OffaLyHistory.com
Title
Offaly Historical & Archaeological Society - Offaly, Research, Distilling, Tullamore, Offaly Photographs, Touring Offaly, Maps, Newsletters, Famous People, Offaly Writers, King's County
Description
The Irish Midlands, which are in every sense the antithesis of the English Midlands for they are sumptuously rural, with many of the roads lined by tall and splendid beech trees, horse chestnuts and aged oaks. Great flat stretches of the bog are, in summertime, sprinkled with feathery white and yellow flowers; many of the roads crossing the bog have become switchbacks from subsidence caused by the bog-water on which they are laid down. But, apart from their natural beauties, the Midlands abound in well-preserved ruins of abbeys, friaries, forts and castles, which seem from a distance, moored in the bogs and meadows. Here flocks of gregarious sheep and more solitary cows and bullocks mooch and graze on the course green grass spattered with buttercups and daisies beneath the windswept Irish sky.
Set in the heart of the Irish Midlands and the vale of the Shannon, Offaly is a place of ease, rest and contentment.
If Offaly is sometimes described as undiscovered country, it is no backwater and the visitor will be pleasantly surprised at the way in which the well cared for and prosperous towns and villages sit in the quiet and generally flat landscape.
