Cahir and Surrounding Area

On Friday, we decided to stay in the Mitchelstown area; our landlady gave us some hints on places to see. But first some comments on the road system. Besides motorways, which are like our freeways, there is a national road system (designated as Nxxx); the nation primary roads are usually pretty good while the secondary national roads can be anything from good to single track. The regional roads (designated Rxxx) can be anything from good like the national roads to single track; but they do tend to be narrow, each lane not much wider than a truck. Then there are local roads (designated Lxxx); these are a challenge.

We’ve fallen in love with the town names; like Skibbereen, Clonakilty and Ardfinnan. So I’ll describe today’s travels in some detail to illustrate the roads and towns along the way.

We drove from our house, Croughmore, east on R665 through Ballyporeen (Bally means town) to Clogheen where we turned north on R668 and went through Ballylooby and Killcommon to Cahir (pronounced ‘care’) in County Tipperary. Cahir is a large town with several interesting sites to visit. We went to the Swiss Cottage (it has nothing to do with anything Swiss) which was designed by John Nash (famous for designing buildings in London in the ‘Regency’ style) and built in 1810 as a ‘play house’ by the Butler family; this means it was a small place they used in the daytime in the summer to entertain and pretend they were roughing it (ala Marie Antoinette at La Petit Trianon).

It is a thatched cottage with four rooms which fell into disrepair between 1980 and 1985 and has been fully restored. The family dictated that the house be designed organically to mimic nature (nothing symmetrical, lots of curves, few straight lines/angles, nothing, not even the style of the windows, repeated in any one room). The result is charming if a bit disconcerting and the finishes and fabrics are very Laura Ashley-esque.

We than walked 2 KM on a lovely wooded path along the Suir River into Cahir for a pub lunch (castle fatigue has set in so we skipped the castle). By the time we left, the sunshine had turned into ‘soft weather’ but we stayed dry because the path was mostly under a canopy of trees.

On the drive back, we turned south at Clogheen on R668 looking for ‘The Vee’. This took us through a national park (Killballyboy Woods) into the Knockmealdown Mountains where the forests on both sides of the road were heavily laced with purple rhododendrons. At the top of the grade we came to a severe switchback (like Highway One on the Jenner Grade) where we had a spectacular view of the River Suir valley and the Galty Mountains beyond. The day was getting late and the clouds threatening, so we retraced our route and returned to Croughmore; a very satisfying day.