Scintillating Sligo • Folksy Travel by Bill Smale

how do I remember scintillating Sligo? There is a song sung by the Clancy Brothers back in the 60s called “the Irish Rover”. They mentioned “the best Sligo rags. So when I saw the village on the map of course I had to stay here a night or two. It’s a cute little town where you will definitely want to visit especially if you come north of Galway.

On the restaurant wall scintillating Sligo — This was on the wall in the restaurant “hooked” which had really nice food and very pleasant people working there. I highly recommend recommended it.

Fish and chips Scintillating Sligo — At the hotel, Riverside Hotel, which is very pleasant by the way, right on the river. Make sure you get a Riverview room, the Reception person recommended the fish and chips at this restaurant. The fish was really excellent, not soggy and you get too decent pieces and you can order an option to “chips” such as the salad which was recommended and was very tasty.

Riverview room Scintillating Sligo — This was from my room which was of course a Riverview

Old post office Scintillating Sligo — This is kind of a very interesting old post office

City Hall Scintillating Sligo — The Sligo City Hall

City Plaza Scintillating Sligo — The city Plaza

Ancient burial site Bill Smale — Below you can see one of the ancient burial sites. The entrance was closed so I took a photo from the distance.

Burial site Bill Smale — This is one of the ancient burial sites

Horse and buggy Bill Smale — It’s a little difficult driving and taking photos at the same time but I was able to snap this one horse buggy going by deep in the countryside

Looking at the farms — Looking out at the farms and some residential area

Sligo country — I didn’t know at the time this was the place of Yeats. He is buried in Sligo and you will see the photos below

This is the Knocknarea mound and on top is the burial site of queen Maeve.

Ancient mound 6000 years old — This mound on top of this hill is almost 6000 years old.

Rough pathway — It’s a rough pathway up the hill

Trail explanation — An explanation of the trail in the area

Hilltop view — Beautiful views from the top of the hill

Reminds me of Pakse — This actually reminds me of Champasak in Lao which is in the Pakse area

Pathway down — This is the view of the path while walking down

Sligo view — You can see the city of Sligo in the distance

Top of the mound — Here is the mound and on top of that you can see the top of Queen Maeve’s tomb

Strandhill beach Bill Smale — Then I went down to Strandhill beach

Yeats graveside — On my way to Donnegal I saw a sign for “Yeats grave” so I decided to stop by.

Disrepair graves — There are some very old graves here which have been neglected and fallen into disrepair

Yeats grave — The grave of William Butler Yeats

Spanish or modern shipwreck — And then there is a memorial to the great disaster shipwreck the three ships of the Spanish Armada and thousands of sailors dead

there is a tale of the “black Irish” having black hair and therefore descended from the Spanish Armada sailors who landed or worship wrecked off of Ireland. Of course the Spanish did try a mass attack of Ireland in an effort to defeat the British. But it seems the term “black Irish“ was really a derogative term against the Irish. There were probably very very few survivors of the shipwreck who were able to stay hidden in Ireland. The English and the Irish rounded them up and the English executed most of them. So the term “black Irish“ does not refer to descendants of the Spanish Armada and in fact there are probably no descendants of the Spanish in Ireland.

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