Insight Guides Ireland (Travel Guide with Free eBook) by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Ireland
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Skipper Colin Barnes (Tel. 086-3850568; www.corkwhalewatch.com; adult €60, under 18s €45, group rates for six or more) runs boat trips from Reen Pier in Union Hall, with regular sightings of dolphins, seals and fin, humpback and minke whales. Trips leave daily at 10am and 3pm, weather permitting, from May to September, and there’s one trip a day October to April at 10.30am.

Castletownshend

Castletownshend (www.castle-townshend.com) is signposted from Union Hall on an attractive backroad, which passes through Rineen. Castletownshend is one of the prettiest, and most unusual villages in west Cork, with a history tightly tethered to the Townshend family ever since English soldier and politician Richard Townsend built a castle there in the 17th century. Wander along its two streets, noting its large, well-designed three- and four-storey houses, often stone-built and neoclassical.

A wall plaque in St Barrahane’s Church enlarges on the history. Behind the church are the graves of Edith Somerville (1858–1949) and her writing partner, Violet Martin (1862–1915). As Somerville and Ross, they are best known for a series of comic sketches of Irish country life, Some Experiences of an Irish RM (Resident Magistrate). They also wrote a well-received novel, The Real Charlotte. There’s a wonderful view of the sheltered anchorage from their graves.

Skibbereen

Skibbereen 6 [map] is a market town built in a solid bourgeois style in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Symptomatic of the changes that have taken place in rural Ireland since the economic boom, it now has a tiny (but very welcome) bypass, in the form of a ring road studded with supermarkets and DIY warehouses.

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