The Boyle Arts Festival offers more than enough to attract crowds seeking culture, but the Co Roscommon town is a first-rate attraction in its own right, writes Gemma Tipton.
IF I WERE A copywriter, asked to come up with a campaign for Boyle, I'm not quite sure where I'd start. "Boyle, more going on than meets the eye", or "Boyle, a lot nicer than you might think" might be factual, but wouldn't really have you rushing to get there. And while the arts festival, which is on next week, is cause enough for a rush, Boyle is well worth visiting, even when there's no festival to lure you in.
While it may not be as forceful with its attractions as some places in Ireland, a couple of days spent poking around the town and its environs reveal a wealth of history, culture, archaeology, music, art and even a little unabashed luxury. One of the reasons for its Cinderella status might be that Roscommon, its home county, is the only county in Connaught without a sniff of the sea. It does make up for that with lakes though, and plenty of boating and fishing opportunities. It's also one of those by-passed towns that people see signs for as they head up to Sligo and the northwest, but seldom turn off the main road to visit.
The town itself has a sleepy feel. It's short on gourmet restaurants, but blessedly free of most of the chain stores that have made so many towns in Ireland feel like the adopted sisters of Anywhere-in-England. There's the ruins of Boyle Abbey, founded by the Cistercians in the 12th century and currently undergoing an astonishingly ambitious restoration job. The River Boyle runs through it, and you can walk along its banks to King House, built by the King family, who once owned most of the area. King House is now home to a museum, library and the Boyle art collection.
It's also the hub of the arts festival, which this year will see John Banville and Bernard MacLaverty reading, Phil Coulter performing, Sandra Oman singing, and more than 150 artists exhibiting. These artists include Basil Blackshaw, Nathalie du Pasquier, Ciaran Lennon, Vera Klute, Stephen McKenna and John Shinnors, and all the work is for sale.
There will also be Car Show, by the Roscommon County Youth Theatre, where the audience slips into the back seats of parked cars to witness the drama unfolding in front. There's an opera dinner, a gourmet picnic, and the first performance in Ireland by Tibetan musician, artist and performer, Loten Namling.
Fergus Ahern, chairperson of the arts festival, is the man responsible for bringing Namling to Boyle. "I was at the rugby world cup in Paris," he says, "and I ended up sitting beside him in a cafe. We got chatting, and he told me what he did. 'Have you ever been to Boyle?' I asked him . . ."
Speaking from Switzerland, where he now lives, Namling is excited about coming here. "I have brought the music of my country all over the world," he says, "but one of the few countries I have never performed in is Ireland . . . I have a passion about the music of my country and want to share this, and tell my audience about the history of my country and the position there."
Irish soprano Sandra Oman will also be performing courtesy of an encounter with Ahern, this time on the radio. "I heard her one day and thought she was brilliant, so I got in touch with her," he says. Ahern is, in fact, rather difficult to say no to, a quality that makes the arts festival programme such an enticing mix. He's also very passionate about his home town, and doesn't see any reason why talents, and audiences, shouldn't make the trip to Boyle, where they will take the stage alongside local artists. (One local artist, long since moved away, is Maureen O'Sullivan, who played Tarzan's Jane, and is mother to Mia Farrow.) As well as being an arts venue, King House includes a museum that tells the story of the Kings, and also of the Connaught Rangers, who were garrisoned here. The Kings had a colourful history, including social climbing, duelling, murder and divorce.
Mary Wollstonecraft (one of the first feminists and mother to Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein) was governess to their children for a while. The children found her inspiring, although three of them would end up either alcoholic or insane. After the Kings sold King House in 1795, to build the far more grandiose Rockingham a few miles down the road in what is now Lough Key Forest Park, the army moved in. The Connaught Rangers were a tough crowd - the Duke of Wellington, who fought with them at Waterloo, said "I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God they terrify me."
Rockingham House may well have been grand, but it is no more. It burned down in 1957, after an accidental fire began in the basement. Today, there's the wonderful (or awful, depending on your views on brutalist architecture) Moylurg Tower on the site, and a visitor's centre that includes a tree canopy walk and the Boda Borg.
A Swedish invention, the Boda Borg is like a low-tech Crystal Maze, where teams of kids (and some adults) go from room to room to solve puzzles, do tasks, climb things, crawl through spaces, and (without the aid of instructions) try to complete the course. It's great fun, and on a rainy day, you can lose the kids in there for hours while you gaze out at the lake through the restaurant windows.
Castle Island is here - which was once inspirational to Yeats. It was home to the McDermotts, rulers of the area until the 17th century, when it was granted to the King family. If the weather improves, the landscape is glorious and deeply ancient. There are the remains of ring forts, crannógs on the islands and passage graves that predate the pyramids.
Away from town in the other direction is the Arigna Mining Experience, where you can tour underground and explore one of the last working coal mines in Ireland. Mines here dated back to the 1600s and finally closed in 1990. Atop the mountain is a windfarm, while, underground, the tour is atmospheric and also, as it is guided by the former miners themselves, somehow poignant.
Today's tourism needs hotels, however, and while Boyle is served by several B&Bs, it is only now that it is finally getting a five-star hotel. Kilronan Castle is on the road to Arigna and, when fully completed, will boast gardens designed by Diarmuid Gavin, a spa and a Nick Faldo golf course. For now, you can stay in gorgeous rooms in the original castle, an excellent restaurant and a cosy bar, where I came upon a gathering of musicians getting ready for the O'Carolan Summer School and Harp Festival in nearby Keadue. Music and, yes, craic, continued into the night, and I woke the next morning, accompanied by a vague hangover, in my blissfully comfortable bed to think Boyle, it's bloody brilliant.
The Boyle Arts Festival runs from July 25th to August 1st: www.boylearts.com
Lough Key Forest Park and Boda Borg: www.loughkey.ie
King House: www.kinghouse.ie
Arigna Mining Experience: www.arignaminingexperience.ie
Kilronan Castle: www.kilronancastle.ie
O'Carolan Harp Festival and Summer School, August 1st to 4th: www.keadue.harp.net