Hello!
This year the students of St. Augustine’s N.S, Clontuskert are taking part in the Keep on Track Project.
We are three miles outside Ballinasloe Town and we are looking after Ballinasloe Station.
A BIT ABOUT BALLINASLOE:
This piece is from www.ballinasloe.ie
Ballinasloe is the gateway to the West of Ireland and a town with a long legacy of hospitality. Once the gravel ridge of the Esker Riada was the natural east-west highway traversing Ireland that was followed by the High Kings of Connaught on their annual pilgrimage to the Hill of Tara. Now the N6 is the main Dublin-Galway road, and halfway between Dublin and Clifden on the N6 is the second largest town in the second largest county in Ireland, Ballinasloe.
Whether here to visit friends and family or tracing ancestral roots or stopping off on your Irish travels, we hope you enjoy your stay in Ballinasloe. If you plan to visit picturesque Connemara or the musical Burren region or Galway, City of the Tribs, then Ballinasloe is the ideal place to break your journey westwards. Perhaps you have cruised upriver to the town’s new Marina and wish to enjoy some Irish food in the town’s highly rated restaurants or enjoy traditional music and an Irish Coffee in one of the pubs. Or maybe you just wish to browse around the town which still bears the landmarks of the Trench family, former landlords of a town steeped in history. A free walking trail, available from the Tourist Office, will guide you round Ballinasloe. Locally-quarried limestone was once shipped trans-Atlantic to front many famous New York buildings and Ballinasloe’s fine limestone buildings featured in the nostalgic Lawrence Collection photo collection. The walking trail spans the centuries from an unique Tudor-arched bridge – the only one of its kind in Ireland – through the era of the town crier, the street lighter and Bianconi coaches plying their trade and ends at the Famine Park which commemorates the famine era.
There is so much history to savour in the East Galway area with many of the villages hosing their own heritage centres or own unique tale to tell like Caltra village where a plaque commemorates local emigrants who perished on the Titanic, or Kilconnell village with its Franciscan Friary, once sacked by Cromwellian soldiers and Lough Acalla that attracts may anglers to the north of Ballinasloe is Ahascragh with St. Cuans Well and Mountbellew which regularly features in the Tidy Towns award.
South of Ballinasloe are several noted ecclesiastical sites such as Clontuskert Priory and the World Heritage Organisation-listed Clonfert Cathedral of St. Brendan the Navigator fame. Clonfert’s doorway is said to be one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in Ireland. The oft-Viking plundered monastic settlement of Clonmacnois, situated on the Shannon, attracted European scholars for centuries while west of Ballinasloe, the brooding battlefield of Aughrim is a reminder of the forgotten day of Irish history – July 12th, 1691. Also in the area is the picturesque Portumna Castle on the shores of Lough Derg; the splendid Loughrea Cathedral, where audio-tours are available or visit the medieval town and fields of Athenry. Thoor Ballylee, the Norman tower house home of W.B Yeats situated near Gort, is another leading visitor attraction in Co. Galway.
