Ireland day 1043. Tuesday 06 August 2024- Fermanagh Day 4

Today’s summary	Spent the morning having a good walk round the Crom estate, and enjoyed a sandwich lunch near the visitor centre. In the afternoon we drove to Carrick on Shannon, to enable us to visit Co Leitrim – the only one of the thirty two Irish counties which we hadn’t visited before. A slow drive back to Dublin afterwards, as the M50 was blocked with multiple accidents so we diverted cross country via Trim
Today’s weather	Bright and sunny in the morning, some rain at lunchtime, then mostly overcast in the afternoon. Moderate south westerly wind. Appx 20c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Crom Castle and Inisherk Island

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

Today was a big day in our Irish adventure – we crossed off Leitrim from our list the remaining unvisited Irish Counties. We started with thirty two on the list, and now there are none.

But before we reached this momentous milestone, we first had to complete our explorations of the Crom (National Trust) estate, where we’ve been staying. We had (for us) an early checkout this morning, so were up and away from our cottage by 10 am. It’s been lovely (Bluebell cottage), by the way, and was in fact one of the nicest cottages we’ve ever stayed in, even though it was “only” rated as three stars.

We parked our car just around the corner, at the visitor centre, then set off to visit Inisherk Island – which you reach over a bridge from the main part of the Crom estate. It’s beautiful and tranquil over on the island, with a massive, although semi-derelict, walled garden in the middle, complete with bug hotels constructed by the local scout groups. Along the way we spotted a wily fox, a herd of fallow deer, and several species of butterfly – Speckled Wood and Silver Washed Fritillary, to name but two. It was particularly good to see the butterflies, as I had been a bit worried about their conspicuous absence in Ireland so far this summer.

Once we got back from our walk, we bought a cup of tea from the café (which was all we could afford as it was sterling cash only as the card machine had broken and I only had a small amount of UK money on me) then ate our sandwiches outside admiring the view.

Once we had dined, we drove about 80 minutes to Carrick on Shannon to take a look at County Leitrim. The town itself was smart and unsurprisingly has been nominated as Ireland’s best kept town on numerous occasions. County Leitrim – the bit that we saw, anyway – was pleasantly rural and very quiet. It’s Ireland’s most depopulated county, I believe.

We had a good walk round the town centre, including the new metal walkway over part of the Shannon riverbank. There was just time to get a cup of coffee before returning to the car and starting our journey back to Malahide. I have to say that the challenge of visiting all 32 counties has formed a great backbone for our Irish adventure. We have both thoroughly enjoyed it and are now just pondering what our next challenge will be. I’ve still got Mt Brandon to climb, though, so perhaps that will be next.

The drive to Malahide seemed to take forever- though in reality it was only two and a half hours – because the M50 was blocked by a succession of accidents. But rather than sit in a queue, we diverted off the main routes and drove across country, via Trim, and avoided the motorway network completely. It was quite interesting, in many ways, to see an aspect of deep Ireland that you don’t get to experience from the fast routes.

So now we are back in the flat and just settling down to watch a bit more of the Olympics. It’s been a great mini-break, which felt much longer than the brief three nights that it actually was. And being able to tick off the remaining three un-visited Irish counties – Fermanagh, Tyrone and Leitrim – was the icing on the cake!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


In the huge but now semi-derelict walled garden on Inisherk Island. I sometimes wonder whether the walls actually have any effect at all in sheltering the plants in the middle of such a large plot	Crom Castle. Now a privately-owned wedding venue, I believe

First steps in our last county. Carrick on Shannon, Leitrim, this afternoon.	On the high street

Although he was born in nearby Co Roscommon, Thomas Parke was brought up in Carrick-on-Shannon and became the first Irishman to traverse Africa	Curious wind-powered harps on the walkway over the Shannon. I don’t think your neighbours would thank you for installing one at home

Absolutely beautiful silver-washed fritillary. Great to see so many butterflies today, as there has been a bit of a dearth so far this summer