Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland - 04/28/17

Motto: Ar Aghaidh
"Forward"

We've just arrived in Castlebar, the County town of County Mayo, after hearing about one of it's festivals, The Four Days' Walk.
Castlebar grew up as a settlement around the De Bary castle in 1235, and was given the right to be made a city in 1613 by King James I. The city's name derives from the castle,

We observed during our walk that Castlebar has a much smaller population than the last cities we visited. Castlebar experienced a population boom only in the late 20th century, currently standing with over 11.000 inhabitants according to the 2011 census, from 4.256 in 1926.

Castlebar is mainly a market town, being the second largest retail centre in Connacht, after Galway, and the 7th largest retail centre in Ireland.

Interesting Facts:

• Inventor, watchmaker, and mechanical engineer Louis Brennan(1852-1932), whose most popular inventions were; a steerable torpedo, a gyroscopically-balanced monorail system and an early helicopter, was born in Castlebar.

• Ulick Bourke, founder of the Gaelic Union, was born in Castlebar.

After asking around a bit, we discovered that the "Four Day's Walk" festival had nothing to do with walking after all, it is a blues music festival.

Close to the city center is County Mayo Peace Park and Remembrance garden, a park honoring people

from County Mayo who lost their lives in both world wars.

Along the names, we saw a dedication to Michael Fenney, the creator of the project, and Mary Mc Alesse, the President of Ireland, who inaugurated the park in October 2008.

Although we were pleased and impressed with the amount of people from the region who fought in the war, we couldn't help but notice that, for some of the population, it seems more turned to the British side of the story, as it doesn't feature important Irish conflicts, such as the Irish War of Independence.

We realized that we wouldn't have many places to visit as soon as we observed the city's density, though something special is located here. The Country Life part of the National Museum of Ireland (which we visited in Dublin) is located here, and it's the only part of the Museum outside of Dublin.

We made a quick turnaround and walked more 6 miles, reaching the Museum in Turlough Vilage in less than 1.5 hours.

The Country Life Museum opened in 2001 and exhibits the way of life of rural Irish people between 1850 and 1950. The exhibitions we saw varied from religious and sacred artifacts such as a piece of the True Cross, believed to be a piece from the cross upon which Jesus was crucified, a collection of photographs showing the lives of the noble and their servants, biography collections and jewelry.