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PONTOON AND FOXFORD |
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If you go south along the R315 for Foxford, through rough, peaty
terrain strewn with boulders, you reach PONTOON after ten miles, on the
neck of land that separates Lough Conn from Lough Cullin. The village is
a good base for exploring both the lakes' shores and the foothills of
the Nephin Beg Mountains to the northwest and the Ox Mountains to the
northeast. On either side of Main Street both the Country Kitchen and
Anchor Bar serve food though for stylish cuisine (the Sunday lunch is
especially recommended) try creeper-clad Healy's Hotel (tel 094/56443,
healyspontoon@tinet.ie ; £55-70/¬69.84-88.88). Originally a lakeside
coaching inn and latterly a no-nonsense anglers' hotel , it has
undergone considerable renovation and is well regarded not only by
fishermen but by the many locals who eat at its excellent restaurant,
renowned for its wholesome home-cooked Irish food.
FOXFORD , a couple of miles east, is a trim village in the lee of the Ox
Mountains which owed its late nineteenth-century survival to the Foxford
Woollen Mill (April-Oct Mon-Sat 10am-5.30pm & Sun noon-5.30pm; £3/¬3.81;
includes tour of present-day factory), which now has an elaborate
audiovisual presentation to tell its story. There's a gift shop and,
upstairs, a pleasant tea shop; rooms are let to local artists and
craftspeople. After the 1840s Famine, the potato crop failed again in
the 1870s, resulting in evictions and abject poverty for the people of
the town and the peat-cutting districts around. Most families led a
precarious existence, relying on their own potato crop and, in the
absence of significant cash employment in Foxford, the meagre earnings
the men were able to bring back from summers working on big farms in
Scotland. Such conditions led to demands for land reform - the Land
League was founded in 1879 by Michael Davitt, also the bringer of trade
unionism to Ireland, whose cottage at STRADE , between Foxford and
Castlebar, you can also visit (Tues-Sat 2-6pm; 50p/¬0.63). The mill at
Foxford was founded in 1890 by a far-sighted nun called Marrough Bernard,
who called it Providence. At a time when more professionally run mills
were failing - so unused were her workers to ideas of productivity that
she had to bribe them with cash prizes - the success of the mill could
certainly be called providential. Its profits were used to fund schools
and a diverse range of cultural activities, of which one, the Foxford
Mill brass band, still survives.
The tourist office , in one of the mill buildings (Mon-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun
noon-6pm; tel 094/56488), has useful details of walking and fishing in
the area; the North Mayo Angling Advice Centre, where you can buy
licences, is also in the town. There are a few B&Bs in Foxford - popular
with fishermen is Mrs M. Gannon's on Providence Rd (tel 094/56101;
£33-40/¬41.90-50.79), but on the whole, you're probably better off among
the scenic beauties of Pontoon. Hennigan's pub has traditional music and
ballad nights.
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