Day 3 Monday

Distance Options A 27 Miles B 37 Miles C 63 Miles

Accommodation : Lady Gregory Hotel

Today you will be riding West to a town called Gort. You will be cycling trough an extensively wooded region known as Sleve Aughty. Thousands of acres of Sitka Spruce forestry interspersed with crystal lakes with nothing along the road but yourself and a few deer grazing "the long acre".

The main reason I am taking you trough this region today is I want to show you areas of the country that have remained untouched by the massive development that has taken place in Ireland over the past 8 years. The economic boom referred to as the Celtic Tiger was somewhat selective with regard to the regions and areas its presence was felt. By taking the route outlined for today you will get to see the other side of Ireland. You will understand why our greatest exports in the 80's were our young workforce. Thankfully that trend has been reversed.

Gort is a medium sized market town on the Galway to Ennis Road, situated in a gap between the Slieve Aughty Mountains and the Burren to the south. The name in Irish is "An Gort", (The Field) or "Gort Inse Guaire", (Field of Guaire’s Island).

The town takes its name form King Guaire, the sixth century King of Connacht, who built a castle here. He had a reputation for his generosity and it was said that his right arm, his giving arm, was longer than his left. One legend recalls how Guaire was sitting down to dinner when mysteriously the plates disappeared out the windows. He quickly followed them on horseback and soon met St Colman who had just finished a seven year fast and had eaten the food. The King was impressed by his ingenuity and granted him lands at Kilmacduagh where he built a monastery, one of the oldest in Europe.

The area around the town is notable for its landscape of gray stone walls and stone-strewn fields. The eighteenth century weigh-house in the Town Square has recently been restored. There is a strong tradition of Irish music in the locality and many pubs stage sessions at night.
Five miles south of Gort is Ardamullwan Castle, where in the Middle Ages the O’Shaughnessy family had their main stronghold. This was on the site of the old military barracks. In 1567 Dermot O’Shaughnessy, claimed the castle on the death of his brother, Roger. A long dispute followed between Dermot and his nephew John, which resulted in both of them being killed.

Thoor Ballylee, home of William Butler Yeats

Thoor Ballylee was Yeats's monument and symbol; in both aspects it had multiple significance. It satisfied his desire for a rooted place in a known countryside, not far from Coole and his life-long friend Lady Gregory.To live in a Tower complemented, perhaps, his alignment with a tradition of cultivated aristocracy which he had envied and a leisured peace which he had enjoyed.

The tower or castle that Yeats bought was a sixteenth century norman castle built by the family de Burgo, or Burke. It consisted of four floors with one room on each, connected by a spiral stone stairway built into the seven-foot thickness of the massive outer wall. Each floor had a window overlooking the river which flowed alongside. At the top here was a flat roof reached by a final steep flight of steps from the floor below.
The tower had to be restored before Yeats could live in it. By the summer of 1919 Yeats and his wife and daughter had moved in. Yeats mentions Ballylee in a letter to Maud Gonne May 1918.

' We hope to be in Ballylee in a month and there I dream of making a house that may encourage people to avoid ugly manufactured things - an ideal poor man's house. Except a very few things imported as models we should get all made in Galway or Limerick. I am told that our neighbors are pleased that we are not getting 'grand things but old irish furniture'.
After the Yeats family moved out in 1929 it fell into disuse , but was restored as 'Yeats Tower' in 1965 and fitted out as a Yeats museum, containing an interesting collection of first editions as well as items of furniture. The adjoining cottage is fitted out as a tea room and shop. The tower has been wired for sound and a pre-recorded commentary can be played on a push-button system. In addition part of the ground floor has been adapted for an audio-visual presentation on the years of Yeats's occupancy.