| Alluring Leinster - Gateway to Ireland
 This week MALCOLM ROGERS looks at the lie of the land in Leinster in our
special travel feature. Leinster extends west from the Irish Sea to
the River Shannon and north from the counties of Wexford and Waterford
to the province of Ulster. On a fine day in Wales the Wicklow Hills
beckon temptingly — just like they did on that fateful day in the 12th
century when the first Anglo-Normans spotted them.
As the 13th century historian and camp-follower Giraldus Cambrensis put
it: “Ireland exercised a strong attraction on adventurous knights... it
was very rich in booty and famed for the good temperature of the air,
the fruitfulness of the soil...” and so on, like some early travel
brochure.
Giraldus’s compadres set about extracting that booty from the natives,
moved in, and spent the next few hundred years harassing the locals.
Today Leinster remains a land of a thousand castles or more, fortified
town houses and walled settlements. The ruins of these ancient
fortifications, bedecked in ivy, stand strewn across the landscape. They
are an exotic reminder of terrible times although are one of the things
we take for granted about rural Ireland.
The various turrets and towers of the Anglo-Norman castles compete for
space with pagan wishing wells, healing bushes, stone dolmens and fairy
mounds, which in turn stand beside crumbling priories, monasteries and
great cathedrals. Ireland may not be quite as rigorously pious as it
once was but it has one of the most Christian landscapes outside the
Middle East.
However, long before the arrival of Christianity, the great megalithic
passage graves at Brú na Boinne and Knowth in Co. Meath had already been
going strong for some 4,000 years in the meditation business. These are
the oldest places you’ll ever see — the Pyramids were way in the future
when the first stones were laid at the bend in the Boyne where Newgrange
now stands.
Not far away the legendary Hill of Tara, the ancient seat of the pagan
High Kings, exudes vanished glory and remains an ethereal place to
contemplate life.
 St. Patrick finally arrived in Leinster in the fifth century, lighting
the first Pascal fire at Slane. The subsequent fusion of Celtic and
Christian culture, as potent a brew as the local poteen, produced great
monastic sites such as Monasterboice, Glendalough and Clonmacnois with
their round towers and high crosses.
Truly Leinster is a divine area where banshees and Bible long
co-existed.
Land of legends
Legends stalk the lands of Leinster. This is the site of the old Irish
epics, half historical sagas beloved by the ancient Gaelic aristocracy.
Here, long before the arrival of Christianity, the likes of the Cattle
Raid of Cooley (the Táin Bó Cuailgne) was being enacted.
The Táin was one of the first ever inter-provincial struggles, the
ancient counterpart of today’s GAA or rugby contests. Way back then it
was cattle, with Queen Medbh of Connacht’s struggle to capture the Brown
Bull of Cooley leaving its marks on most of the northern part of
Leinster as she cut a swathe through the province.
In Medbh’s time thick forests and deep bog slowed her progress. Today
most of the native forest is gone but the bogs of the midlands are
regarded as a precious habitat, almost unique in the world.
Leinster and activities
Leinster is the home of horse racing in Ireland which to a large extent
means it’s the world centre for equestrianism.
Mind you as the horse has been going strong in the country for the best
part of 28,000 years, it’s not that surprising.
The Sport of Kings is centred here in the Midlands. The Curragh in
Kildare hosts the Irish Derby, while Fairyhouse is the home of the Irish
Grand National. If you want a behind-the-scenes view of the industry,
visit the National Stud in Kildare.
The great rivers of Leinster, as well as its loughs and coastline, offer
fishing of the highest order. The number of salmon and trout in Irish
rivers has certainly decreased over the last few years — mainly as a
result of the much criticised drift-netting which scoops up hundreds of
fish before they have a chance to spawn upriver — but it’s still
possible to get terrific sport from any bank along the Slaney, Boyne,
Barrow, Castletown or Liffey.
For hill-walking the Wicklow Mountains, the Cooleys, the Comeragh, the
Slieveblooms and Lugnaquilla all offer the very best of hiking.
The midlands in general are the least-visited part of Ireland and
consequently it’s an area which is more ‘Irish’ than the more trampled
tourist routes. The landscape of Laois and Offaly is surprisingly hilly,
immensely charming and criss-crossed by quiet boreens — ideal for
cycling or that long forgotten pleasure, motoring.
City life
 Leinster boasts the oldest city in Ireland — Waterford; the biggest —
Dublin; plus the former ancient capital of the country — Kilkenny.
They’re all now thriving metropolises and depending on what you’re
looking for can be ideal weekend breaks.
Dublin is famed for its craic and is today a thriving metropolitan city
with all the excitement that involves — plus some of the problems.
Nonetheless it remains a friendly enough city with a crime rate that is
probably just below the EU norm.
Waterford can look somewhat down-at-heel but boasts some terrific pubs
and restaurants, Wexford is the place to go if you’re an opera-loving
bird-watcher with a penchant for seafood, while Kilkenny is definitely
for the arty types.
Originally called Cúige Laighean, the modern name Leinster derives from
the Irish ‘Laighin’, one of the original ‘free races’ of Ireland, with a
bit of Norse in their too — ‘stadir’, probably meaning farm or
homestead.
The 12 counties of Leinster have evidence of habitation by man for more
than 5,000 years. The great megalithic passage graves at Newgrange and
Knowth in Meath and the Proleek Dolmen at the start of the Cooley
Peninsula are among the oldest buildings and structures anywhere in the
world. Stone-age Leinster man had a very sophisticated society and
everywhere from Faughart in Louth to Kinnitty in Offaly are ruins and
curios waiting to be discovered — as the Celts found when they moved in,
followed by the Norsemen, the Normans, the Cromwellian and Dissenters,
these fertile lands have much to offer by way of diversion. |
