century and remarkably legible for its age; the round tower beside it is not open, the site is free and unstaffed, and the car park is small enough that a coach fills it. A few miles away, Mellifont was the first Cistercian house in Ireland, founded in 1142, and its octagonal lavabo — where the monks washed before eating — is the piece worth the trip. The visitor centre is seasonal, so out of season expect the ruins without interpretation. In Drogheda, St Peter’s on West Street holds the preserved head of St Oliver Plunkett in a shrine and is free to enter; Millmount across the river is a Martello tower on a Norman mound with a town museum and the best view of the place; and the Highlanes Gallery shows art in a former Franciscan friary.

The coast and the flat country

Louth’s coast is mostly low and tidal rather than dramatic. Clogherhead is the exception — a Blue Flag strand with a cliff path out to the working fishing harbour at Port Oriel, where you can sometimes buy fish off the boats. Dundalk Bay is one of the most important wader sites on the east coast, with big flocks on the mudflats through winter and a scope worth carrying. Inland, Ardee sits on the ford where Cúchulainn and Ferdia fought in the Táin, and a couple of miles out the Kildemock Jumping Church is a gable wall that ended up standing inside its own foundations, with several competing explanations and no agreed one.

Getting around

The M1 runs the length of the county and the Dublin–Belfast rail line stops at Drogheda and Dundalk, so both towns work without a car. The Cooley Peninsula does not — the roads out to the mountains and the lough shore have little or no bus service, and the lanes are narrow enough that meeting a tractor means reversing.