Things to Do in County Sligo

More about County Sligo

Town, surf village or the north coast

Sligo town is the practical base — the county’s hotels, restaurants and the only real choice of places to eat late are here, and nothing in the county is more than forty-five minutes away. Strandhill is the alternative if you are here for the water: eight kilometres out, a surf village with board hire, seaweed baths and a few good places to eat, and it fills on any weekend with decent swell. Rosses Point across the bay is quieter and more of a family and golf village. In the north of the county, Mullaghmore and Grange put you under Benbulben and beside the best of the empty beaches, though the choice of accommodation thins out and July and August book up months ahead. Enniscrone on the Mayo border is the traditional seaside resort end of things, with a long strand and the Edwardian seaweed baths. Wherever you land, note that a lot of Sligo’s smaller places close or drop to weekends between November and March.

Beaches, surf and tides

Strandhill is a serious beach break rather than a swimming beach — the currents are strong enough that bathing is not permitted there, and people who want to get in the water go round to the sheltered side at Culleenamore instead. Easkey, further west, is the reef break that first put Sligo on the international surfing map, and it works best in autumn and winter. Streedagh is a three-kilometre bar of sand with two histories underfoot: three ships of the Spanish Armada were driven ashore here in September 1588, and the rock platform at the northern end is packed with Carboniferous corals. Enniscrone has five kilometres of firm sand and the seaweed baths at the end of it. For something stranger, Coney Island can be driven or walked to across the strand at low water, following a line of pillars — check the tide tables properly before you try it, because cars do get caught.

Under Benbulben

Benbulben’s forest walk is the easy one: a flat looped trail of about five and a half kilometres directly beneath the limestone face, with a car park and no navigation required. It does not go up the mountain, and the plateau itself is not a casual walk. Knocknarea is the better summit for most people — a stepped path from the Rathcarrick side, an hour or so return, and Queen Maeve’s unexcavated cairn on top, which visitors are asked not to climb or add stones to. The Gleniff Horseshoe is a narrow single-track loop road of about ten kilometres running into a glacial amphitheatre in the Dartry mountains, with Diarmuid and Gráinne’s cave visible as a dark slot high on the cliff and a ruined schoolhouse at the head of the valley. Glencar straddles the Leitrim boundary — the lake is shared and the waterfall Yeats used in “The Stolen Child” is on the Leitrim shore, a short walk from a free car park. South of the town, the Ox Mountains are lower, boggier and almost empty, with Lough Talt giving a straightforward lakeside loop.

The tombs

Carrowmore has an OPW visitor centre and guided access on a season that runs roughly from spring to the end of October; the central cairn at Listoghil is the one to walk to. Carrowkeel is the opposite experience — free, unstaffed, up a rough track and then a steep walk onto the Bricklieve terraces, with the cairns sitting exactly where they were left. Go in dry weather and wear boots. Creevykeel at Cliffony is a full-court tomb right beside the N15, which makes it the easiest major monument in the county to see. The Caves of Keash are a row of openings in a limestone scarp above the village, reached by a steep field climb and worth it for the view back over the plain. Offshore, Inishmurray holds an intact early monastic enclosure with its cursing stones; boats run from Mullaghmore in settled weather, but landings depend entirely on the swell and are often cancelled.

Yeats, the lake and the town

Sligo Abbey in the town centre is a Dominican friary with the only carved high altar surviving in an Irish monastic church; it is an OPW site with a seasonal opening, so check before a winter visit. Lissadell on the Maugherow peninsula was the Gore-Booth house and Constance Markievicz’s childhood home, with gardens and a Yeats exhibition, open on its own seasonal schedule. Around Lough Gill, Dooney Rock and Hazelwood both give short lakeshore loops with parking, and the Innisfree of the poem is a small island you view from the shore rather than land on. For music, the Coleman Heritage Centre at Gurteen is the home of the south Sligo fiddle style and runs sessions and classes.

Getting there

The Dublin–Sligo train takes a bit over three hours and lands you in the town centre, which is fine if you plan to stay put. For the tombs, the Gleniff loop or the north coast beaches you will need a car — bus coverage outside the main road is minimal, and the lanes in the Bricklieves and at Gleniff are single-track with passing places.