Sligo Tours

About Sligo

County Sligo is Yeats Country — the landscape that inspired Nobel laureate W.B. Yeats and shapes virtually every visitor experience in the county. The connection is not sentimental: Sligo's mountains, lakes, and coastline appear in the poems themselves, and the Yeats Trail — a signposted touring route connecting 14 locations — threads through the sites that fired some of the most celebrated poetry in the English language. Benbulben is the county's defining landmark — a flat-topped, cliff-faced mountain rising 526 metres above the plain north of Sligo town. Its distinctive profile appears in photographs and paintings worldwide. At its foot, the churchyard at Drumcliff holds the grave of W.B. Yeats, inscribed with his own epitaph: "Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman, pass by!" Across the bay from Benbulben, Knocknarea (327 metres) is crowned by Miosgán Méabha — a massive cairn on the summit traditionally identified as the tomb of the legendary Queen Maeve of Connacht. The walk to the summit takes about 40 minutes from the car park at Strandhill and is one of the most accessible and rewarding short hikes in the west. Strandhill, at the foot of Knocknarea, is the surf capital of the northwest. The National Surf Centre is based here, and the beach draws surfers year-round. Voya Seaweed Baths — heated seaweed baths overlooking the Atlantic — are a popular complement to the surf scene. Carrowmore, on the outskirts of Sligo town, is one of the largest and oldest megalithic cemeteries in Europe — over 60 tombs and passage graves dating back more than 5,000 years. The visitor centre interprets the site, and many of the tombs are freely accessible in the surrounding fields. Lough Gill, east of Sligo town, is the lake that inspired Yeats's poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Boat trips circle the lake, passing the tiny island of Innisfree. Lissadell House — a 19th-century country house associated with the Gore-Booth sisters and Yeats — sits on the coast between Drumcliff and Benbulben.