Westport Harbour

On the move again today. We have nominated the site at Rosses Point as being the best so far, good and clean facilities, excellent view and easy access to bus into Sligo town.

As we started on the road, the rain started, but that made today a good travelling day. We stopped in Ballina at Lidl to stock up on groceries.

Our next stop was at the Irish Museum of Country Life and Turlough House. A helpful guide explained there were just 2 rooms in the house to look at, the parlour which gave an insight into the life of the upper class life style and the second room was an art exhibit of sacks with glass potatoes depicting the potato famine of the 1840’s. The museum was a modern building with an audio video introduction and a number of well set out displays illustrating country life in the past in Ireland. The essence of life seemed to be to provide nearly everything from nature so making chairs, baskets, even fancy dress costumes from such things as wheat. People worked long hours and had few comforts. Electricity and, later, telephones didn’t start to be common place in rural areas until well into the 1970’s. There were plenty of customs that often revolved around the growing season. Tinkers who travelled around in the summer months were very welcome as they either provided or repaired items such as tin buckets hence the name Tinker.

We arrived at the Westport site, settled in and checked several weather sites on our mobiles trying to decide if Monday or Tuesday would be best for cycling the Great Western Greenway.Read more