Frogswell
The Surrounding Area
Getting to Mayo is
simple enough. Knock airport, only 30 minutes away, has flights to Stanstead,
Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham. You can even take the commuter plane to Dublin
and fly on to many other destinations. Both bus and train can be caught in Foxford
and you'll be in Dublin in about 4 hours. You can drive to Dublin in about 3 hours
but it might take you as long to get from the outskirts to the centre of the city!
Frogswell lies in the townland of Cloonconlon, part of the village of Straide, famous as the birthplace and burial place of Michael Davitt, founder of the Land League. Straide village is one mile from Frogswell and has a church, 2 pubs, a shop and elementary school. Turn left when you get to the village and Foxford is the nearest large village to the north, about 5 miles away and if you continue on for 12 miles more you will reach Ballina, a lively town with Tesco, Dunnes and Lidl to shop in and a Salmon Festival in summer. The seaside resort of Enniscrone with seaweed baths and miles of beach is only a short distance beyond Ballina.
Turn right at Straide, head south and in 1.6 miles you'll be in Ballyvary, with a post office, shops and pubs, where you'll link up with the N5 . Travel west on it and you'll reach the county town, Castlebar in under 10 minutes . It has expanded a lot in the last few years and now has Tesco, Dunnes, Aldi and Argos . If you want more shops and out-of-town retail parks, there are plenty in Galway, about 90 minutes further on . For charm you can head to Westport , a delightful cosmopolitan spot on Clew Bay from where you can drive round to and perhaps climb Croagh Patrick, the Holy Mountain …more commonly referred to as The Reek.
The area round Straide is famous for its salmon fishing on the Moy. It's still an unspoilt area with quiet lanes for walking, riding or cycling and miles of bog and mountain where you can wander, perhaps seeing lizards and newts while listening to curlews or watching a snipe evading a sparrow hawk by zig-zagging into the woods. The nearby Lough Conn is a great place for a family outing with man-made beaches and parking spots and old beech forest to walk in.
